Image

Presidential Death Match: Media’s Big Event

Presidential elections have been media spectacles for almost 50 years, roughly since television became the national drug. One landmark 1960 production, arguably the first televised "presidential death match," pitted Jack Kennedy, an Arthurian figure to be sure, against Dick Nixon, doing a creepy Richard III imitation. Their TV debate is said to have turned the tide, but the election itself was questionable, and high Camelot hopes were cut short by assassination and war.

Image

The Future of Community Radio

Will audiences keep tuning in to radio if the information and music they want can be more easily accessed by other means? Can FM compete with the quality and reliability of new portable devices? And will listeners continue to pay attention to long fund drive pitches? These are some of the difficult questions public and community radio must answer in the near future.

Image

Iraq War Coverage Skews Perceptions

On the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, media coverage of the occupation continues to decline. According to a survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the percentage of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined since last year, dropping from an average of 15% last July to just 3% in February, 2008. Public interest has also dropped.

Image

The People Powered Potential of Independent Media

It's good to be with media makers who don't believe that climate change is just a rumor, don't think immigrants coming to the U.S. for a better life should be turned into criminals, and didn't need over three years to figure out that the administration manipulated public opinion and distorted reality to go to war in the Middle East.

9/11 Collapse

Mission improbable: Challenging the official story of 9/11

For more than four years, the public has repeatedly been urged to ignore "outrageous" conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that set in motion the so-called "war on terrorism." However, the official explanation that has been provided - and widely embraced - also requires the acceptance of a theory, one involving a massive intelligence failure, 19 Muslim hijackers under the sway of Osama bin Laden, and the inability of the world's most advanced Air Force to intercept four commercial airplanes.