Jonathan Turley has a new op-ed that gives four categories of speech that western governments are increasingly using as grounds for limiting it: speech that it is blasphemous, hateful, discriminatory, and deceitful.
Category Archive: Media
Oct 12 2012
You know you are old when …
… you recognize the names of pop culture celebrities because they appear frequently in news headlines and accompanying photos (names such as Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban, Amanda Bynes, Taylor Hicks) and you not only do not know what they are famous for (Are they singers? reality show stars? actors? people whose naked photos have appeared …
Oct 10 2012
Online reviews
I rarely read online reviews of things because it seems strange to be swayed by the opinions of anonymous people whom I did not know in the least and who might have their own agendas or even a vested interest in the product. If I do read a review, it is to see if there …
Sep 25 2012
Another reason to have faith in the next generation
In a post that looks at how debased mainstream media news coverage has become, Glenn Greenwald highlights a story of student journalists (scroll down to item #4) who have a better understanding of the media’s role than their supposed betters.
Sep 22 2012
Scientists, journals, and science journalists behaving badly
Science journalism plays an extremely important role in translating the almost impenetrable jargon and style of journal articles into languagethat can be digested by the general public. Hence it is important that they convey accurately and in a balanced way the main conclusions of the research. But in order to make their work appealing to …
Sep 17 2012
And for our next guest, we have an immature idiot
There are times when I actually feel sorry for Fox News, as in this case where Gretchen Carlson ends up interviewing an idiot. Doesn’t anyone screen these people? It’s bad enough that she has to listen to the co-hosts on either side of her spouting drivel day in and day out, does she have to …
Sep 10 2012
Checking your emails for tone
The internet age has spawned huge numbers of incidents where people have sent emails that have inadvertently offended the recipient because the sender was not sensitive enough to the absence in written messages of the important cues that accompany the spoken word, where facial expressions and tone of voice and inflexions can provide helpful clues …
Sep 10 2012
Political rhetorical styles
John McWhorter is a linguist who wrote an excellent book The Power of Babel on the evolution of language that I discussed about five years ago. He writes good essays on rhetorical styles and has analyzed the differences between the Clinton and Obama speeches at the Democratic convention.
Sep 08 2012
The collusion of CNN with world governments
Glenn Greenwald reports on what happened to a CNN investigative report that it had commissioned on the Arab spring in Bahrain in 2011. On arrival there, the CNN news team was shocked at the harsh treatment being meted out to everyone including them and they turned in a story that was highly critical of the …
Aug 29 2012
Why is this not news?
A report emerged yesterday about an ugly incident in which someone attending the Republican convention threw nuts at an African-American CNN camerawoman and saying “This is how we feed animals.”
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