Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
The Washington Post on Thursday night promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg – headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – cites a report by…
Here are some takeaways from the news about “fake news”: false stories propelled Donald Trump’s presidential victory, undermined the peace deal in Colombia, and contribute to ethnic violence in Myanmar. Facebook is to blame, with Twitter and Google distant abettors. Whatever you think of these conventional conclusions, fake news is causing us to close this…
.entry-header One of the themes that has emerged during the controversy over “fake news” and its role in the election of Donald Trump is the idea that Russian agents of various kinds helped hack the process by fueling this barrage of false news. But is that really true? In a recent story, the Washington Post…
Editor’s Note: There is an update to this story provided by the network’s general manager at the bottom of this piece. — Admittedly, we in the Mediaite writer’s room laughed out loud in shocked disbelief when we read the first headline this morning from the International Business Times: Oops! CNN’s Boston TV channel accidentally broadcasts…
Scott Eric Kaufman, an assistant editor at Salon and one of our most free-ranging and adventurous voices in recent years, died on Monday near his family home in Houston after a lengthy illness. He was 39. We join our readers and those who encountered Scott’s work and his inimitable personality in other venues, from the…
Christiane Amanpour was honored with the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for her extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom on November 22, 2016. The text of Amanpour’s acceptance speech, as prepared for delivery, is below. I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for…
You can learn everything you need to know about the “alt-right” by looking at the man who popularized its name. Credit goes to Richard Spencer, head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI), and one of the country’s leading contemporary advocates of ideological racism. The weekend before Thanksgiving, Spencer keynoted an NPI conference in…
Two years ago if you asked me to explain the concept of content marketing I would start by talking to you about planets. Imagine you are a marketer standing all alone — like The Little Prince — in the middle of a small planet. That planet is your website. Today it doesn’t get many visitors because it’s too small…
On Monday, some of the biggest names in TV news trooped into Trump Tower for an off-the-record meeting with the president-elect. It was an all-star cast. Not just on-air stars like Lester Holt, Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopoulos, but their bosses were also summoned before the Potentate of Fifth Avenue. The meeting was a huge…
Image via Forbes. Thought Catalog for thinkfluencers Forbes magazine has managed to land an exclusive interview with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, despite the fact that he “almost never speaks publicly.” And how’d they manage that? “Interviews with him and a dozen people around him and the Trump camp lead to an inescapable fact: The…