journalism

Exiled Turkish journalist Can Dündar sentenced to 27.5 years in prison for Reporting on Ankara’s aid to Syrian Fundamentalist Rebels

( Committee to Protect Journalists) | – The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned a Turkish court’s conviction and sentencing of exiled journalist Can Dündar. On December 23, the 14th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes announced that Dündar, who lives in Germany, had been sentenced to 18 years and nine months in prison for an espionage […]

Donald Trump

Peril in the Middle East, Peril at Home: Our Top 10 Stories of 2020

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 2020 was a monster of a year, leaving three million Americans dead (a record), probably nearly half a million of them of Covid-19 once everyone is counted. The fecklessness of the outgoing Trump administration was responsible for a good deal of this national catastrophe, one that did not strike our […]

Democracy

Pollsters are Missing Winners, but so Much else

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Once again Donald J Trump delivered another electoral surprise. It was not the re-election win he had been hoping for but it was a nail biting down to the wire event that far exceeded the pollsters and most pundits’ predictions. Nor was the president’s relative success confined […]

China

Has Russian media turned on its golden boy Trump, joining with China and Iran?

The Conversation

By Robert Hinck, Robert Utterback and Skye Cooley | – It can be easy to overlook how the rest of the world is making sense of America’s chaotic campaign season. But in many cases, they’re paying attention just as closely as U.S. voters are. After all, who wins the U.S. presidency has implications for countries […]

Donald Trump

Call for Fox Media News Monopoly to be Broken up: Rupert Murdoch an “arrogant cancer on … democracy” – Rudd

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has called for the break up of his country’s media monopolies (almost all major media are owned by just two corporations). One of the two media monopolies he was slamming is Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp. In its incarnation as Fox News, the same company has […]

Donald Trump

How our TV News is letting Trump get away with Claiming the Pandemic is Behind Us when we have a 9/11 every 3 Days

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican National Convention wants the pandemic to be in the past. It isn’t. Cases are up almost 1 percent this week. We still have over 40,000 new cases daily, down from a peak of 70,000 in mid-July. Some of the decline is a result of less testing, connived at […]

African-Americans

Tucker Carlson Rises to Defense of Confederates who Killed 360,222 Federal Troops, 100x more than Al-Qaeda

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tucker Carlson is shedding advertisers the way a rattlesnake sheds his skin. He went full white supremacist some time ago, and has been carried at Fox News only because the channel’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, appears to be a throwback to the policies of white Australia, which restricted immigration to that […]

Authoritarianism

Strange Attractors: Why is Trump’s Covid-19 Train Wreck so Mesmerizing to Corporate Media and the rest of Us?

Rebecca Gordon

(Tomdispatch.com) – My partner and I have been fighting about politics since we met in 1965. I was 13. She was 18 and my summer camp counselor. (It was another 14 years before we became a couple.) We spent that first summer arguing about the Vietnam War. I was convinced that the U.S. never should […]

Donald Trump

At Last, Someone is Suing Fox “News” for Journalistic Malpractice in Misguiding People over Seriousness of Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I have long thought that Fox Cable “News” was open to lawsuits for its persistent purveying of falsehoods to viewers, some of which will cost lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets sued over it climate change denialism, for instance. All you need is for a viewer to maintain […]