Putting news in perspective

Sam Smith – According to traditional journalism – as opposed to what we see these days on Fox News – the job is to tell the facts.  One of the things, however, that can be left out of coverage is historical perspective. How does this compare with what has happened in the past? For example, …

Digital deficit disorder

Sam Smith, 2010 - Thanks to the work I do, I'm constantly looking at percentages and other such figures developed after much, and often expensive, research. And as I do so, the ghost of Alice Darnell repeatedly arises, reminding me - as she did teaching my 12th grade math class - that a result can …

HOW’S THIS FOR BALANCED JOURNALISM?

 Sam Smith - I view hundreds of headlines each day and just for the hell of it decided to compare the number covering the Will Smith incident as opposed to those about Ukraine. During three hours, Ukraine won with 23 headlines while Will Smith got 21. How's that for balanced journalism?

The media’s unintended contribution to racism

Sam Smith - Every day I scan over a thousand headlines for news worth reporting. The most notable absence: stories about ethnic groups working well together. According to the media, multiculturalism is nothing but a problem, with a particular obsession on stories where it ends in violent death. And it hardly ever reports on the …

Media time killers

Sam Smith - Watching Andrea Mitchell drone on about the post-Breyer Supreme Court reminded me of a media problem that gets virtually no attention: all day news channels have to fill all their days with news, or an imitation of it. Analyzing who is going to replace Breyer is of magnificent assistance in this  since …

Getting started in alternative journalism

Sam Smith – After graduating from college, I found work in a basement office of a row house on New Jersey Avenue SE, a few blocks from the Capitol. Out of this long, sunken, slovenly one-room den qua office was published Roll Call, a weekly paper for those thousands who worked on Capitol Hill. In …

Why the media doesn’t like Green Book

Sam Smith – I can’t remember an Oscar winner getting so much criticism as Green Book Admittedly, it is a charming story that does not reflect far more painful ethnic relations of the time and it may be historically inaccurate. But it was released when ethnic issues seem stunningly void of possible decent resolution, when …

Media essays

The conspiracy theory card The other day, Politico ran a typically sneering article about the Bilderberg Group. As usual, anyone who shows the slightest interest in the hyper secret meeting of some of the most powerful people in the world is a "conspiracy theorist." This is smug, childish, mindless establishment journalism at its worst. By …

Telling just the bad part of the story

Sam Smith - Watching Green Book, I was pleasantly relieved to see a film dedicated to telling a story of improved ethnic relations. If you base your assumptions on the media, it would appear that nothing much in this sphere is getting better. While the media is not at fault for telling the true bad …

Rest in peace, Radio Shack

Rest in Peace, Radio Shack This photo on Reddit - another Radio Shack folding - reminds us of the key role Radio Shack has played in the life of the Progressive Review. In the early decades of this journal, Radio Shack was our technological guardian angel. Here are a couple of our favorite devices– Sam …

The neighborhoods of Fred Rogers and Donald Trump

Sam Smith - An exceptional new documentary on Fred Rogers hit a theme for me about two thirds through: I realized that Mr Roger's neighborhood was the exact opposite - in decency, integrity, friendliness and happiness - of that being created by Donald Trump. Fred Rogers wasn't a perfect individual. He was, in that fine …

When television took over politics

Sam Smith - It's been my long held thesis that few things have altered American politics more than the arrival of television's popularity as a source of news and opinion.  As noted here before, for example, it had a profound effect on political corruption. Prior to television, corruption was a feudal arrangement i.e. politicians were …

Of superheroes and super media

Sam Smith-  Four days after the Parkland killings I went to see Black Panther. I normally avoid such films because of their level of gratuitous violence, but given the rap on Black Panther, I gave it a try. As I watched I began to wonder if I  end up among those blamed for some future …

There’s no business like show business. . .and certainly not politics

Sam Smith – The other day I came across a poem I wrote about a week after the first Kennedy-Nixon debate (probably for Roll Call newspaper where I was working at the time): I’ll Take My Candidate Without Cream or Sugar, Thank You Pollster, spare that candidate Give him a chance to run Free from …

Dealing with the banality of political evil

Sam Smith – Having been in this racket for six decades, I’m aware that some things have changed dramatically for the worse and yet the public and the press regard them as normal –as Peter Dreier points out, what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. Among these has been the fading of moral voices …