I HAPPEN TO BE WRITING this on my birthday, but it’s to celebrate another, much bigger and more important birthday. The British Broadcasting Corporation, to use its rarely-spoken unabbreviated name, is about to turn one hundred years old. Continue reading “A Century of Auntie Beeb” »
A NEW KING TAKES OVER from the old Queen and a new political leader replaces the previous played-out office-holder. Continue reading “Renewed Leadership; Altered Messaging” »
INCITING? ENABLING? TRIGGERING? How should we view media responsibility in these recent days of mounting, and I’d suggest far from random, acts of extreme violence.
It would have been a mistake to ever think, if anybody really did, that the writer Salman Rushdie (left) might no longer be in danger, a full 33 years after the fatwa death sentence was declared against him by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, himself now long dead and gone. Continue reading “Horrors that Follow Online Threats” »
I SURPRISED SOME FOLKS, EVIDENTLY. During my regular public radio version of this column last week, I reacted very negatively — and some people said uncharacteristically — to one disturbing aspect of President Joe Biden’s Middle East trip. Continue reading “Journalism: High-risk Profession, Still Practiced Against Bad Odds” »
IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN. The gruesome symbolism of US citizens shot dead and injured amid the red-white-and-blue razzamatazz of Independence Day was horribly predictable.
The law of averages, though it’s more a journalistic construct and far from a proven mathematical rule, has long suggested that sooner rather than later the all-American atrocity of a gunman on a rampage would occur on our national day of celebration. Continue reading “July 4th Message: Freedom for What?” »
