By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Elizabeth Warren rose above her dispute with Bernie Sanders over who said what and offered a powerful argument about gender and politics at Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate. But it might be too late to matter. That, at least, appears to be the consensus in my quick scan of political punditry following the final candidates’ forum …
Continue reading Pundits wonder if Warren’s good night may have come too late
The New York Times today profiles Prager University, a right-wing meme factory founded by media figure Dennis Prager. In case you don’t know anything about Prager, I thought you’d be interested in some background. In 2017, I gave a WGBH News New England Muzzle Award to YouTube and its owner, Google, for restricting access to …
Continue reading The Times profiles right-wing media figure Dennis Prager. Here’s some background.
Previously published at WGBHNews.org. Amy Klobuchar was having her moment. The Minnesota senator, an also-ran since entering the presidential race in the middle of a snowstorm last February, turned in her strongest debate performance Tuesday night. And now she was pressing her advantage, appearing on all three cable news outlets to repeat her message that …
Previously published at WGBHNews.org. For the first time in Donald Trump’s 33-month presidency, his impeachment seems possible — maybe even probable. The dam that withstood the Mueller Report has broken in recent days over the news that Trump may have withheld military aid from Ukraine in order to strong-arm that country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, into …
Previously published at WGBHNews.org. Bernie Sanders is an unlikely savior of journalism. The iconoclastic senator has long had a prickly relationship with the press in his home state. According to Paul Heintz, a staff writer with the alt-weekly Seven Days, Sanders hasn’t granted a full-fledged interview in more than four years to the paper, which …
Previously published at WGBHNews.org. Tucker Carlson may have finally hit bottom. Then again, maybe not. If Fox News fails to act after Carlson was exposed over the weekend for making insanely misogynist comments on a low-rent radio show between 2006 and 2011, then he will probably continue on his merry way, indulging in sexism and racism on what might …
Previously published at WGBH News. The dawn of a new year is yet another opportunity for President Trump to make news in all the wrong ways — and another invitation for the media to obsess over every tweet, insult, lie, and outburst of unpresidential behavior. Aside from denigrating journalists as purveyors of #fakenews and as …
In case you missed it, Mitt Romney kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign Tuesday by harshly criticizing President Trump in a Washington Post op-ed piece. It seems transparently obvious that Romney believes Trump won’t survive the Mueller investigation and that he’ll be in the best position to pick up the pieces. Add to that the …
Continue reading Romney kicks off 2020 presidential campaign
Previously published at WGBHNews.org. The Federal Communications Commission has opened a new front in its war on behalf of corporations and against the public it purportedly serves. A proposed FCC rule that could take effect as early as December would drastically cut funding for community cable television stations — the folks who bring you city …
Continue reading Is community access TV on the FCC chopping block?
Previously published at WGBH News. Last week I was asked a provocative question. What prompted it was a panel discussion of The New York Times’ 14,000-word exposé of how President Trump built his fortune on the dual foundations of his father’s wealth and of legally dubious tax schemes. The story was such a sensation that the Times …
Continue reading How Trump buries the truth beneath a blizzard of lies
