A press that is free to investigate and criticize the government is absolutely essential in a nation that practices self-government and is therefore dependent on an educated and enlightened citizenry.
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Freedom of the Press
Friday, August 22, 2025
Is the Smithsonian Too Woke?
He’s renamed a body of water and a mountain. He put himself at the top of the Kennedy Center. Now, President Donald Trump wants to put his stamp on the Smithsonian Institution and make its museums less “woke.”
"The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been," Trump said in a recent social media post.
The Smithsonian oversees 21 museums and libraries, the National Zoo as well as research and education centers around the country.
NPR's Steve Inskeep visits the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History ahead of what the Trump administration says will be a systematic review of "divisive or partisan narratives."
1) What institution did President Trump describe as "out of control" and why?Who is Peniel Joseph, and what is his background?
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Monday, August 18, 2025
Thursday, August 14, 2025
What Is News?
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
This course looks at the role of the media on international, national, state, local, and school-wide levels. Although the content is constantly changing there are recurrent themes including domestic and foreign policy, the economy, war, crime, and the environment. Let's look back at the stories that made the headlines the past year and, make some predictions about what we may study this year.
Friday, May 16, 2025
Will AI Wipe Out Mainstream Media?
Emerging artificial intelligence technology is making it even more difficult to discern what's real and what's not, worrying some about the potential impacts on politics. ABC News senior reporter Emmanuelle Saliba has more on the risks the emerging technology presents for misinformation, and how to spot fake images.
1) What is an AI news channel?
2) Who is the audience?
3) How real is it? How can you tell?
4) Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the 1st Amendment? What dangers does it pose?
5) Do you think AI will wipe out mainstream media? Why/ not?
Thursday, May 15, 2025
I Robot, I Media
Q. How can we ensure that our development as moral and social animals keeps pace with our rapidly evolving communications technology?
A. By playing an active role in our media consumption, trusting reporters who demonstrate fairness and reliability over time, offering corrections when they get something wrong, and when we care enough--reading the original documents they worked from.
Friday, May 9, 2025
Don't Panic
Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, an alien researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Do movie trailers appeal to our 'deep' or 'hyper' attention?
Douglas Adams cult classic may have been the stuff of Science Fiction in the 1970s, but one can't help compare his fictitious guide to existing modern-day technology. Never before have we had access to so much information at our fingertips. So why is it we seem to know so little?
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Radio Free Europe
The iconic rock band answered their call: They're now giving their 45-year-old smash a remix, sharing all of the proceeds from it directly to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It's being issued on digital and on vinyl, with four other R.E.M. rarities.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
The Matrix In Me
How do the outcomes of this test compare to similar tests on racial bias?
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
60 Minutes
In an extraordinarily blunt final segment of the news magazine show, Pelley revealed that CBS’ parent company Paramount “began to supervise our content in new ways” as it tries to complete a merger with Skydance Media, with Pelley adding that Owens “felt he had lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
Owens announced last week he was leaving “60 Minutes” after 24 years with the program and 37 years at CBS News. No replacement was immediately named.
Pelley said that topics the show has pursued in its roughly 60-year history are “often controversial,” noting recent stories have included Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and the Trump administration.
“Bill made sure they were accurate and fair,” Pelley said. “He was tough that way, but our parent company Paramount is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it.”
Pelley said Owens’ resignation last Tuesday “was hard on him and hard on us, but he did it for us and you.”
“No one here is happy about it, but in resigning, Bill proved one thing: He was the right person to lead ’60 Minutes’ all along,” Pelley concluded.
The segment was also shared on various “60 Minutes” social media accounts with many of its correspondents reposting it, including Cecilia Vargas, Jon Wertheim, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
CBS News and Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Owens’ resignation letter, he said that in the the last few months it was made it clear that he “would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it” or make “independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes.”
Owens’ decision to step down comes as Americans’ trust in media outlets has hit a low and as outlets find themselves under attack — including frequent jabs from the White House. In November, President Donald Trump slapped CBS News and its parent company, Paramount Global, with a $10 billion lawsuit that claims a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris was grossly mis-edited by CBS at the Harris campaign’s direction.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly called for the network to lose its license and urged the Federal Communications Commission to punish the broadcaster. Ultimately, “60 Minutes” handed over the full transcript and video of the contested interview to the FCC, and Trump and Paramount this month agreed on a mediator in the lawsuit.
Shortly after reports of Owens’ resignation emerged, two “60 Minutes” producers spoke anonymously with CNN’s Jake Tapper. One source called Trump’s lawsuit “baseless” and stressed Owens’ refusal to apologize or bend while noting the top producer “fought for the broadcast and for independent journalism and that cost him his job.”
A second source was blunter.
“It‘s like a guy who has been battling for months against an attack,” this person said. “He sacrificed himself hoping it might make our corporate overlords wake up and realize they risk destroying what makes 60 Minutes great.”
Friday, April 25, 2025
Full Disclosure
Video conferencing is pulling back the curtain on our private lives, as our friends & colleagues finally get a peek into our homes. Correspondent Mo Rocca talks with designer Jonathan Adler, fashion commentator Simon Doonan, and New York Times critic-at-large Amanda Hess about what Zoom is divulging about us.
1) What can we learn about our reporters and celebrities by 'peeking' into their living rooms and offices?
2) Do you trust them more or less? Why?
3) What is in your 'Zoom' background and what does it 'disclose' about you?
Thursday, April 17, 2025
And Thats the Way It Was...
A pioneer broadcast journalist who began his distinguished career as a wire service reporter, Cronkite was a longtime champion of journalism values who was often referred to as the most trusted man in America.
By the mid-1950s more than half the nation's living rooms have a TV set, which serves as a kind of national mirror. It reflects a populace that is white, Christian, and middle-class. It has no accent. It defines normal. It defines America.
When Walter Cronkite ends his CBS newscast with his rock-solid assertion, 'And that's the way it is,' it's a sweet finish to his nightly suppertime slice of reality. Facts, unseasoned and served deadpan. (Gladstone, pg. 103)
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
The Golden Age of Objectivity
If the highest law of journalism is 'to the tell the Truth and shame the devil' then the Golden Age of Objectivity was the 1950s. The 1951 government film 'Duck and Cover' advised on what to do if the see the flash of a nuclear bomb. Fear of Communism and the threat of atomic war moved us into the 'donut hole' of consensus.
Monday, April 14, 2025
Objectivity pt. 1
Yet all around their was a grinding, dehumanizing poverty reflected in the eyes of these 'newsies' selling papers on city streets. Before WWI people viewed the world as being cruel but rich with opportunity. Horatio Alger novels told stories of how the humblest orphans could ascend into the middle class through hard work.
This view changed following the war. As damaged soldiers returned home with stories and the hideous and meaningless death of millions of young men a deep cynicism sets in and 'Dadaism' is born. Its basic philosophy: everything is meaningless.
Monday, April 7, 2025
WAR! Ernie Pyle & GI Joe
As a roving correspondent for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, he earned wide acclaim for his accounts of ordinary people in rural America, and later, of ordinary American soldiers during World War II. His syndicated column ran in more than 300 newspapers nationwide.
At the time of his death he was among the best-known American war correspondents. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his spare, poignant accounts of "dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective. "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told", wrote Harry Truman. "He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
How to Spot Bias in the Media and Fight It
Bias is hard to avoid, but it can be really damaging - leading us to make poor choices without fairly weighing up the facts.
That same logic holds true for media. All news outlets are organizations and made up of people. This means that editors, reporters, commentators, and researchers that work in journalism bring their point of view to work with them every day, and it is borderline impossible for them to completely separate themselves from the stories they report. It is therefore logical to assume that even the hardest news will be colored, to a certain extent, by the person reporting it. At a microlevel, when looking at a story, this point of view can manifest itself in a variety of ways that we should be on the lookout for:
Value as fact: In softer news, the presenter might attempt to pass off their beliefs as fact. This is especially true of punditry and opinion sections (think Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, or Stephen Colbert) where the presenter is often attempting to confirm their own worldview and make that worldview more presentable to the consumer. If a worldview or set of values is stated, we should automatically be on the lookout for bias in how the story is presented.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Mascot-Ology
People have all sorts of reasons to pick one team over another. Some break down game footage; others look at advanced statistics; and still others give preference to schools they or their friends attended.
But what if we took a different approach and picked teams based on the strength of their mascots?
1) Who would win?
2) Whose Mascot is the toughest? Whose is the weakest? Why?
3) Which mascot is the most common? The most unique? Explain.
4) Why do schools choose the mascots they do? What do mascots say about a school?
5) Why aren't their any 'Indian' mascots in the March Madness Tournament?
The "Brave," an American Indian warrior, became the symbol of the Talawanda Schools in the 1950s.
But who was Talawanda?
Do Indian Mascots honor insult Native American Groups?
Should Talawanda have changed its mascot? If so what to?
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
The Great Refusal
Monday, March 17, 2025
Happy St. Patrick's Day?
“The Most Recently Discovered Wild Beast” (1881) is one of a series of nineteenth-century images portraying the Irish as violent and subhuman. Native-born Americans criticized Irish immigrants for their poverty and manners, their supposed laziness and lack of discipline, their public drinking style, their catholic religion, and their capacity for criminality and collective violence. In both words and pictures, critics of the Irish measured character by perceived physical appearance.
Political cartoons such as the “Wild Beast” offered an exaggerated version of these complaints. The Irish-American “Dynamite Skunk,” clad in patriotic stars and stripes, has diabolical ears and feet and he sports an extraordinary tail. around his waist he is wearing an “infernal machine,” a terrorist bomb that was usually disguised as a harmless everyday object, in this case a book. in the cage next to him, sketched in outline, is a second beast.
In many ways, the events of today are similar to those that took place from the mid-19th century through the early 20th century, with an increasing number of Irish citizens traveling to the U.S. They came to escape starvation during the potato famine, to find work or to escape the tyranny rule of imperial Great Britain. But what many who came soon discovered is they weren’t necessarily welcome here.
That sounds a lot like what’s happening to immigrants coming from Mexico and refugees coming from the Middle East. Though the phrases used to describe modern immigrants are different and it’s now illegal, to some extent, to hire based solely on ethnicity, the same sentiment still seems clear from many Americans: “We don’t want you here.”
The lesson to be learned here is where the Irish population in the U.S. is today. Descendants of the Irish who were once denigrated for their heritage are now some of the most influential people in America. Many of us are mayors, senators, presidents and CEOs.
For the first time in a while, those who control our government have displayed the same intolerance toward modern immigrants that those in the 19th and 20th centuries displayed to the Irish.
Just be forewarned: If you are anti-immigrant, history will likely frown upon you. For more than a hundred years now, Americans have been fighting back against newly arrived cultures. You know what happens just about every time? The immigrants end up becoming a major backbone of our country.
It will be particularly ironic when those who are anti-immigrant have their grandchildren and future generations celebrating holidays associated with those groups, the same way we now celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
2) Describe two or three specific details of the cartoon that support that message.
3) How were Irish Immigrants often criticized by native-born Americans? Why?
4) What similarities are there between the events of today and the events of the past?
5) What lessons can we learn from the popularity of St. Patrick's Day?
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Rosebud
Monday, March 10, 2025
Fear Mongering
Friday, March 7, 2025
Goldilocks Number
Monday, March 3, 2025
I'd Like to Thank the Academy...
After watching these memorable Oscar Speeches, imagine you have just won an Oscar! What will you say? Who will you thank? Will you laugh? Cry? Will you have an inspirational or political message? Write and record your speech using your phone or think pad and share the link on Google Classroom.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Truthiness
3) Which network does the rest of America trust the most for their news? Why?
Monday, February 24, 2025
Birds On a Wire
If 'courage and caution' are the 'yin and yang' of journalism, when can a little bit of caution a good thing?
Friday, February 14, 2025
Canis Journalisticus
If journalists really are like dogs, 'barking at anything that moves', then Helen Thomas agrees.
Without a free press doing its job as a journalistic watchdog, citizens are left to guess if their elected officials are doing their jobs, or if the people they have entrusted have earned that trust.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Does Secrecy Make Us Safer?
When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked details of massive government surveillance programs in 2013, he ignited a raging debate over digital privacy and security. That debate came to a head this year, when Apple refused an FBI court order to access the iPhone of alleged San Bernardino Terrorist Syed Farook. Meanwhile, journalists and activists are under increasing attack from foreign agents. To find out the government's real capabilities, and whether any of us can truly protect our sensitive information, VICE founder Shane Smith heads to Moscow to meet the man who started the conversation, Edward Snowden. Watch the episode.
1) Is Edward Snowden a 'traitor & a coward' or a 'patriotic hero? You decide.
2) What does Tulsi Gabbard, our new Director of National Intelligence, think?
3) Should we have secrets from our Government? Explain.
4) Should our Government have secrets from us? Explain.
5) Where does our right to 'privacy' end and the Government's right to 'know' begin?
7) Do you agree or disagree with this decision? Is it biased?
8) If you were directing the movie who would you choose? Why?
Watch an Oscar nominated documentary about Snowden .
Watch the pivotal moments in 'Citizen Four' and learn how they came to life on the screen.
Should Edward Snowden be 'pardoned?'
Monday, February 10, 2025
Superbowl Commercials
Friday, January 31, 2025
What In the World?
Thursday, January 23, 2025
A Mountain By Any Other Name...
President Donald J. Trump’s plan to return Denali, the Alaska Native name for North America’s tallest peak, to its earlier name, Mount McKinley, has run into opposition from Alaska lawmakers.
Shortly after taking the oath of office on Monday, Mr. Trump surprised many in the state when he announced “we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley where it should be and where it belongs.”
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Executive Order
For a closer look at the power of these orders and their limits, watch the following story and then answer these questions:
1) What is an 'Executive Order?'
2) How does it work?
3) How is it different than a 'Bill?'
4) Which of Trump's executive orders do you most agree with? Least?
5) If you were President what 'executive orders' would you sign on the first day?