mediacriticism
Thierry Breton is the European Union's commissioner for internal market. His responsibilities include overseeing the government's policies relating to online speech. In effect, this makes him the European Commission's would-be censor in chief—and he is eager to wield his power against unruly dissenters. Case in point: On Monday, Elon Musk interviewed former President Donald Trump live on X, the social media site previously known as Twitter. Millions of people listened to at least part of that conversation, which covered a range of newsworthy topics: everything from the recent attempt on Trump'...
Reason
Now that Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has become Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, it is ostensibly time for the media to scrutinize his record and past statements. (Emphasis on ostensibly.) To say the mainstream coverage of Walz has been fawning thus far would be quite an understatement; The New York Times described him as "a one-man rejoinder to the idea that the Democrats are the party of the cultural and coastal elite." The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel merrily aided media efforts to portray Walz as a lovable, folksy paternal figure, writing that "dad is on the ballot." CNN pro...
Reason
Nicolás Maduro is the authoritarian leader of Venezuela. Last weekend, he declared himself the winner of that country's presidential election—an outcome that is highly disputed; the Carter Center lambasted the Maduro regime's lack of transparency and said the process "cannot be considered democratic." Thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets in protest. In response, the government has implemented a crackdown, killing at least 16 people and detaining a thousand more. Such behavior is entirely characteristic of Maduro, an outlaw who has faced credible accusations of drug trafficking, p...
Reason
For the last month, the mainstream media have set their sights on President Joe Biden, generating a massive and unusual amount of negative coverage in order to end his doomed candidacy. Now Biden is out, Vice President Kamala Harris is in, and things have returned to normal. Consider this hagiographic recap of Harris' consequential weekend by CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere. "Through all her calls at the Naval Observatory, Harris wore a hooded Howard University sweatshirt, workout sweats and sneakers," reported Dovere on X. "They got pizza and salad for dinner. She went with her favorite topping: an...
Reason
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow thinks it's very interesting that Republican vice presidential contender J.D. Vance named his venture capital firm after a magical object from the series The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). "Lord of the Rings is sort of a favorite cosmos for naming things and cultural references for a lot of far-right and alt-right figures both in Europe and the United States," said Maddow on Wednesday. She further noted that Peter Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist and supporter of Vance, also named one of his companies, Palantir, after a LOTR item. It is absolutely true that Vance and Th...
Reason
Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Oh.), the GOP's vice presidential nominee, made his speaking debut at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, hitting themes of economic populism and remembering the forgotten American worker. For many reasons, Donald Trump's selection of Vance should come as something of a disappointment for libertarians. Of all the people Trump was reportedly considering for the job—North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and others—Vance is the least inspired option. He favors a bevy of progressive ...
Reason
A consensus is swiftly forming among Republican politicians, activists, and media figures that the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump can be blamed on the heated, occasionally violent anti-Trump rhetoric deployed by President Joe Biden, leading Democrats, and mainstream media pundits. This is a deeply cynical and misguided tactic—and Republicans are well aware of it, since they have rightly criticized their political opponents for doing the exact same thing. "Today is not just some isolated incident," wrote Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), Trump's pick for vice president, on X (...
Reason
For a brief moment, speculation that COVID-19 originated in a lab had been upgraded in the discourse from a conspiracy theory to a serious possibility worthy of serious inquiry. No longer. In an op-ed published in STAT on Tuesday, AIDS activist Peter Staley bemoans the "witch hunt" being carried out by an"anti-science mob" against EcoHealth Alliance—the New York-based nonprofit that had been using federal funds to do gain-of-function work on potential pandemic pathogens at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. EcoHealth has been the subject of immense, bipartisan controversy in recent mont...
Reason
My first ever job in journalism was at something called Hollywood Crush, a young Hollywood news and gossip site that was part of the larger MTV News ecosystem. Although the MTV brand still had a certain cool-kid cachet, left over from a time before it became associated primarily with teen reality shows, I was not exactly pounding the pavement for the groundbreaking stories that would change the world. By the time I left—laid off in one of those periodic mass purges that were as much a hallmark of 2010s journalism as the Buzzfeed-style listicle—my greatest contribution to the discourse was a we...
Reason
One of my favorite memes on X this week showed two photographs—one of war and devastation and the other of a neat tree-lined street with middle-class suburban houses. The caption under the first picture: "This is the reality of life on Earth." The caption on the second one: "This is an anomaly and can end at any time." It's a great reminder of how good most of have it, especially within the context of millennia of human existence. It's also a reminder that many of our fears and fixations—especially those commonly expressed on social media and in legislatures—fall into what my daughter calls fi...
Reason
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