As one of the first events of this magnitude that has taken place squarely within the Twitter era, Osama Bin Laden's death reveals the challenge facing traditional media outlets when Twitter runs rampant with speculation (and real reporting).
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25 years ago today, one of the most significant tragedy-induced media events of the twentieth century took place: the Challenger Disaster.
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Signs of a deep and abiding popular skepticism toward the official conspiracy narrative of the 9/11 attacks continue rhizomically to proliferate through our media culture nearly a decade after the Mother of All Media Events.
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Juan Williams, Laura Schlessinger, Lou Dobbs, and Don Imus all used racially insensitive comments to renew flagging careers and reinvent themselves for a changed media environment. It's rebranding through racism.
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Considering the revelations which could emerge from WikiLeaks, news that U.S. Embassy Officials in Canada were vilifying CBC's fictional programming was...unexpected.
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While controversy is nothing new for reality TV, the political overtones of Bristol Palin's run on Dancing with the Stars illuminate the genre's tenuous relationship with the principles of democracy.
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Despite its reputation as a wonky and bewildering issue, net neutrality actually boils down to a pretty simple principle of openness and nondiscrimination. It’s important to point out, then, that a lot of those who are talking about “net neutrality” these days aren’t actually talking about this.
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The ACTA retreat is indicative of a larger crisis in how media policy works today. Specifically: we have no idea how media policy works today.
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By now you've surely heard the news: Christine O'Donnell is not a witch. Merely scoffing at her response to this brouhaha, though, means passing up an opportunity to understand how she constructs herself and her appeal as a righteous outsider.
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What the FCC, which received lackluster response to its announcement that it wanted to bring 100-megabit broadband to American homes, can learn from Google.
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Are people more open to new ideas when they get their daily news through the Internet or do they tend to use today's historically unparalleled access to support what they already think?
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Later this year, the RightNetwork, a network dedicated to programming solely for conservatives, will launch. I’m intrigued by this network for a few reasons.
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Glenn Beck may say he is simply an entertainer with little interest in politics, but that is a lie. He has proven himself a political demagogue who employs a variety of well-worn rhetorical techniques, all of which, as history has shown, are dangerous.
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The latest ideological skirmish will be played out through a History Channel mini-series on the Kennedys by conservative producer Joel Surnow. The problem, though, runs much deeper than shoddy history. It is rooted in a fundamental epistemological divide between left and right over what constitutes truth and how we arrive at it.
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While Palin's contract with Fox News seems natural and inevitable, television is actually her worst medium.
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