While I was fussing with MIRANDA WARNING, I completely missed something much more important. It took my friend Jennie D. to remind me of it: Eyes Wide Open, a traveling exhibition organized by the American Friends Service Committee about the human cost of the Iraq war. Watch the movie. If it moves you, sign the […]

The item ALL RED ALL THE TIME, about a peculiar essay by Portugese writer Paulo José Miranda, drew this response from John Keene: I read your blog regularly and have faith in your critical powers, so I’m a bit dismayed that you didn’t see the sharp and obvious irony in José Miranda’s “America” project. It’s […]

This came unsolicited. Click the link and watch very weird, well-designed, right-wing propaganda about America from a European’s point of view. It’s by Portugese writer Paulo José Miranda, who claims: “America built the Moon. America widens space. America keepings welcoming the world. America doesn’t have a religion, it has God. … Iraq is not occupied, […]

Theater writer Jesse McKinley learned two object lessons this week: Never trust a Broadway producer, especially for a puff piece, and never report that something in the future is “certain” to happen, especially in the theater. “On Thursday,” he wrote, the producer of a new “Sweet Charity” revival told him plans to bring the show […]

Jean Shepherd was always my idea of a media rebel. Phil Donahue never was. But he became one for me this morning on Democracy Now! Donahue, right, smiles easily and calls himself lucky. He says his success spoiled him, which I’m sure is true. But behind the smile and the luck there’s a gritty malcontent […]

The shooting rampage at the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota puts American neo-Nazism back on the front page and adds an awful top spin to yesterday’s e-mail debate about David Irving and C-SPAN. As you’ve doubtless read by now, Jeff Weise — a self-described Ojibwe Native American teenager who killed 10 people, wounded seven […]

It’s amusing to look back every once at some of the things posted here over the past 20 months. So says my staff of thousands, which has decided to start a Straight Up tradition. It begins today with possibly the most entertaining yet pointed commentary about the 2004 election: the Sloganator. Go there. I did […]

Taking a cue from ArtsJournal publisher Doug McLellan, who has created a public forum for debating significant arts issues, herewith a baker’s dozen e-mail comments on free speech, the Holocaust and ethical journalism. They were spurred by Friday’s item, C-SPAN ON TRIAL, about the idea of broadcasting a speech by Holocaust denier David Irving to […]

Paul Wolfowitz’s nomination to head the World Bank and John Bolton’s to represent the United States at the U.N., far from being promotions, signal a purge of neocons from policy-making positions in the Bush regime. So says investigative reporter Greg Palast, left, who was interviewed on Democracy Now! about his recent BBC Newsnight report detailing […]

Tim Rutten’s media column (in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday) noted that “National Public Radio’s decision to sever its 21-year connection to [David D’arcy, below] one of its most experienced arts reporters” — purportedly because he was unfair to the Museum of Modern Art — raises doubts “about how its news operation sets and […]

Fox News, which registered “Fair & Balanced” as its trademark, must have done a double-take when C-SPAN tried to poach the phrase earlier this week. In a ludicrous attempt to “balance” its coverage of a lecture by Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, C-SPAN said it would pair it with a speech by Holocaust denier David Irving, […]

Tom Freudenheim, the former deputy director and chief operating officer of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, sends this message — a tongue-lashing for the Museum of Modern Art over its negligence in the Egon Schiele case and for NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dworkin over his and NPR’s foul treatment of reporter David D’Arcy: Re the MoMA/NPR/D’Arcy […]

By Jan Herman Covering National Public Radio’s flank in the David D’Arcy case, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin has effectively backed NPR management’s decision to dump D’Arcy (below) after the Museum of Modern Art complained about his report on an ownership dispute over a painting by Egon Schiele. Well, take it from an insider who […]

I intended to write a fuller item than yesterday’s about The Message Machine, which gives an extraordinary rundown on how the Bush regime has propagandized the American press through the use of Video News Releases (VNRs). The piece, which started out on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times and jumped to a huge […]

Absolutely essential reading: The Message Machine, this morning’s story by David Barstow and Robin Stein about the propagandizing of the American free press, often through the collusion and ignorance of the free pressers themselves. More about this tomorrow. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

By JAN HERMAN Just to wrap up yesterday’s item: Leave it to the Vienna Philharmonic to treat not only its critics with contempt but also its allies. It backed out of a discussion on WNYC’s VPo-friendly Soundcheck about the orchestra’s discrimination against women and minorities after saying a representative would appear (provided he didn’t have […]