​Show of hands, who can recall the last time they voluntarily turned on a television to watch the evening news on a major network? I’m imagining a quiet classroom with maybe one or two students raising their hands, and the faint sound of crickets in the background. And this is why. Ratings have dropped tremendously for those television news programs, many of them coming from major media conglomerates. And as the TV news ratings drop, the amount of people watching news through

The Trump administration has made it clear on several occasions that the United States has a “fake news” problem. However, his administration cites the culprits as the New York Times and CNN, while rewarding white nationalist outlets like Breitbart News. I’d like to ask the president to define what exactly he means by fake news. While the New York Times and CNN have a plethora of their own structural problems, it is very hard to argue that the news in which they report -- the

I read this in a blog from 2009, but it still holds extra true today. There is a somewhat recognizable shift in journalism. Complete objectivity doesn’t exist. It just can’t, and people are beginning to realize this. However, this phenomenon can be treated: all it takes is a little with a dose of transparency. What does that mean, “transparency”? For starters, it means that reporters should address their biases up front. There’s that word -- bias. We’ve all got them, and we’v

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, American public news media received a ton of criticism for failing to call out the government. And rightfully so, considering public journalists abroad were grilling their own elected officials on why they felt the need to pursue conflict in Iraq. So what happened with PBS and NPR? Simple -- they didn’t want to bite the hand that was feeding them. They were fearful of losing government and corporate funding by appearing radical and “anti-Am

Let’s look at the term “free and open internet.” When talking about the net neutrality debate, this phrase can spring up on both sides. Those in favor of net neutrality want it so the smaller sites can function at the same speeds as the larger sites, and those opposed want it so that the bigger sites can pay their way into the fast lanes. Now, every time I hear that term thrown around by net-neutrality opponents, I can’t help but laugh, and think of the old SNL segment where

This is a post I have wanted to write for quite some time now, but I wasn’t sure I had the numbers (or more accurately, the links) to fully support it. However, the anecdotal evidence was there, and after speaking with this year’s Izzy Award, I feel confident in my ability to openly present this issue. When it comes down to it, certain independent publications and national public journalism outlets will take the Harvard history major over the Ithaca College journalism major.

Censorship. A couple of things come to mind when we hear this phrase. The popular answer for 2017 might be China – with Twitter and Facebook banned from the nation, and Google quick to submit itself to the country’s censorship rules, China is a strong contender for a major censored media environment. Or perhaps you take a more Orwellian approach. You hear censorship and think along the lines of 1984 – Big Brother is always watching, and the Thought Police are always…well, po