Rachel Smolkin’s piece on the ethics of covering natural disasters was eye-opening to me. It featured the perspectives of many journalists who, while covering Hurricane Katrina, struggled to balance their morals with codes of journalistic practice.  Smolkin describes that a group of students was once asked whether they would interrupt their reporting of a story... Continue Reading →

Image: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share A recent plan to desegregate schools in Columbia, Maryland, a suburb that prides itself on inclusion, has sparked heated debate and protests.  This article from the New York Times gave a lot of space for those against using bussing to integrate schools in Columbia to discuss their reasoning. The article provided instances of... Continue Reading →

In what appears to be an effort to undermine the validity of the presidential impeachment inquiry, Laura Ingraham, a Fox News television host, and her guest, John Yoo, a top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, accused White House national security official, Colonel Alexander Vindman, of espionage.  This came after Vindman testified that he... Continue Reading →

I learned about propaganda when I was in third grade. I was reading an American Girl book about a girl growing up during World War Two. I remember assuming that propaganda, like many other elements in the story, was a thing of the past. I remember thinking that today, now that people had access to... Continue Reading →

On Tuesday, Steve C. Jones, a federal judge in Georgia, blocked a law signed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in May that would ban abortions occurring after six weeks of pregnancy.  I read an article published in the New York Times ⁠ about this. It framed the issue as being part of a larger shift... Continue Reading →

I’m confident that if Richard Nixon was alive right now, he’d be green with envy. It only took one scandal for Congress to bring him down, whereas Donald Trump has been dodging accusations of illegal activities since before his election. I mean, it’s absurd that the president is still in office. He makes Nixon look... Continue Reading →

The final question of the democratic debate: “Tell us about a friendship you’ve had that would surprise us.”  I’m sorry… What?  I cannot fathom why the moderators chose to ask that question, which had to do with the recent controversy surrounding Ellen Degeneres’s friendship with George Bush. Over the course of the three-hour-long debate, they... Continue Reading →