You are here

Month: October 2019

JFK, Mass Media, and the Origins of ‘Conspiracy Theory’

James Tracy

By James F. Tracy (Originally posted at MemoryHoleBlog on November 22, 2018) Prefatory Note on Censorship in Academe This study was written in 2013-14 as part of my academic research as Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. I have had numerous papers addressing news coverage of historical events published in academic journals over the past two decades. However, this was the first attempt to offer a scholarly treatment of a research object related to a conspiracy–how the news media “framed” New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s JFK assassination inquiry. When I presented the paper at the Association For Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Montreal Conference in 2014 the panel respondent congratulated me on what he deemed…

FULL ARTICLE

9/11, the Discreet Charm of the Japanese, and the Alchemy of Narrative

Jonathan Revusky

A year and a half ago, I wrote a little piece about 9/11 flight attendant Betty Ong. While I have been certain for some time that Betty Ong never existed, and also reasoned that if one found one such fake, there were bound to be some others, I still assumed that most of the nearly 3,000 victims were real people who really did die that day. It is only recently that I have come to the conclusion that there was, in fact, nothing particularly special about Betty Ong, and if I had chosen any other random victim of that day, I would have almost certainly come to the same conclusions as I did about Betty Ong. This conjecture was put to the test…

FULL ARTICLE

NPRavda Features Double Agent Ruddy

David Martin

​The late Wesley Pruden, when editor of the conservative Washington Times, once observed that, “At NPR all the guys sound like girls and all the girls sound like guys.” He was right on the money, I thought, but, curiously, that’s about the harshest thing I think I’ve ever heard said about National Public Radio from a right-wing commentator, or by any commentator, for that matter. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the rest of them regularly rip into CNN, MSNBC, the three major TV networks, and The Washington Post and The New York Times, but I don’t recall ever hearing any of them say anything at all about this very influential organization that is partially funded by taxpayer dollars. You have to wonder…

FULL ARTICLE