Yesterday, Carl Nassib, defensive lineman for the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders, revealed on Instagram that he was gay. Most of the photos in articles about the news were straightforward — but the Boston Globe decided to play some childish subliminal tricks. Nassib’s announcement was historic because he’s the first gay NFL player to come out…
New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi wrote a devastating article on her interview with Donald Trump’s lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, including writing about his fly being unzipped. Is writing negatively about a political figure’s appearance appropriate? I’m not sure. Go read Nuzzi’s article, “A Conversation With Rudy Giuliani Over Bloody Marys at…
via GIPHY Did Disney insist on taking down GIFs of Baby Yoda? It looks that way. If so, it’s the stupidest move ever. Baby Yoda (or at the very least, a baby that looks just like him) is a character in The Mandalorian, the new Star Wars series on Disney+. And he’s popular, because he’s…
How do you justify evil? According to the AP and the Boston Globe, the Trump administration is ending a program that allowed families to stay in the United States while their children receive medical treatment for illnesses like cancer. (Boston is a center for specialized hospitals for children and cancer treatment so it deals with…
Tim Murtaugh, Director of Communications for Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, sent a memo to TV producers regarding who they should put on TV. Imagine what would happen if we took this seriously? The text of Murtaugh’s memo to producers at networks like CNN is below. Memorandum To: Television Producers From: Tim Murtaugh Director of Communications,…
On November 6, Tufts student Camilo A. Caballero wrote an op-ed in the Tufts Daily, the student newspaper for Tufts University, demanding that the university remove former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci from the board of advisors of its School of Law and Diplomacy. Scaramucci responded by threatening to sue for libel if the…
This weekend the New York Times published an article about a foot solider in the white nationalist movement. Critics say the article normalizes Nazis. My reaction was the opposite: I found the descriptions of a “normal” midwesterner with these beliefs terrifying. “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland,” by Richard Fausset, is a profile of Tony…
The New York Times is trying to decrease the number of editors at the paper, including cutting the copy editing desk by about half. With the world awash in fake and dubious news, this is no time to cut back on the last line of defense on quality and factual accuracy. But more to the…
A 48-year old man drove a van into a crowd of people in the Muslim neighborhood of Finsbury Park in London, but he’s mostly missing from the news headlines about the attack. Why? Is it journalists’ passive writing habit, bias in a case where Muslims were victims rather than attackers, or just a need for…