Editorial Blogpost: TV and the Internet

In American political scientist Robert D. Putnam’s Bowling Alone, Putnam addresses the issue that television has on civic engagement. The passive stimulation of watching television gives the viewer the illusion of being civically engaged, but in reality they are just sitting still, staring at a television screen. However, since the book’s publication in the year …

In-person connections created on the Internet – good or bad?

With shows like To Catch a Predator and Catfish being as popular as they are, it's easy to assume that meeting up with someone you befriend over the Internet is a recipe for disaster. These shows revolve around someone not being who they said they were online, or worse, being potentially dangerous. In Dateline NBC's …

How narrative cinema has changed history

Great Britain, 1961 - Homosexuality is considered a crime and punishable by imprisonment. The subject is so taboo and unspeakable that no film released in Great Britain even contained the word "homosexual". However, in 1961, that changed with the release of Victim, directed by Basil Dearden. The film stars Dirk Bogarde as Melville Farr, a …

How a newspaper deals with reader feedback

It's fair to say people don't trust the news as much as they used to. In the age of fake news, reporters are often put under extreme scrutiny by readers. I grew up in a household where both of my parents worked for a newspaper in Connecticut, and I got to hear all the stories …

In Eastern Europe, two politicians attempt to harness the power of mass media

Since 2013, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has measured the freedom of the press in countries around the world. According to the institute, journalistic freedom “...is determined by pooling the responses of experts to a questionnaire devised by RSF. This qualitative analysis is combined with quantitative data on abuses and acts of violence against journalists during …

“Here we go” – How one man became the most trusted source in a notoriously unreliable field of journalism

Sports journalism is surely not held in as high regard as news reporting actual important events such as geopolitics, legislation, and diseases. I mean, it's just a game, right? Well, in August 2017, French club Paris Saint-Germain made headlines for signing Brazilian soccer star Neymar Jr. from Barcelona for a whopping fee of 222 million …