In fact, Americans question whether dialogue with other Americans, a necessity for the cultivation of social capital, is even worth their time. In 2020, Bahman Fozouni, a professor emeritus in the Political Science Department at California State University, Sacramento, asked, “Should we find ourselves in the company of the Trumpies, does it make sense to engage them in a political conversation?” A year earlier, filmmaker Michael Moore argued that liberals have “all tried at Thanksgiving dinner to convince the conservative brother-in-law of the wrongness of his ways, but he’s three years deep into pro-Trump. He’s lost."

Over the past five years, though, another kind of press criticism has come to prominence after a period of marginalization. This brand of press criticism takes a free and independent press as a necessity for life in a democratic society. Instead of seeking to delegitimize the press, these critics are simultaneously explaining the workings of the press to the public and holding it accountable in its role as the public’s representative and watchdog.

There will be time for an outbreak postmortem once the U.S. gets past the threat of the coronavirus  --  and the nation will move past it, just as it has countless challenges in the past. The question now is how many Americans will suffer and how many will die unnecessarily. Our goal should be to protect as many fellow citizens as possible, regardless of political affiliation, race, age, gender, etc. Viruses neither care about nor recognize these traits, nor should we when addressing a crisis. Unfortunately, our efforts to safeguard the populace have been seriously undermined by the current social and political climate, rife with division and prejudice, and this climate has been not only fostered, but furthered, by the current administration.

The film never settles on a protagonist, and the storytelling mimics The Big Short, which was itself a poor aesthetic rip-off of the seminal movie of the decade, The Wolf of Wall Street. The screenplay relies heavily on telling instead of showing; the info-dumps pile up into a mountainous heap of superfluous details. Charlize Theron’s impressive transformation into Megyn Kelly notwithstanding, Bombshell ultimately doesn’t live up to its title because of Roach’s lack of style, perspective, and insight.

Last March, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, the network’s National Security Analyst, added to the turmoil when he emailed colleagues he was quitting after 10 years because he was “ashamed” of what his employer had become. Implicit but not stated in Peters’s diatribe, is the lurking specter of censorship. He accused the network’s primetime hosts of “dismissing facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults” against the network’s targeted enemies. 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski’s plan to allow greater media consolidation in local markets could wipe out many of the remaining TV station owners of color left in the country. According to the latest data, people of color own just over 3 percent of all full-power TV stations — just 43 of the nation’s 1,348 stations — despite making up close to 40 percent of the U.S. population. But the FCC chairman doesn’t plan to deal with this media inequality. Instead, he wants to adopt rules that will make things worse. 

Shakespeare's plays all begin with a conflict that is well underway by the time the curtain goes up.  A divided court, controversial law, and a presidential election five months away took center stage in this summertime drama.   In what seems to be the climax for President’s Obama signature legislation, we are actually in the midst of the greatest health care transition this country has ever seen. 

It is by no means a novel endeavor to denounce conservative media outlets for their often sinister operating practices and wanton dissemination of agenda-driven, sensationalist propaganda, which they distribute rather brazenly under the guise of “factual news.” The rather less-than-ideal qualities of institutions such as Fox News Channel, the cable news channel owned by the Murdoch media leviathan, News Corporation, seem almost so obvious as to make writing about them largely redundant. Yet Fox News Channel has managed to eclipse other cable news networks in popularity for the better part of a decade. 

Edward R. Murrow’s famed “Good Night, and Good Luck” broadcast—a scathing éxpose of Senator Joseph McCarthy capped with Shakespearean verse—is the archetype for media-based confrontation and virtually unimaginable when viewed through the lens of today’s complex media landscape. The event stood so fatefully on the precipice of history that Murrow, who was torn over using his hallowed news program for editorial purposes, nearly collapsed after he signed off the air.