Social Media

NPR Rocked by Self-Inflicted Scandal

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  WASHINGTON, D.C. — Another American media outlet is rocked by a self-inflicted scandal. It’s not clear what National Public Radio’s business editor Uri Berliner was thinking when he decided to bash his employer as “liberal” on a Substack newsletter run by a known conservative flame thrower, Bari…

Attorneys General in 41 States Demand that Facebook Take Action Against Scammers

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Staff Report – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown joined a bipartisan coalition of 41 Attorneys General around the country to demand that Meta address the recent increase in Facebook and Instagram platform account takeovers by scammers. Account takeovers happen when bad actors break into a user’s account and change passwords, effectively…

If A Tree Falls in the Forest, Will it Ever Be Heard From Again?

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Under the Microscope – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound? This, of course, is an age old thought experiment that is tinged with the stink of Anthropocentrism, homocentricism, or if you like, human…

Letters: Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

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Editor’s Note: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” is a line from an editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church. Written in response to a letter by eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asking whether Santa Claus was real, the editorial was first published in the New York newspaper The Sun on September 21, 1897. “Is There a Santa…

Part 3: On Unfulfilled Hopes, Shattered Dreams and Journalism

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — One of the themes that emerges from this life analysis is that kids need heroes to inspire and emulate. That’s why it’s so important for young women to have role models, along with African Americans and other minorities in America. All I can do…

Part 2: On Unfulfilled Hopes, Shattered Dreams and Baseball

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Do you ever feel like you are marking time, waiting for something to happen? Something that is supposed to happen, but the timing is not yet right? I was thinking that recently when watching the movie “Field of Dreams.” “The one constant through all…

Part 1: On Unfulfilled Hopes, Shattered Dreams

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — A person with character may pickup a few nicknames in a life. A famous Baptist preacher once called me “Cowboy,” and it stuck. That worked for a couple of decades, and I was locally famous as the only drummer to ever wear a cowboy…

The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance: How Authoritarian Leaders Mutilate Reality, History and Culture

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“The first thing every totalitarian regime does along with confiscation and mutilation of reality is confiscation of history and confiscation of culture.” – Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Introduction WASHINGTON, D.C. — When I first walked into the administration building of an Alabama community…

The State of the News Media and What That Means for Democracy

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“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” — Thomas Jefferson,…

Bipartisan Support for Regulation of Big Tech Means It’s Coming in 2023

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By Glynn Wilson — WASHINGTON, D.C. — Elon Musk of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, the methhead hacker/programmers at Google and YouTube and their lobbyists in Washington, as well as their Republican friends in the House, do not want to hear this. But there is little doubt that more government regulation of social media is…

Google’s Ad Business Funds Disinformation Around the World

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By Craig Silverman, Ruth Talbot, Jeff Kao and Anna Klühspies – ProPublica – Google is funneling revenue to some of the web’s most prolific purveyors of false information in Europe, Latin America and Africa, a ProPublica investigation has found. The company has publicly committed to fighting disinformation around the world, but a ProPublica analysis, the…