THE MEDIA GO CRAZY over this kind of story. A farmer plowing his field unearths a vast, priceless store of ancient treasures.
It’s something of a trope – since it happens, well, if not all the time … then at least both rarely enough to be newsworthy and frequently enough to invoke a familiar, even folkloric format for the narrative. Continue reading “Unearthed: The Story-telling Power of Opulent Objects” »
THERE JUST TWO KINDS of people who’ll be denied a life-beyond-death, we are told in the newly-opened Broadway staging of Jez Butterworth’s sinewy Northern Irish Troubles-based play The Ferryman.
They are “the unburied – and liars”, says a character who serves as a cultural and moral conscience of the play. Continue reading “Hidden Depths Revealed, and Improved, in ‘The Ferryman’” »
DURING A MEDIA INTERVIEW it could come as a shock to hear a senior western government’s representative quoting – approvingly and with reverence – the declarations of “our community’s Caliph”. Surely not that Caliph, a hasty or ill-briefed journalist might think. Not the leader of that blood-drenched, self-styled ‘caliphate’ proclaimed by ISIS and now militarily beaten down. And of course it wasn’t. Continue reading “International Spokesman for Cooperation – As Official and as Individual” »
AN IMPORTANT STORY UNFOLDED for three weeks recently, in at least eleven American states – but it gained little mainstream press coverage.
Admittedly, it wasn’t too easy for journalists to learn checkable facts about it. Continue reading “Under-Reported Story: Planning for Prison … Design that Denies Human Rights” »
I’VE BEEN HIT by an onslaught of “The Eights”. My local public radio station, WNYC has been reflecting on our so-called ‘culture wars’, tracing them decade by decade, through the prism specifically of events that occurred in years ending in 8. Continue reading “Decisive Dates by the Decade – A Personal Media Sidelight” »
