Recent calls to “defund the police” miss the point, yet they point to something important to both the public and police themselves. More than anything, such demands express the frustration that comes on the heels of not only the recent police killings but in response to decades of attempting to reform police institutions to purge … More Misunderstanding Police: Transformation, Not Mere Reform
The surge of partisan vitriol over “fake news” during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election raises some very serious though deeply misunderstood issues. What is news, what is information, what are facts, and what role does propaganda play in the “news cycle” in the various media? Is there a viable role for “fact checkers” … More Fake News: Chicken Little Meets the Canary in the Coal Mine
The mass media continue to present the issue of climate change as if it were an unsettled scientific topic for political debate. Of course, the mass media are owned by the very corporations that have externalized the real costs of their pollution of the environment. If the real costs to people and the planet were … More Climate Science or Social Science?
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 