Banning Boycotts

“What the outcome of The Arkansas Times’s lawsuit will be is unclear. One thing, however, remains crystal clear: These anti-boycott laws, allowing government to use money to punish dissent, will encourage the creation of ever more repressive laws that risk strangling free speech for years to come.”

—Alan Leveritt, founder and publisher of The Arkansas Times, which sued to overturn Arkansas's law outlawing boycotts of Israel, “We’re a Small Arkansas Newspaper. Why Is the State Making Us Sign a Pledge About Israel?” The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2021.

• Editorial Comment: Governments subverting the First Amendment.

PeezPIX 

Another Damn Sunset

December's SENIOR NEWS, The Stocking Stuffer Issue, is out. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Danger: Reading While Walking

“People should not be left long unsupervised with books. You can be riding a bus and miss eight stops because you are not riding a bus at all — you are somewhere entirely different watching somebody throw an important piece of jewelry into a volcano. 

“Books give you the faulty idea that you can safely travel in realms of gold or voyage leagues underwater without getting wet; they make it impossible to be certain that your new classmate is not a rat under a series of raincoats; they send you pingponging into the past where you could do considerable harm if allowed to wander; they dispatch you into futures that don’t exist and trick you into thinking they could. Some of them are terrifying. Some of them are stomach-churning. All of them are treacherous, especially if you are reading them when walking. Don’t read them when walking.” 

—Alexandra Petri, columnist, “Opinion: Take all books off the shelves. They’re just too dangerous,” The Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2021. (Thanks to alert WORDster David Hankin)

• Editorial Comment: Does this girl’s parents know she's reading? At least she's not walking . . .  

PeezPIX 

December's SENIOR NEWS is out. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Television

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks —
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.”

—Roald Dahl (1916-1990), children's author, spy, chocolate expert, poet, screenwriter, WWII pilot, excerpt from  “Television,” 2003.

• Editorial Comment: Grownups, too.

PeezPIX 

December's SENIOR NEWS is out. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Thinking

“A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.”

—Jerry Seinfeld, comedian and idiot-savant.

• Editorial Comment: I’ll wait for the movie to come out.

PeezPIX 

Cloud Painting

November’s SENIOR NEWS celebrates the book. Online here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

The JFK Files?

NOTE: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas 58 years ago today. Release of files on the JFK killing, scheduled for last month, has been inexplicably delayed.  

“Democracy requires that decisions made by the government be open to public scrutiny. Yet excessive secrecy surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination continues to inspire doubt in the minds of the American public and has a profound impact on the people’s trust in their government.”

—Reps. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), “Biden postpones release of JFK assassination files, citing pandemic-related delays,” The Washington Post, Oct. 23, 2021.

• Editorial Comment: Let's not rush into this.

PeezPIX 

Thinking, in Repose

The December SENIOR NEWS, “The Stocking Stuffer Issue,” comes out Thursday. Look for it here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Unconstitutional

News: NY trial court in libel case orders The New York Times to halt reporting on Project Veritas, the conservative “news” documentary group.

“This ruling is unconstitutional and sets a dangerous precedent. When a court silences journalism, it fails its citizens and undermines their right to know.” 

—Dean Baquet, executive editor, The New York Times, “Judge Tries to Block New York Times’s Coverage of Project Veritas,” New York Times, Nov. 18, 2021. Thanks to alert WORDster Tony Seton.

• Editorial Comment: A win for the right not to know.

PeezPIX 

Old Man @Sea

November’s SENIOR NEWS celebrates the book. Online here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Information Disorder

“Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems. Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.”

—Katie Couric, Chris Krebs & Rashad Robinson, co-chairs, Commission on Information Disorder, “Final Report, 2021,” The Aspen Institute, November 2021.

• Editorial Comment: Can we handle the truth?

PeezPIX 

Big Spruce

November’s SENIOR NEWS celebrates the book. Online here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism