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Media and Opinion blog
John Peter Zenger and the Jury That Defended American Press Freedom in 1735 A New York printer was jailed for mocking a royal governor, and twelve jurors defied the bench to set him free. Here is how it happened. The Sedition Act of 1798 Jailed a Congressman Who Won Reelection From His Cell Seven years after the First Amendment, Congress made it a crime to criticise the government, and the voters turned the party that passed it out of office. Before Cable There Was Human Events, and Before That Almost Nothing Conservative media began as a few small newsletters and magazines that kept ideas alive while the big outlets looked away, and the line runs to today. Anonymous Sources, Who Gets Them and What a Reader Should Demand Anonymity is sometimes the only way the truth gets out and often a way to avoid accountability. Here are five questions that tell the two apart. How to Read a News Story From the Bottom Up and Catch What the Lede Hides A numbered, practical method for reading a news story backwards: sources, verbs, bare numbers, headlines, last words and datelines, with a worked example. The Corrections Page Is the Most Honest Part of the Paper, So Read It How corrections, clarifications, editor's notes and retractions differ, why silent edits matter, and how to judge an outlet by how it handles its mistakes. Irving Kristol and the Liberals Who Followed the Evidence Rightward A one-time Trotskyist founded The Public Interest in 1965 and led intellectuals who watched Great Society programs fail. His record and his critics. Six Myths About Ayn Rand and Her Uneasy Place in the Conservative Movement Rand is called the movement's philosopher, yet she rejected its religion and called herself no conservative. Six claims tested against her record. Buckley Policed the Fringe, and the Right Grew Stronger for It In the early 1960s William F. Buckley Jr. drew lines against the John Birch Society's leadership and Ayn Rand's circle, and the movement was better for it. Frank Meyer, the Ex-Communist Who Married Liberty to Virtue Frank Meyer left the Communist Party, joined National Review and argued that virtue must be chosen freely to count, a bargain still shaping the right. The 1953 Book That Told Americans They Already Had a Conservative Tradition Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind gave American conservatism a family tree from Burke to Eliot, and it changed what the movement believed it was. Sowell's Two Visions Explain Why Smart People Talk Past Each Other A Conflict of Visions argues political quarrels rest on unspoken assumptions about human nature; naming them turns shouting matches into arguments. Fabricated From the Byline Up, Four Scandals That Shamed Elite Newsrooms Four celebrated reporters invented people and scenes while editors trusted a good story over a check. What Cooke, Glass, Blair and Kelley teach readers. Common Sense Is a Philosophy Too, and It Shaped the Founders' Plain Talk How Thomas Reid's answer to Hume reached the Founders through John Witherspoon, and why conservatives trust the plain judgment of ordinary citizens. A Thought Experiment, the Nation That Disarmed to Prove It Meant Peace A labelled satire about a country that disbands its army and sends a strongly worded letter, followed by the real record of the 1920s and 1930s. Tradition Is Not Nostalgia, and Five Other Myths About Conservatives Six charges against conservatives, from worshipping the past to opposing all change, tested against Burke, Lincoln's Cooper Union speech and the record. Cato's Letters, the Newspaper Essays That Taught the Colonies Liberty Two London journalists wrote 144 essays after a stock-market crash, and colonial printers kept reprinting them. What Cato argued, and how it reached Zenger. Colorblind Law Is Not a Code Word, It Is Harlan's Dissent Made Good Colorblindness was the civil-rights movement's own legal argument, and the strongest objection to it fails against Harlan, the Brown briefs and the 1964 Act. Richard Weaver Said Ideas Have Consequences and Traced Them Back Centuries Weaver's 1948 book blamed modern decline on abandoning universal truth. His argument, his case for property, and the fair charge that he was too sweeping. Oakeshott Said Being Conservative Is a Temperament Before It Is a Program Oakeshott described conservatism as a disposition to prize the familiar. His skepticism is a useful friend but a limited guide for Americans with a creed. Will Rogers Mocked Congress for Thirty Years and Never Lost the Room The Oklahoma cowboy humorist teased both parties and every Congress until 1935 and stayed America's favourite. He shows how to be funny without being cruel. Satire From Aristophanes to Swift Has Always Been the Weapon of the Underdog Satire is how the governed answer the governing, every age that tried to suppress it lost, and today it comes more and more from the right. The Disinformation Governance Board Lasted Four Months, and That Was Too Long A federal board meant to referee disinformation was paused in weeks and dissolved in months, and it shows why government must never referee true speech. Seven Words Reporters Use to Tilt a Story Without Telling a Single Lie Bias rarely hides in false facts. It hides in seven small words, and here is a substitution test that exposes each one. The Ideas Came First, How Magazines and Think Tanks Built the 1980 Landslide Reagan's 1980 win and a Republican Senate were the harvest of ideas planted long before the campaign: magazines, think tanks and ballot measures. Why Fox News in 1996 Proved There Was an Audience Nobody Was Serving A cable channel launched in October 1996 found a large audience almost at once, and that is market evidence about whom the rest of television news served. Death Panels, the Coverage, and the Board Congress Quietly Repealed The press mocked "death panels" in 2009 while a real ACA board with power over Medicare spending never seated a member and was repealed in 2018. Assault weapon, ghost gun, arsenal, how news vocabulary does the arguing Seven words in gun coverage carry a conclusion before any argument starts. Each one's legal meaning, its use in coverage, and a neutral alternative. Ten Words the Press Uses About the Supreme Court, Translated for Normal People Activist, extreme, supermajority, rogue and six more words carry arguments inside them. Each is defined, tested against named cases and given a verdict. How the Press Covers Supreme Court Decisions, and What the Stories Leave Out Court coverage tells you who won, not what the opinion held. Test three famous frames against the actual rulings, then learn to read a syllabus in ten minutes. Why newsrooms cover believers like a tribe they have never met Coverage often treats religious Americans as a bloc to be explained, not people with reasons, and fair coverage is not hard to describe. Freedom of the Press Meant No Prior Restraint, and Then It Meant More Blackstone's free press banned censorship in advance but allowed punishment after. How American law moved past him, from Zenger to Sullivan. 'My body, my choice' is a slogan, so let's take it seriously for once The slogan assumes the answer to the one question in dispute: whether a second human body is involved. Its history, its best argument and its limits. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 and what the law requires A 2002 federal law says an infant born alive at any stage is a person. What the statute says, how it passed, and why the later fight is over enforcement. Hot Day Means Climate Crisis, Cold Snap Means Weather, a Lesson in Coverage Coverage treats every heat wave as climate and every cold spell as weather. Here is the distinction scientists draw and how to check a claim yourself. The AP Stylebook Changed a Phrase in 2013 and the Coverage Changed With It One wire-service style decision in 2013 reshaped how the immigration story is told, and the statutes never changed with it. Why the Fact-Check Became Its Own Genre and How to Check the Checkers Fact-checking grew from a newsroom chore into a branded genre with its own rating scales. Here is how it works and a method for testing any check. When Dateline Rigged a Pickup Truck to Burn and Then Apologized on Air NBC's 1992 Dateline segment used hidden igniters to help a GM truck burn on camera, then apologized in 1993. Why a staged picture is worse than a wrong fact. The Duke Lacrosse Case and the Rush to a Verdict the Facts Never Supported In 2006 a false accusation was treated as proven until North Carolina's attorney general declared three athletes innocent in 2007. The due-process lesson. Richard Jewell and the Trial by Headline of a Security Guard Who Was a Hero A guard who saved lives at the 1996 Olympics was named as the FBI's focus within days. What the Jewell case teaches about leaks, headlines and due process. From Banned Claim to Live Hypothesis, How the Lab-Leak Debate Was Framed Newsrooms say they simply follow the evidence. The lab-leak record shows how a question was labelled a conspiracy theory before the evidence was in. The Laptop Story Twitter Blocked and the Letter That Gave It Cover In October 2020 Twitter blocked a New York Post story and 51 ex-officials suggested a Russian hand. The record shows why platforms should not edit elections. Walter Duranty's Pulitzer and the Famine the New York Times Did Not See A Pulitzer-winning Moscow correspondent downplayed the Ukrainian famine while a young Welshman told the truth. What access does to a reporter's judgment. The Night a Network Bet Its Reputation on Memos Typed Like a Word File CBS aired Bush Guard memos in 2004 that bloggers doubted within hours; an independent panel faulted the process. The lesson: verify before you wish. TikTok v. Garland and the Hard Clash of Free Speech and National Security The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the TikTok divestment law in January 2025, and the case shows where conservatives divide on speech and a foreign adversary. An AI Chatbot Rewrote History in 2024, and That Is a Speech Problem Too Google's 2024 Gemini image pause showed that AI carries its builders' values into every answer, which argues for transparency over government rules. Europe's Digital Services Act and the First Amendment, Side by Side Europe and Britain regulate online speech with statutes the First Amendment would not allow, and comparing them shows what American law protects. Misinformation Is Not a Legal Category, and Government Should Stop Pretending Government cannot police misinformation because false speech is generally protected, and the narrow exceptions and the record of official error explain why. The Twitter Files Showed a Process, Not a Plot, and That Is Worse The released documents showed routine machinery for filtering visibility and handling government contacts, and routine machinery is harder to fix. Publisher or Platform, Eight Myths About Big Tech and the Law Eight popular claims about Section 230, the First Amendment and the tech companies, tested against the statute and the cases, with a verdict on each. The 1995 Prodigy Lawsuit That Accidentally Created Section 230 Two early rulings punished the online service that tidied up and spared the one that did not, and Congress wrote Section 230 to end that perverse result. Moody v. NetChoice and the Unfinished Question of Who Owns the Feed The Court treated feed curation as editorial judgment but sent the Texas and Florida laws back, leaving conservatives split on common carriage versus property. NRA v. Vullo and the Unanimous Rule Against Government Jawboning Nine justices agreed that an official may not use regulatory leverage to make businesses shun a disfavored group, and the rule protects every viewpoint. Murthy v. Missouri Lost on Standing, Yet the Record It Built Still Stands The Court ruled on who may sue, not on whether federal pressure on platforms is lawful, and the record the case built still matters.