Author: William A. Babcock

June 4, 1989

BEIJING — Dozens of Chinese college students.  Children.   They sought me out with their faxes in May and June, 1989, to tell me what was happening in the world’s largest public square.  They knew of the Christian Science Monitor’s unbiased international reporting.  They somehow knew the identity of the Monitor’s senior international news editor responsible for directing its

Unethical crusades

Our Dishonest President, Times Editorial Board, Versa Press, Inc., East Peoria, Ill., 2017, $7.99, 112 pages. Our Dishonest President has been repeatedly promoted in one-quarter page advertisements in the Los Angeles Times. The ads, which appear with a large image of the book’s cover, read: The immensely popular series of editorials by the Los Angeles Times

[Opinion]…and a P.S.

Speaking or printing the word is generally regarded as virtually taboo as the word is considered to be a viciously hostile epithet. So vile, in fact, that one is hard-pressed to think of a time this century that it has appeared in the print media or been uttered in a televised or broadcast news program.

A logo, and team, by any other name…

“The Cleveland Indians announced Monday they are dropping the Chief Wahoo logo from their uniforms next year, bowing to decades of complaints that the grinning, red-faced caricature used since 1947 is racist.” That news from the Associated Press in Cleveland was quickly carried Monday across the nation in the New York Times, on NPR, USA Today, the

Crown thy good with brotherhood

Opinion By William A. Babcock The more things change, the more they remain the same. That’s particularly true of America’s not-so-beloved song and lyrics the United States has had as its National Anthem since 1931. Francis Scott Key’s poem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was set to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven” some 200 years ago.