I grew up in a two-newspaper home in Belleville, Illinois, and have few fonder memories than Sunday mornings after Mass with a dozen glazed from Mallo’s Bakery and multiple pages of beautiful sports agate, jam packed with box scores and standings. Those and countless other mornings at the kitchen table with ink-stained fingers inspired what…
Fake news is a current phenomenon, though it dates back hundreds of years ago. In the earliest days of printing, newspapers published articles about monstrous beasts or unusual occurrences. The discovery of a monster with “goat’s legs, a human body, seven arms and seven hands” was published in a pamphlet in 1657 in Catalonia. In…
The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death is a part of Saudi Arabia’s information war in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia wants to cut off criticism in and outside the country by controlling media outlets and journalists. According to the Human Rights Watch, there are at least 60 people currently in jail just for expressing…
President Trump’s assault on truth has developed into the central organizing principle of his presidency. For two years he has piled lie upon lie to build an alternative reality, a fable embraced by tens of millions of credulous adherents. The president’s false statements and lies aren’t occasional, unguarded fibs. They fit together in an all-encompassing…
President Trump’s pre-election plan to reinterpret the 14th Amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship would weaken a part of the Constitution that has roots in St. Louis and that serves as the Constitution’s deepest reservoir of individual rights. That background, which didn’t get much attention in the media, is important to understanding the danger of Trump’s…