media

Since Bob Woodward has managed to make himself the center of attention in Washington this week (yet again), I might as well say it — just in case anyone wondered: No, he’s no relation of mine. Glenn Greenwald writes: Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that it would deploy “only” one aircraft carrier in the [...]

Patrick Cockburn writes: “Never believe anything until it is officially denied,” is a useful saying, advising scepticism towards whatever the government claims to be doing. This is the right mental attitude for any journalist or observer of the political scene. But for sniffing out official or journalistic mendacity, evasion and ignorance, a good guide is [...]

Gideon Haigh writes: Studs Terkel was in a buoyant mood in the spring of 1963 when he welcomed Marlon Brando onto his popular Chicago radio program. He had just won the Prix Italia for his celebrated documentary of nuclear dread, Born to Live; he was shortly to record passengers on board the Freedom Train to [...]

Thanassis Cambanis writes: Anthony Shadid never seemed to be in a hurry. If you needed him, or simply wanted his company, he would linger to chat and fix you with a gaze that defined undivided attention. He gave the impression that nothing was more important to him than whomever he happened to be speaking to, [...]

On November 8, 2011, Anthony Shadid wrote: The House of Assad evokes an imperial sense of power, or at least its trappings, with iconography that one scholar described as infused with “laudatory slogans and sempiternal images.” But my first impression of Rami Makhlouf, President Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and one-time confidante, was of his unassuming quality. [...]

The New York Times reports: Anthony Shadid, a gifted newspaper correspondent whose graceful dispatches for both The New York Times and The Washington Post covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict and turmoil, died, apparently of an asthma attack, on Thursday while on a reporting assignment in eastern Syria. Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer [...]