Taking on the Media: There’s No News in the ‘Birmingham News’
By Scott Horton (Harpers.org)
Back in the eighties, I used to train aspiring young Kremlinologists in the art of reading and understanding Soviet newspapers. As they used to say “there’s no truth in Pravda (truth), and there’s no news in Izvestia (news),” but actually you could learn a lot studying their weaselly distortions of fact. The most revealing thing was often not what was said, but rather was left unsaid. Today’s Birmingham News offers a piece in the best tradition of Pravda, showing us that the old Communist journalism may have gone to its grave in Moscow, but it’s thriving in the Heart of Dixie.
The rest of the story: Harper's
Back in the eighties, I used to train aspiring young Kremlinologists in the art of reading and understanding Soviet newspapers. As they used to say “there’s no truth in Pravda (truth), and there’s no news in Izvestia (news),” but actually you could learn a lot studying their weaselly distortions of fact. The most revealing thing was often not what was said, but rather was left unsaid. Today’s Birmingham News offers a piece in the best tradition of Pravda, showing us that the old Communist journalism may have gone to its grave in Moscow, but it’s thriving in the Heart of Dixie.
The rest of the story: Harper's
posted by John Gabree at 12:04 PM
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