The Columbia Journalism Review – perhaps the journal on journalism most respected by journalists themselves – published a startling four-part series on how the media covered “Russiagate,” the charge that Trump and his allies colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election. The series is startling in that it acknowledges now the major news media often failed – and failed miserably – to do its job.
While the response from the media is generally a deafening silence, Mother Jones (not a major news medium) published its critique of the series – that it “bolstered Trump’s narrative.” In other words, journalism is no longer about fact and evidence, but narrative. On the other side of the political spectrum, Roger Kimball at The Spectator looks at one facet of Russiagate reporting – that the think tank that fueled the story and was accepted without question by the media was itself a fake organization.
Ulysses S. Grant’s 12-year-old son Fred often accompanied his father during campaign battles in the Civil War. The general thought this would be a good education; Fred later said it was often pretty awful to see what he saw. At Emerging Civil War, Frances Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant, who’ve published a book on children who enlisted in the Civil War, talk about Fred’s experience.
You may have heard about the “monuments men,” the soldiers who saved Europe’s art from the Nazis at the end of World War II. But they had an Italian counterpart – the man who saved 10,000 pieces of Italy’s art from the Nazis. Michael Prodger at The Critic Magazine has the story.
More Good Reads
Faith
Villainous Christianity in ‘The Whale,’ ‘The Wonder,’ and ‘Women Talking’ – Brett McCracken at The Gospel Coalition.
Being Still – Greg Doles at Chasing Light.
Leaders Who See the Lowly – A.W. Workman at Entrusted to the Dirt.
Secular Liturgies Leave Me Longing for More – Darryl Dash at Dashhouse.
Life and Culture
On Our Need to Be Displaced: Flannery O’Connor’s prescription for our divided times – Christina Bieber Lake at Comment Magazine.
The destiny of cult thinking: Dark similarities with the Soviet moral void are already on the rise – Fleur Elizabeth Meston at The Critic Magazine.
So Long. See You All a Little Further Down the Road – Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest.
What Progressive Educators Get Wrong About Creativity – Daniel Buck at Quillette.
How Ideologues Infiltrated the Arts – Rikki Schlott at The Free Press.
On Language and Ideology – David Rieff at Desire and Fate.
Watching the Great Fall: Beyond Progress and Nostalgia – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.
American Stuff
WWII mystery turns 80: Torpedo-struck ship and its crew vanished off NC coast in 1942 – Mark Price at Raleigh News & Observer.
Micaela Almonester, Andrew Jackson, and Myths – Sean Michael Chick at Emerging Civil War.
British Stuff
Killed by what they thought would save them – Stephen Steele at Gentle Reformation.
Writing and Literature
Finding My Place in Oral History – J.J. Anselmi at The Millions.
Ties that Bind: Wendell Berry, the Bible, and Port William – Jonathan Van Maren at The European Conservative.
Will ChatGPT put professional speechwriters out of business? No, only cynical leaders could do that – David Murray at Writing Boots.
Ukraine
Special investigation: Serious concerns over fate of Ukraine’s museum works taken by Russians – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.
Poetry
So Close By – Warren Bonham at Society of Classical Poets.
Art
Caspar David Friedrich & the ‘Reliturgification’ of the West – John Strickland at The Imaginative Conservative.
The Lord Almighty Reigns – Keith & Kristyn Getty
Painting: Woman Reading a Book on a Beach (circa 1896), monochrome watercolor by James Jebusa Shannon (1862-1923).
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