Columbia Journalism Review

Five decades after Kerner Report, representation remains an issue in media

[Commentary] In February of 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Report—which detailed an extensive and daunting list of inequalities and inequities that led to civil unrest in Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Newark. Among its findings, the commission highlighted how the lack of adequate representation among the people assigning, reporting, and editing media coverage might drive “the underlying problems of race relations.” 

Threat Tracker

[Commentary]  At the beginning of 2017, the US Press Freedom Tracker started cataloguing every violation of press freedom that took place on American soil, be it through violence, arrest, denial of access, or other threats. This is a selection of those incidents from 2017.

When Trump goes global

[Commentary] The hope of the Arab Spring has been realized: Now that anyone can publish anything from anywhere, it is impossible for even the most determined despot to jail every journalist and critic. But even as the most ruthless dictators are realizing the world has changed, they are quickly learning a new method for dismissing dissent and turning the guerrilla media techniques back on the guerrillas. Their instructor: Donald J. Trump, president of the United States.