Science Journalism

A look inside the fairness doctrine and its impact on politics and free speech in American talk radio.

Shale gas extraction - commonly known as fracking - is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet - whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the land beneath our feet - is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent.

The 2020 Democratic primaries were some of the most extreme in the history of the United States. But the show isn't over yet. Socialism is still on the rise, and ideas that used to be considered crazy are now even more mainstream than they were before. In Red November, conservative journalist Joel Pollak tells the story of how the Democratic party got so extreme, and give a riveting account of life on the campaign trail. There are stories from the Democratic debates, interviews with candidates, and scuffles between journalists.

The Democratic Party left rural America behind. This urgent rallying cry shows how Democrats can win back and empower overlooked communities that have been pushing politics to the right—and why long-term progressive political power depends on it.

In August 1974, after his involvement in the Watergate scandal could no longer be denied, Richard Nixon became the first and only president to resign from office in anticipation of certain impeachment. Tom Brokaw, who was then the young NBC News White House correspondent, gives us a nuanced and thoughtful chronicle, recalling the players, the strategies, and the scandal that brought down a president.

On a cold November day in Amsterdam in 2004, the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and killed by an Islamic extremist for making a movie that "insulted the prophet Mohammed." The murder sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native land to investigate the event and its larger meaning as part of the great dilemma of our time.

Greg Palast has spent the last 30 years getting the goods on corporate con men and political hucksters. Now he and his special guests cut through the TV news babytalk in Armed Madhouse. Armed with more than 50 classified documents and confidential memos, Palast brings you the stories not allowed in The New York Times.

In this candid and revealing audiobook, Mike Wallace tells the behind-the-scenes stories from his remarkable 60-year career. Here are intimate anecdotes, off-camera antics, never-before-told tales, and, most important, Wallace's insights about some unforgettable characters.

All They Will Call You is the harrowing account of "the worst airplane disaster in California's history", which claimed the lives of 32 passengers, including 28 Mexican citizens - farmworkers who were being deported by the US government. Outraged that media reports omitted only the names of the Mexican passengers, American folk icon Woody Guthrie penned a poem that went on to become one of the most important protest songs of the 20th century.

In October 1993, a tiny start-up called the Food Network debuted to little notice. Twenty years later, it is in 100 million homes, approaches a billion dollars a year in revenue, and features a galaxy of stars whose faces and names are as familiar to us as our own family's. But what we don't know about them, and the people behind them, could fill a book.

In The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock skillfully documents perhaps the most important but least understood political development of the last 30 years: how the Republican Right has won political power and hijacked public discourse in the United States. Brock, a former right-wing insider and the author of the New York Times best seller Blinded by the Right, uses his keen understanding of the strategies, tactics, financing, and personalities of the American right wing to demonstrate how right-wing media has all but subsumed the regular media conversation.

In the second half of 2020 and continuing into 2021, protests against racial injustice spread across the United States after the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis Police Department officers. What transpired during this troubled time cast a bright light on the contemporary relationship between the press and police in the United States. The relationship between these two fundamental institutions is, however, a long and complicated one.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News host Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. In America in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson had in mind: Whether he's the patriot or the tyrant, he's definitely full of manure.

In Sit Down and Cheer, Martin Kelner traces the development of this relationship from its humble origins in the 1960 Olympics, by way of the first-ever Match of the Day in 1964, through to the financial impact of Sky, right up to the high-tech gadgetry of our present-day viewing. Insightful and very funny, this is an entertaining exploration of two major national pastimes and not to be missed.

Com experiência extensa no jornalismo, Ricardo Viveiros traz uma escrita que deixa transparecer seu olhar perspicaz para os fatos e do qual o ouvinte não sai ileso. De modo amplo e didático, a obra nos leva a entender o cenário no qual a população brasileira dividiu-se entre os “contra” e os “a favor”.

On May 7, 1945, journalist Edward Kennedy bypassed military censorship to be the first to break the news of the Nazi surrender executed in Reims, France. While, at the behest of Soviet leaders, Allied authorities prohibited release of the story, Kennedy stuck to his journalistic principles and refused to manage information he believed the world had a right to know. No action by an American correspondent during the war proved more controversial.

Every cop has a case that dug its claws in and would not let go. For veteran detective Ron Iddles, it was his very first homicide case - the 1980 murder of single mother Maria James at the back of her Melbourne bookshop. He never managed to solve it, and it still grates like hell. Maria's two sons, Mark and Adam, have lived in a holding pattern longer than Rachael Brown has been alive.

In Democracy Lives in Darkness, Emily Van Duyn discovers and follows a secret political organization of progressive women in a conservative community in rural Texas. Its members met in secret to protect themselves from retaliation by their conservative neighbors, friends, and family. They discussed immigrant rights, women's reproductive rights, racism, and intolerance of those of different racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds in their community. Democracy Lives in Darkness is about this group: their daily lives, their choices, and ultimately, their incubation.

¿Quién manda en España? ¿Por qué mandan los que ocupan puestos de poder en los ministerios, secretarías de Estado, direcciones generales? ¿Qué redes de intereses les unen entre sí? Más allá de las "puertas giratorias", unos grupos pequeños de altos funcionarios, personas vinculadas al poder real, sobre todo al económico, toman las decisiones y lo hacen sin responder ante los ciudadanos ni escucharles. Porque las élites de poder no se presentan a las elecciones ni defienden un programa electoral.

Desde que fueron anunciadas las negociaciones de paz con las Farc, Juan Gabriel Vásquez no ha dejado de comentar ese proceso que tanta esperanza -y tanta polarización- le ha traído al país. Este libro recoge todo lo que ha escrito al respecto: sus columnas de opinión en medios de Colombia y el mundo, pero también conversaciones con Humberto de la Calle, Juan Manuel Santos y Doris Salcedo.