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Eric Risberg / AP The Absurdist Spectacle of the Nike Boycotts
The viral responses to the company’s new campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick reinforce the stakes of his protests—and misunderstand what motivated the brand in the first place.
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HBO The Lazy Trope of the Unethical Female Journalist
With Camille Preaker, Zoe Barnes, and Rory Gilmore, Hollywood’s depictions of women reporters have never been further from reality.
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Dennis Van Tine / STAR MAX / IPx Donald Trump and the Currency of Tapes
Why eavesdrops, hot mics, and other unorthodox recordings are such a staple feature of the 45th presidency
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Jae C. Hong / AP And Then No One on the CBS Earnings Call Asked Les Moonves About Harassment
Americans have been conditioned to draw dangerous lines: money on the one side, morality on the other.
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Lorin Eleni Gill / AP Nia Wilson and the Formula for Covering Black Death
The racial elements and gruesome details surrounding the teen’s killing have pushed the story into the public sphere. But only some black victims are afforded this kind of attention.
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Lucas Jackson / Reuters / Katie Martin / … The Lasting Trauma of Alex Jones’s Lies
The systems that have for so long helped to enforce the notion of collective truth in America are no longer sufficient: Deception is everywhere. And it is dangerous.
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Matt Sayles / AP Beyoncé’s Vogue Takeover Is a Show of Power
The pop star’s reported shaping of the September cover hints at the shifting relationship between the media and their subjects—and between creators of color and traditional gatekeepers.
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Dennis Van Tine / STAR MAX / IPx … Les Moonves and the Familiarity Fallacy
The CBS chief’s associates have been offering a common defense: that the man they know simply wouldn’t do the things he is alleged to have done.
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Julie Jacobson / AP Roseanne, Hannity, and the One Joke That Reveals So Much
Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Barr offered a non-apology to Valerie Jarrett. And then she mocked Jarrett’s haircut.
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George Rinhart / Getty The Problem With Happy Endings
From tidy stories of reunited migrant families to #PlaneBae, Americans’ bias toward optimism is a wonderful thing—until it’s not.
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Leah Millis / Reuters Brett Kavanaugh, Jim Jordan, and the Fog of the Partisan
It's a slippery slope when weighty matters get dissolved into claims of bias and fakery.
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Lucas Jackson When the White House Is a Safe Space
The elevation of ousted Fox News executive Bill Shine to the highest workplace in the land is another reminder: #MeToo backlash will happen compromise by compromise, shrug by shrug.
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Rangizzz / Shutterstock Two Strangers Met on a Plane—and the Internet Ruined It
Nothing in American culture—not even delight, not even coincidence, not even love—is safe from the gravitational forces of commodification.
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Joshua Roberts / Reuters For the Love of the Local Newspaper
Regional publications do work that really matters to their communities. And local journalists know it in their bones.
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Mana Mohpayak / Shutterstock To Be a Good Citizen, First Pay Attention
Yes, voting; yes, speaking; yes, showing up; full participation in the American democracy of the moment, however, demands an even more basic activity.
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Andrew Harnik / AP Schrödinger’s Coat
The 20th century witnessed the rise of the media event. The 21st, with its tan suits and swatted hands and flippant Zara outerwear, is bringing a new spin to the old idea.
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ProPublica How to Look Away
A corollary to a politics of destabilized truth is a politics of destabilized empathy.
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Bebeto Matthews / AP Bill Clinton Feels His Own Pain
His current book tour has reinvigorated discussions of what the former president owes, in the age of #MeToo, to “that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”
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Joe Tabbacca / AP ‘The Trust of the Reader Is Distrusted by Roth’
How The Atlantic covered the late novelist Philip Roth from 1966 onward—via scathing reader letters, glowing reviews, and personal remembrances
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Sony Classics What 'The Age of the Twink' Actually Means
Are scrawny guys suddenly “in”? Or are straight men just, finally, getting openly objectified like women and gay men long have been?
