In chapter 17 of “Mightier than the Sword,” Rodger Streitmatter lists 10 traits that suggest that journalism has shaped the history of the United States. The second trait, in particular, caught my eye. It reads: “for many of the journalists and their news organizations, standing tall meant standing alone.” The more I thought about that statement, the more I realized just how accurate it was. So many of the famous news stories that we think about that shaped American history were done by journalists who dared to write about something no one else would. William Lloyd Garrison used the Liberator to aid the anti-slavery movement in the early 1830’s, a time when that viewpoint could lead to serious consequences.

One example Streitmatter didn’t mention is Bob Woodward and Carl Benstein and their uncovering of the Watergate scandal. Those men went up against the President of the United States, and their hard work and determination paid off. Journalists with that kind of courage, that can find stories other journalists can’t, those are the ones that change history. Their stories live on for decades, and serve as inspiration for budding journalists looking to make just as big an impact.

Journalism is at an odd place in 2017.The Trump Administration has dealt a serious blow to the public’s trust in traditional news sources, hard copy sales continue to decrease and the number of people who use social media as their primary news source continues to increase, leaving a huge vulnerability to falsehoods and misinformation.

And yet, it is exactly situations like the one we’re in now that remind us how important journalism is to a functioning, democratic society. People need to be kept informed of the world around them, and actual news outlets with fact checkers and editors remain the best way of accomplishing that.

Places like The New York Times, are starting to realize that, and their new ad campaign that brands them as a source of truth among several misleading others is a step in the right direction that, hopefully, will start to restore public confidence.

Citizen four,” the documentary that took the world by storm, is one of the best I have seen in a very long time. Following a hacker who has been contacted by news stations and looked after by government officials, the film is about the discovery of the hacks around the world what took place a few years ago. In this beautifully constructed dramatic Documentary, the audience follows this young man around as he uncovers secrets of the world and of society in general. Fascinating, heartbreaking, and just interesting all the way through, “Citizenfour” is a film that I would highly recommend even if you are not a big fan of this genre. It is thought-provoking and shows you just how scary the world of technology can really be sometimes. A great film in every sense of the word, even if it does start to feel it’s length about halfway through when it becomes a little repetitive. Fantastic and worth the watch!

Shattered Glass is a fascinating glimpse into the brain of a sociopath, all the more interesting as it’s based on real events from 1997. Christensen has the lead role as the so-called journalist Glass. He hides behind a pair of thick glasses and adopts a strange, sickeningly sweet persona that, of course, hides a manipulative psychotic. That’s the trick the actor manages to pull off – he has to get the audience to believe in and understand both sides of the character. A chronic liar, his fabrications become so involved and complex that they in themselves form a fascinating thread in the story. Most of Glass’s tales have a small kernel of truth, but the majority is all made up. So he invents additional bogus material and fake evidence to back up the original fabrications, such as websites & voice-mails. It’s like seeing a whole separate made up world created and co-existing with ours, all springing from Glass’s warped mind. His desperation and seeming despair is alarming to behold and fits in with the character we saw in the first half of the film. The detective work done by Steve Zahn’s character to begin finding out what’s untrue is also very interesting to observe, and then Glass’s own editor (Sarsgaard), new on the job, follows up on the groundwork laid out to finally deduce what has sort of been in front of them the whole time. Sarsgaard, a very good actor, is a standout juggling new pressures, mixed feelings and finally resolve to get at the truth.

Starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, All the President’s Men follows two reporters, Carl Bernstein and Robert Redford, whose reporting of the Watergate break-in eventually leads to the resignation of president Richard Nixon.

It’s clear from the get-go that the story, the fact-gathering is the star of the movie. Hoffman and Redford are two of the greatest actors of all time, so to see them in their prime is sight to behold, and because of the movie condenses almost a whole year into two hours and 18 minutes, everything not conducive to the flow of the story is thrown out the window, resulting in continually engaging narrative.

The ending, however, is what stuck with me after watching. The camera zooms in on a typewriter rapidly spitting out different headlines. The music fades away, and all you hear is the rapid clack of they typing, ending with the line:

Nixon Resigns

Gerald Ford To Become 38th President At Noon Today

A great ending to a great movie.

I’ve actually seen spotlight twice now, and it continues to be one of my favorites, though I realize that’s hardly a unique position to have given its “best picture” status. Spotlight is directed by Tom McCarthy, and follows a handful of reporters at the Boston globe who decide to investigate reports of pedophilia within the catholic church.

Part of the reason this movie continues to be one of my favorites is how it doesn’t rely on anything other than good acting, and good writing. There’s no CGI, no epic orchestral score. But when Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) finally loses it, it feels earned, and it remains one of the most powerful monologues I’ve ever seen. You can sense his frustration, how anxious he is to publish and how angry he is when he’s told to wait. The rest of the cast are no less brilliant. Michael Keaton has been a favorite of mine ever since Birdman, and Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron has an almost calming presence on screen, and his total indifference to the raw power the church had access to was a treat to watch.

For those who are on the fence about this movie, I urge you to watch it. The acting, even-handed direction and engaging dialogue raises it above most.

On April 3, 2017, Emily Atkin wrote an article in the New Republic regarding the rebuking of many corporations against Trump’s EPA executive order, and that if any real change is to be achieved, these companies will need more than just public statements and signuatures.

Atkin points out that not all of these companies are green in their own right. Amazon is very secretive about their carbon emissions, and while Apple, Microsoft, and Google all received an “A” from CDP’s annual climate change report, Amazon got an “F.” At the same time, Nestle continually fights environmental groups over its practice of extracting millions of gallons of water from drought-stricken regions of California, all under the order of Peter Brabeck: Nestle chairman and climate change denier.

Atikin concludes by urging the American people to keep a keen eye on the actions of these corporations. Poll after poll has shown that more and more consumers maintain environmental sustainability as an important factor that influences their purchasing decisions. Atkin wants more people to adopt this outlook, and take it a step further, supporting manufacturers whose press releases are backed up by their practices.

On April 3, 2017, Joe Simpson of HEATSTREET wrote an article explaining the recent controversy surrounding the Wall Street Journal and Ethan Klein of the popular YouTube channel H3H3. On March 31, Klein released a video lambasting the paper for shedding light on the fact that certain brands were pulling support from YouTube after discovering that their ads were playing alongside content they deemed inappropriate.

The WSJ article created a snowball effect that spurred many more brands to stop running ads on the site, costing YouTube up to $750 million in revenue, hurting Klein and other “YouTubers” whose entire livelihood revolves around the site. Klein goes on in the video, claiming that WSJ reporter Hack Nicas falsified certain screenshots used in the article.

In the video, which Klein now removed, he argues that it’s likely impossible for advertisements to have been shown because of revenue charts from the channel owner of the objectionable video. In short, Klein asserted, if there were advertisements playing before the video the channel owner would still be receiving money.  Klein also argued that having a racist word or phrase in a video title would automatically lead to YouTube pulling advertisements, and that Nicas’s screenshots, seen below, would show different view counts.

However, evidence quickly surfaced rebuking Klein’s claim. Users on Reddit pointed out that one of the videos in question had a been tagged by YouTube’s content ID system, meaning the video received advertisements through a different method. Further, YouTube view counts don’t always update immediately, meaning Nicas refreshed the page and saw a different ad without a view registering.

Klein uploaded a new video saying that this evidence “threw too much doubt into my theory.” In the future, Klein promised to be “more thorough” in his investigations.

Yesterday, Paul Krugman published an op-ed in the New York Times lambasting the new health care plan the Trump administration recently unveiled.  Krugman starts by referencing the ideological inconsistency of the plan, which essentially adapts the framework of the Affordable Care Act, but removes key provisions that will critically damage its effectiveness, resulting in what Krugman dubs a “death spiral of soaring premiums and collapsing coverage.”

Krugman then goes on to analyzing why this new health care plan is ineffective. While the plan keeps the provision regarding pre-existing conditions, it allows insurers to charge older Americans much higher premiums.

Subsidies are now in the form of tax credits, and are linked to age as opposed to income, again shifting the price towards older Americans.

But most damaging is the removal of the individual mandate, which charges premiums to those who don’t sign up for the plan. The Affordable Care Act only works if you have plenty of healthy people of offset the cost of sick people. With no financial motivation to get health care, healthy people will abandon the system until all that’s left is sick people, and insurers will start rising the prices.

With that, Krugman gives his final remarks:

Given the sick joke of a health plan, you might ask what happened to all those proclamations that Obamacare was a terrible, no good system that Republicans would immediately replace with something far better — not to mention Donald Trump’s promises of “insurance for everybody” and “great health care.”

But the answer, of course, is that they were all lying, all along — and they still are. On this, at least, Republican unity remains impressively intact.