Addressing disinformation requires understanding the intersection of media, free speech, and malicious politics — After the January 6 insurrection, where pro-Trump rioters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol under the Big Lie that massive election fraud robbed Trump of re-election, Americans found themselves pondering once again a decades-long quandary: Why can’t we stop disinformation? The primary reason is that no one has truly framed the…

Revisiting Purnell’s Iron Law of Politics — With the rapid acceleration of America’s political and cultural divisions, there’s been growing chatter that adopting a multiparty system allows more voices to be heard, and gives voters more choices among their representatives. In my detailed response, “Should America Adopt a Multiparty System?,” I argue that America’s problems are not…

Policy makers thought the “Information Superhighway” would open up and democratize speech. You see where this is going. — [This is part 3 of a multipart series exploring America’s political divide. Part 1 addresses whether America’s divisions are caused by our two-party system (they’re not), while part 2 explores the difference between how Americans themselves feel about actual issues versus that of their parties (very different). In both articles…

Arguments favoring a multiparty system are spurious — In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, many felt that America was edging closer to a new civil war due to the ever-widening gap between the Democrats and Republicans. This era of hyperpolarization and partisan politics have some observers asserting that the primary problem is our two-party political system…

Exclusive Pre-production video leaked! [ I got an exclusive!!! A friend of a friend knows a guy who drinks with a guy who’s a cameraman for a TV station, and that guy funneled a transcript from a video session all the way back to me. It was a joint PSA…

Read PurpleAir ratings and checking your air filters — often — Between August and September of 2020, those of us in the San Francisco Bay Area were trying to findN95 masks, as if our very lives depended on them. …

Most Americans don’t know what a lot of things are, but have an opinion about them anyway A story in AL.com, a news site dedicated to Alabama politics, ran a story with the headline, “Alabama lawmaker wants to ban critical race theory, so I asked him what it is.” The…

Bad Journalism Makes for Great Clickbait The headlines making the rounds throughout all of media — social and otherwise — is the one from Salon.com, “DeSantis signs bill requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with state.” Truth or Satire? Neither! It’s not true, nor is it intended to…