Photo by Oleksandr Kovalenko, from the Visual Culture Research Center Because I do not understand the current state of Russia, I was very grateful we had the opportunity to talk with Sergey Parkhomenko and Vasyl Cherepanyn. What stood out to me the most in our discussion was when Parkhomenko told us that being a journalist in Russia is a choice. It is not a profession you would make money off…
Photo by Graeme Jennings, from Washington Exami On February 11, 2019, The Chicago Maroon published a breaking news update on an armed robbery at the University of Chicago. While there was no problem with the report itself, there was an immediate controversy over the featured image, that of a suspect led by a police man. Many readers thought this suspect looked like a potential minor, and believed that the photo of…
Photo from Medium On March 4th, 2019, President of the University of Chicago, Robert J. Zimmer, issued the “news”: “Federal Action Regarding Free Expression on Campus.” Rather than viewing this email as “news,” I saw it as an declaration of Zimmer’s affirmative stance that the US government should not meddle with free expression on campus, and that he is justified to propose this stance. First, let’s get several details straight:…
Photo from Russia Beyond After reading “New Beginning or Dead End” by Ardaky Ostrovsky, one important question came to my mind: can freedom of expression in media coexist with socialism? In the context of the Soviet Union, it seemed that no matter how hard Gorbachev sought to reign in the people following the continuation of perestroika in the 1980s, the unfavorable consequences of this political reform were not amendable and…
