Journalism, Bias & Censored news
The Cross-cutting Politics of AI Servers and Load Growth
Like much of the rest of the country, the ERCOT region of Texas is projecting massive growth in electricity demand, driven mostly (though not exclusively*) by new data servers. The servers are part...
Money, Leverage and Politics
I recently began teaching a course on the regulation of “networks, platforms and public utilities,” using a 2022 casebook by the same name. It is from a group of progressive legal scholars who are...
Hiding Illegality in Plain Site
Much of the energy world is waiting on the Trump Administration to disperse funds that Congress directed to be used to support specific types of energy projects. The Administration's withholding of...
Don’t watch, read
The poet Robert Burns once wrote, "Be merry, I advise. But as we be merry, may we also be wise." As Republicans aim to roll back climate policy progress it is increasingly difficult for the climate...
Retuning Our Sense of Media Bias
Can you have a healthy democracy without a common set of facts? This is the question of 21st century U.S. politics, and the linked article (subscription required) uses it to explain the ways in...
“The power of conviction … yeah, I always fall for that.”
This is a relatively famous New Yorker cartoon by Jason Katzenstein, depicting a generalization about male/female rhetorical styles. But it might as well be illustrating the way social and...
Intentional vs. Unintentional Fake News
In chapter 4 of Climate of Contempt I summarize the academic literature showing how (1) online platform algorithms mislead and anger us, and (2) political persuaders use that anger to push us toward...
“Rage-Farming”
Of all the political communication pathologies worsened by modern media technology, one of the lesser-known is “rage-farming.” It's an old idea in new clothes. Their biographers detail the pettiness...
Annotating Energy Transition Stories — Episode # 3
I noted in a previous post that popular understanding of the energy transition is harmed as much by constant minor exaggerations and omissions as by outright lies. Many of the misrepresentations of...
“Flooding the zone with s**t”
As I have noted in several other posts (e.g. here and here), a second Trump presidency would represent a setback for the energy transition because of Republicans' turn away from green energy and...
Annotating Advocacy Journalism – Episode #2
The modern media environment damages public understanding of complex issues as much by incentivizing frequent small inaccuracies as by way of bots and deliberate misinformation. Let’s look at...
A Closer Look At Censored News & Its Effects
When talking about censored news feeds in front of groups, I often repeat a sentence from Climate of Contempt to the effect that Democrats and liberals are more likely than Republicans and...
The Chasm Between Invention and Commercialization
Steve Levine's 2015 book, Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, tells the story of one of the laboratories competing for federal (2009 ARRA) stimulus money targeting...
Celebrating Good Energy Transition Journalism
In chapter 4 of Climate of Contempt I explore the way competition from social media and advocacy journalism has crowded out – and changed – traditional journalism. And I use this blog to point out...
Annotating Advocacy Journalism – Episode #1
Let’s look at two April 2024 examples of misleading journalism. On April 12, 2024 the Daily Caller ran a piece entitled “Electricity Prices Have Risen Seven Times Faster Under Biden Than Trump.” It...