Over the past few days, there has been increased activity around the Ecuadorian embassy in London, sparking fears Julian Assange faces imminent detention by British authorities. Helen Razer weighs in on truth, on Assange, and why you should care about both.

The Russian public was quiet about Manafort and Cohen, but in the halls of power, debate about Trump’s usefulness rages. By Alexander Gabuev.

So much of mainstream journalism has descended to the level of a cult-like formula of bias, hearsay and omission. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters is “perception,” says John Pilger.

The world’s first bearding zine has launched an online store catering to United States customers seeking Australian made grooming products.

Germans are losing faith in their media. Nowhere is this more apparent than in mistrust of refugee crisis media coverage. Where did journalists go wrong? And how much of this skepticism reflects a preference for rumors over facts?

Rebecca Solnit on Why Journalists Need to Cause Trouble. Adapted from the 2016 commencement address for the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, Solnit’s alma mater.

As the leaders of the G-7 liberal democracies convened in the Japanese shrine town of Ise-Shima this week, host Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used the event to showcase his nation as a regional beacon of democratic values and a counterweight to authoritarian China. However, recent events have raised doubts about his commitment to at least one of those values — freedom of the press.

A key weapon of the neo-liberal establishment in delegitimising the emergence of popular organisation to the left, is to portray all thinkers outside the Overton window as dangerous; actively violent, misogynist and racist... By Craig Murray.

Broadsides were the Facebook posts and tweets of their day. By Natalie Zarrelli.

To deny the importance of vulgarity is to reject the revolutionary tradition… By Amber A’Lee Frost. (May 17, 2016)

The Washington Post suggests that a new study of Trump voters proves “economic anxiety” is irrelevant to his success. The study suggests otherwise. By Eric Levitz.

There is a case to be made that the media created Donald Trump. It was, reportedly, his anger at being dismissed by political pundits that led him to run for president in the first place. And it was, arguably, the media’s wall-to-wall coverage of his every utterance that powered his victory in the Republican primary. But slowly, surely, the media has turned on Trump. He still gets wall-to-wall coverage, but that coverage is overwhelmingly negative. Increasingly, the press doesn’t even pretend to treat Trump like a normal candidate...

According to leading pro-Democratic media, the US cannot possibly work with Russia. By Adam Johnson. (Aug. 24, 2016)

In a climate of bitter political partisanship, anti-media rhetoric and diversified media options, just 32% of Americans now say they trust the media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" -- the lowest level since 1972, when Gallup began polling. "Now, only about a third of the U.S. has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public," Gallup said in its press release.

On July 23 1991, construction workers near the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan found an Igloo cooler with the partially decomposed remains of a toddler-aged girl inside. According to the chief NYC medical examiner, the cause of death was asphyxia, and further testing revealed that the young girl had semen in her rectum when she died. No one reported the girl missing, and for over two decades, police had no real leads.

The Huffington Post’s namesake founder, who stepped down as editor in chief last month, built an iconic media company in record time. Then, after a decade at the helm, she left suddenly. By William D. Cohan.

To the cable news camera, structural oppression is harder to capture than a burning cop car. Spectacle still rules cable news. By Alex Pareene.

The shameful conspiracy of silence around America’s many wars. By Damon Linker.

“More than most armed struggles, the conflicts have been propaganda wars in which newspaper, television and radio journalists played a central role.” By Patrick Cockburn.

Writer Thomas Frank examines the DC media's coverage of the Sanders campaign, and finds an antagonism driven by the same elitist politics and beltway solipsism that power both the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party leadership, and a shared ideological blindspot towards the possibilities of politics and the worth of stale (often disastrous) Beltway consensus. [Podcast]

For almost sixty years, the weekly St. Louis Evening Whirl brazenly attacked criminals, exposed the sexual peccadilloes of the black bourgeoisie, and racked up millions in libel claims— most of the time in iambic, rhyming couplets. By Scott Eden.

Hillary Clinton and her supporters have turned to ugly McCarthyism in attacking Donald Trump to divert attention from their email scandals, a dangerous use of Russia-bashing, says Robert Parry.

How hard is it to con people in Washington, D.C.? Easier than you might think, considering it’s the place where things like nuclear war get decided. The national-security circuit in particular, with its think tank fellowships and massive government contracts, is one of the juiciest rackets around... By Brendan James.

Just about fifty years ago when I was becoming politicized around the war in Vietnam, I began searching desperately for information and analysis that could explain why this senseless war was taking place… By Louis Proyect.

How do we restore consensus in an age so divorced from fact? By Maria Bustillos.

“In an election year that has been defined by the failure of elite political operatives and members of the media to anticipate the volcanic discontent that drove the insurgencies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the idea of reporters and campaigns periodically shedding their oppositional roles to party together seems particularly odious.” By Ross Barkan.

An honest journalist holds all sides to the same standard of criticism, no matter what his or her own views. By Ken Silverstein.

The persistence of Vox… By Nathan J. Robinson

It is the American people themselves that should scare us to death, not whichever puppet our masters can convince us trust. By Dr. Bones.

As Britain awoke to Donald Trump becoming the next President of the United States of America, the world was reacting with shock and disbelief.

Just because Facebook isn’t doing anything about it doesn’t mean you can’t. By Madison Malone Kircher.

The problem isn’t whether the media was too biased against Trump or didn’t listen to his voters. The problem is that journalism doesn’t help everyday Americans solve their problems. By Will Bunch.

Before leaving Pulitzer Hall, the Columbia Journalism School building in Manhattan, on Election Night, I stopped by our makeshift newsroom to absorb some of the evening’s excitement. It was still early in the process; polls were just beginning to close around the country… By Ari L. Goldman.

How timely it is to read this strange, intense novel from Ha Jin about the glories and limits of the press. A former soldier in the Chinese army who chose to stay in the U.S. after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Ha Jin has lived and worked under two very different sets of rules. By Ron Charles.

From Al Smith and Eleanor Roosevelt to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. By Jesse Walker.