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"According to Musburger's wonky logic, McCarron earned a hot girlfriend by being really good at throwing a pointy ball around on a field. In case you're still wondering why people like myself find Musburger's comments creepy, I'd now like to issue a friendly reminder that a) girls are not prizes that you win for being good at things and b) when you issue uninvited commentary on women's looks or bodies, this is why we throw things at you."

"Gold and Phillip offered their insights on examples of rumors and misinformation in the 2016 campaign, discussed the competing issues and agendas they must navigate in their reporting, and chatted with students and educators about the active role young people can play as consumers and creators of news and information about political issues. The hangout was part of a special series on "Building News Literacy, Critical Media Skills, and Political Awareness Today" produced in connection to Letters to the Next President 2.0.  NLP NEWS Check out the News Literacy Project's latest developments. "

Here's an article that offers the other side of the issue the SOPA bill was written to address. A California appeals court yesterday rejected Universal Music's claim that video-sharing service Veoh didn't do enough to protect content owners. All eyes now turn to New York where another influential court is set to rule on the same issue-who should be responsible for copyright enforcement.

"Just before the holidays, late-night comedian Conan O'Brien poked a little fun at local TV newscasts. In doing so, he illustrated some serious issues about the compromises journalists make in understaffed newsrooms. O'Brien has aired similar montages in the past, capturing repetition in local stories about such topics as Cyber Monday shopping, restaurants that serve political-themed food, and the news that actor Mike Myers and his wife were expecting a baby. The compilations are popular fodder for Internet discussions, where viewers attributed the homogeneity to "consumerist propaganda," "controlled brainwashing," and "corporations spitting out prefabricated copies of fake news." The truth is less conspiratorial. Each story O'Brien featured was supplied by a syndication service that distributes scripts, video clips, and fully-produced news packages to local stations. The self gifting story came from CNN Newsource, which claims 800 affiliates. (CNN is part of Time Warner, which also owns the TBS cable channel that airs "Conan.") You're almost certainly watching syndicated content when your local newscast shows video of national or international stories. Stations also rely on Newsource for sports highlights, business and consumer reports, entertainment news, and stories CNN categorizes as "Caught on Camera," "Animals," "Kickers," and "Easy to Tease.""

To find out what the experts think, we typically rely on the news media. This creates a challenge for journalists: There are many issues on which a large majority of experts agree but a small number hold a dissenting view. Is it possible to give voice to experts on both sides - standard journalistic practice - without distorting the public's perception of the level of disagreement? This can be hard to do. Indeed, critics argue that journalists too often generate "false balance," creating an impression of disagreement when there is, in fact, a high level of consensus. One solution, adopted by news organizations such as the BBC, is "weight of evidence" reporting, in which the presentation of conflicting views is supplemented by an indication of where the bulk of expert opinion lies. But whether this is effective is a psychological question on which there has been little research. So recently, I conducted two experiments to find out; they are described in a forthcoming article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Both studies suggest that "weight of evidence" reporting is an imperfect remedy. It turns out that hearing from experts on both sides of an issue distorts our perception of consensus - even when we have all the information we need to correct that misperception."

"It's harder and harder to have an honest debate on the internet. Social-media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook Groups are rife with trolls; forums are plagued by archaic layouts and spambots. Teenagers who are looking to talk about big issues face additional frustrations, like the fact that most adults on these platforms don't take them seriously. Naturally, they've turned to Instagram. Specifically, they've turned to "flop" accounts-pages that are collectively managed by several teens, many of them devoted to discussions of hot-button topics: gun control, abortion, immigration, President Donald Trump, LGBTQ issues, YouTubers, breaking news, viral memes."

"Forbes magazine has crossed a line that many in the publishing industry view as sacred. Try to spot the advertisement on the cover of its upcoming March issue."

"While there is no demonstrated link between video game play and violence of the kind we have seen all too often in recent years, there is an active scientific debate over what we know and do not-and which next steps the scientific community should take to more definitively understand the dynamics of the many factors that are associated with highly damaging anti-social behavior. To help unpack the debate, I asked Cheryl Olson, Sci.D., one of the nation's leading authorities on the subject and author of Grand Theft Childhood to weigh in on the key research issues"

"Here's a tool for vetting news and information in the digital age. The "SMELL" test won't make you foolproof, but it can help you become a savvy information detective. Apply it to any content purporting to be factual from any source -- face-to-face, to Facebook, to Fox, the New York Times, and online "to infinity and beyond." On some major issues, fact-checking websites will sniff out bias for you, e.g., Factcheck, Politifact, and Snopes. But most of the time, you're on your own."

"n this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence."

"Tt should be obvious that your gender doesn't hinder your ability to code, yet women continue to face an uphill climb into tech careers thanks largely to unspoken stigmas against female coders.  For its latest campaign, the nonprofit advocacy group Girls Who Code tackles this issue with satirical, delightfully deadpan humor. The new work, from McCann in New York, features young girls sardonically explaining how their boobs, their periods, their long eyelashes and more get in the way of their coding. "

"Smartphones. They hold more potential distractions than a carnival. And more potential for family conflicts, as well. That's the subject of "Screenagers," directed by Delaney Ruston, a primary care doctor and filmmaker who took up the topic in the midst of conflicts over screen time in her own family. In the film, Ruston discusses the issue with parents, academics, mental health professionals and kids, including her own, in an attempt to get a handle on the enormous shift taking place in how tweens and teens interact with the world and each other."

"Nike's web site allows visitors to create custom shoes bearing a word or slogan -- a service Nike trumpets as being about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are. Confronted with Nike's celebration of freedom, I could not help but think of the people in crowded factories who actually build Nike shoes. As a challenge to Nike, I ordered a pair of shoes customized with the word "sweatshop." Nike refused my order. A contentious email exchange ensued which was subsequently distributed widely on the Internet as an email forward. Eventually, news of the dispute was reported in major newspapers, magazines, and on television. You can read a detailed account of "My Nike Media Adventure" in the April 9th issue of The Nation."

"From Baton Rouge to Minneapolis to Dallas, it has been a fraught week in the United States. Tonight, University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Sut Jhally is speaking at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts about race relationships in America. Jhally is the founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation. He is best known for producing and directing films on politics, violence and social issues. Jhally spoke with WAMC about how he thinks the election of Barack Obama affected racial identity in the United States. The lecture is titled "The Crisis of Whiteness in the Age of the Black Presidency." It is free and open to the public."

Starting March 1, InStyle will take over a 19-by-42-foot storefront at the bustling corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue and the windows, enabled with touch-screen technology, will show six spring looks. The venture is overseen by the magazine's publishing side, although the products featured in the window will be inspired by the title's March issue. Collages, in a similar vein to Polyvore's model, can be created and instantly sent as a digital postcard to smartphones. Essentially, these cards provide a detailed shopping list, with special offers and a photo stamp (women can personalize the cards further by having their photos taken at the storefront). Geo-targets from the cards will direct shoppers to a given brand's closest preferred retailer. It can get as specific as, say, "see Linda on the third floor of Bloomingdale's, in the northwest corner of the store."

Every bit as unattainable as Barbie-doll proportions and the heroin chic look are the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, fat-free, and muscle-sheathed male physiques littering today's media. Researchers are beginning to pay attention to what these stimuli do to the male body image. Guys, it turns out, have body issues too. 

Male and female images As one dramatic example, the image and representation of women and girls in the media has long been a subject of concern. Research shows that there are many fewer females than males in almost all forms of mainstream media and those who do appear are often portrayed in very stereotypical ways. Constantly polarized gender messages in media have fundamentally anti-social effects. In everything from advertising, television programming, newspaper and magazines, to comic books, popular music, film and video games, women and girls are more likely to be shown: in the home, performing domestic chores such as laundry or cooking; as sex objects who exist primarily to service men; as victims who can't protect themselves and are the natural recipients of beatings, harassment, sexual assault and murder. Men and boys are also stereotyped by the media. From GI Joe to Rambo, masculinity is often associated with machismo, independence, competition, emotional detachment, aggression and violence. Despite the fact that men have considerably more economic and political power in society than women, these trends - although different from those which affect women and girls - are very damaging to boys.

"From NSA sweeps to commercial services scraping our Web browsing habits, to all kinds of people tracking us through our smartphones, Angwin says we've become a society where indiscriminate data-gathering has become the norm. Angwin has covered online privacy issues for years, and in her new book she describes what she did to try to escape the clutches of data scrapers, even to the point of creating a fake identity."

"In a recent strategy meeting with our team, we watched Simon Sinek's landmark TED talk, "Start with Why." Again. If you haven't watched it, you really should. It's 17 minutes of marketing common sense. Simon lays out a simple, yet powerful, observation that the companies, leaders and brands we hold up as innovative, market-shaping and successful, start with "why" -- why they are in business, not what they are selling."