The Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sion makes the fol­low­ing announce­ment regard­ing a child who is not Britain’s youngest-ever father:

The Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sion has announced an inquiry into alleged pay­ments by The Sun and the People to the par­ents of Alfie Pat­ten. Con­tinue read­ing →

Edit­ors, report­ers and even car­toon­ists are in the grip of reli­gious McCarthyism.

Free­dom of Speech lies bleed­ing in the gut­ter, near its dead friend, Ration­al­ism. Super­sti­tion struts its stuff.

Reli­gion won’t kill you, but it knows someone who might just beat you till your brains come out of your ears.

We are afraid to even admit our fear, call­ing it tolerance.

And tra­cing back our moral cow­ardice, one name comes to mind — a name that could have belonged to a hero or a mar­tyr in the struggle. Instead, it belongs to a vic­tim — a vic­tim in whose story I played a small and undis­tin­guished part.

The name itself is not a mys­tery. To reveal it I would need only to reach up on the book­shelf for my copy of The Satanic Verses and point out the sig­na­ture, the date and the yel­low­ing wire copy taped to the dust jacket. Con­tinue read­ing →

An Iraqi journ­al­ist friend told me again today a story he has told me sev­eral times before.

It fea­tures, so he says, in an upcom­ing movie, so I don’t think I’m break­ing any con­fid­ences shar­ing it.

It was April 2003. Saddam’s statue had fallen in Fir­dos Square and my friend was hanging around the Méridien hotel in Bagh­dad, where the Mar­ines were busy set­ting up base. Con­tinue read­ing →

Back in Novem­ber 2008, I was at the Sum­mit on the Global Agenda, an ambi­tious attempt by the World Eco­nomic Forum to bring aca­dem­ics, poli­cy­makers and busi­ness people together to dis­cuss some of the more inter­est­ing chal­lenges facing all of us.

And also to see if we could make any pro­pos­als that might address some of the con­cerns we shared.

My group looked at the media — well, journ­al­ism to be pre­cise. The dis­cus­sion was wide-ranging, opin­ion­ated, and almost impossible to draw into a neat and tidy bow. As any­one involved with the news media can attest, the mes­meric effects of watch­ing the col­lapse of organ­iz­a­tions, insti­tu­tions and busi­ness mod­els can be sim­ul­tan­eously ter­ri­fy­ing and para­lys­ing. Con­tinue read­ing →

From the New Yorker. Cheer your­self up and buy a subscription.