A post-election letter from the National Coalition Against Censorship's Executive Director Joan E. Bertin. 

Great news: On Monday a North Dakota judge refused to authorize the charges against Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman for her reporting on the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

We’re just back from North Dakota, where on Monday District Judge John Grinsteiner refused to authorize "riot" charges against Amy Goodman for reporting for Democracy Now! on an attack against Native American-led

Mainstream media is dying. The network evening news audience is in steady decline; the big three magazine publishers, Time Inc., Condé Nast and Hearst have all closed or consolidated titles; and the newspaper industry has been especially ravaged, with dailies folding across the country. Increasingly people get their news from the internet and from cable channels. Advertisers are moving on to Google and other non-traditional sources. Do these developments leave us better off? The democratization of news, in an unfiltered internet to which all bloggers and news aggregators have equal access, is a good thing. It encourages a diversity of voices, competing to provide information and analysis. Others argue that the public loses when traditional journalistic standards are no longer upheld, and where resources to investigate and report critical stories are no longer available. Can mainstream media re-invent itself to thrive in a digital age? Does it matter?

It doesn’t take long for political discussions on social media to turn negative.From vitriolic remarks, to hyperbolic statements, to name-calling, online political conversations tend to turn into a tit-for-tat verbal slug fest. One accusation in particular is common in YouTube comment sections, Facebook threads, Twitter, and other online forums, and that is one person accusing someone they disagree with of being a “low information voter” — or more crassly, calling the person an idiot or stupid. 

The 2016 New York presidential primary highlights yet again the reckless incompetence, if not outright corruption, of the nomination process in favor of corporate establishment candidates. BUT it actually goes wayyyy deeper than that. Lee Camp explains this and more on Redacted Tonight.