It used to be that if you wanted to know what happened at the local school board meeting, or city council debate, or even in your own neighborhood, you could open up a local paper and read about it. But cutbacks have hit local newsrooms hard — and now a once robust industry is on…
Any American with a social media account in 2016 has seen friends share political news articles, speeches, and memes regarding the year’s presidential election. This latter category may have included “Bernie or Hillary?” posters alleging Sanders’s admiration of lizards, edited images of Donald Trump with small hands, or maps predicting Jeb Bush to win in…
The United States is one of the most highly propagandized societies in the world.[1] Through a combination of cultural insularity, strategic internal messaging, almost constant warfare and overwhelming monetary support for particular political ideologies, the United States presents a case study in autocratic control of dominant institutions that service centers of ideology and power.[2] While…
Pressuncuffed.org seeks to encourage and promote rigorous student reporting, scholarly research and debate on the role of, and obstacles to, independent journalism in the United States and abroad. Our website features reporting by University of Maryland students about press freedom in the United States and abroad. It also offers resources to instructors elsewhere who may want to teach classes or hold workshops on this theme. In the near future, this site will become a place for student work from around the country and abroad.
Dana Priest, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner at The Washington Post and Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland.