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Flak may be concisely defined as political harassment and is detrimental to community for its strained ethical posture, cynicism and corrosive impact on social and political bonds of trust. Following conceptualization of flak that differentiates it from scandal and activism, this investigation focuses on Project Veritas as its case study. Veritas is a right-wing flak mill that, using media, has set out to professionally damage people and organizations across almost a decade. The investigation telescopes in on two Veritas stunts that provoked reviews by the justice systems of California and Texas. In these cases, the California Attorney General and Texas special prosecutors delivered astringent criticisms of Verita's covertly-recorded "sting" videos, while largely or wholly exonerating their flak targets (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now [ACORN], Battleground Texas). Along with conceptualizing and critiquing flak, the investigation concludes with a call for news that extends beyond fact-checking and the limited, complacent techniques of objectivity in favor of more ambitious pursuit of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the argument that the very act of reporting shapes the raw material of news, this investigation examines “Us” and “Them” dichotomization as it is routinely insinuated into news narratives. Specifically, this investigation analyzes 215 articles from the “hard news” and commentary sections of the International Herald Tribune (IHT), the globally circulating, hard-copy emissary of The New York Times. Us/Them dichotomization pervasively structures news narratives in IHT with the United States cast as “Us” and the rest of the world largely constructed as “Them”. Whereas We are orderly, harmonious, and steeped in democratic mystique in IHT's news narratives, They are characterized by constant struggles for unity and all shades of illiberalism (e.g., Statism, corruption, mayhem). These constructions mutually reinforce each other when they appear side by side on newsprint, day after day. Particular emphases in the analysis concern coverage of China, Russia, the coup in Egypt, the “world historic” gravitas of Barack H. Obama, and the aftermath of Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this essay, I examine more than 560 articles in The Guardian (UK) and The New York Times from 2002 to 2003 in order to characterize the coverage of Spain in the two prestigious English-language newspapers. I argue that along with being more extensive, The Guardian's coverage of Spain is generally more attentive to the textures of Spanish life. Nonetheless, The Guardian also exhibits a form of Orientalism (Said, 1979) in its at times Otherizing constructions of stasis and crypto-authoritarianism in Spain. The New York Times, by contrast, often exaggerates similarity between Spain and the United States. I use the concepts of ‘personalization,’ ‘authority­disorder,’ and ‘fragmentation’ (Bennett, 2001) that frequently structure the narratives of US journalism in order to illuminate the Times' coverage. Personalization is evident particularly in the Times' coverage of the then Spanish President José María Aznar. Massive popular peace advocacy during the spring of 2003 in Spain was also understated by the Times as it was parsed into fragmentary coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]