A few months ago, Media Matters for America started the Progressive Talent Initiative (PTI), a new project to discover and cultivate a new generation of progressive on-air media talent.

PTI is an intensive, four day media training program beyond the scope of anything in the progressive movement to date. Our first training was held in August and brought together members of the progressive community for lively discussions about messaging and hours in front of the camera practicing the new skills learned.

After chatting with my friend MT, a fellow hardcore Asian American feminist, it was apparent that these kinds of stories about Asian women (much like the depiction of Asian women in non-news media) get sensationalized only when the story helps enforce the role or and reaffirm the archetype of the Asian as a racial exception and the Asian woman as an uncomplicated victim. Sound like APIA feminist studies 101? I wish there were such a thing.

When I walked into the ING coffee shop this morning and looked up to see the CNN “news reports” about the flap over President Obama’s comments regarding Professor Gates’s arrest by the Cambridge police, I was reminded once again how much the quality of journalism has  generally declined during the last decade -- and how it has filled the American public’s brain with half-baked sound bites and quarter-truths.   What makes Made-For-TV journalism so dangerous is that there are a lot of people out there wh

Artwork: Join or Die by Justine Lai If Join or Die is a call to citizens, I’d rather die than continue with Justine Lai’s mission to paint herself having sex along the presidential timeline.  Aesthetically, she’s got great technique (no pun intended) as an oil painter; other than that, her painting