"Do you ever think about things that you do think about?" (Inherit the Wind)
When Daniel Ortega became president in 2007, the relationship between the Nicaraguan government and the independent press changed dramatically. It’s not that the independent press had enjoyed a particularly easy relationship with the previous administrations. However, the governments of Chamorro,…
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When it comes to Venezuela, it’s impossible to understand today’s media landscape without thinking about Hugo Chavez. The controversial Venezuelan president is one of the most media savvy politicians in the Americas. Alo Presidente, Chavez weekly radio/television show, is an…
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If history is right, Porfirio Diaz, one of Mexico’s most infamous dictators, once decried his nation was too close to the United States and too far away from God. Canada, though not as dramatically, might feel the same about the…
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Even before I ever began researching, writing, and comparing media systems around the world, I was familiar with the name Silvio Berlusconi. I knew him as Italy’s prime minister, and also as the billionaire media mogul. I did not know,…
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Globalization must be among the most contested terms in contemporary society. It is, at once, the blessing that will unite the world in a common Kumbaya, or the curse that ravishes local economies, fosters inequality, and, at the end of…
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In the early nineties, when I was an undergraduate in college, my mother sent me a tape recording of a very popular Salsa band. Their name was Orquesta de la Luz, and they were Japanese. Now, salsa music is not…
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