media — Bunk History

Oscar Wilde

“A Nation of Lunatics.” What Oscar Wilde Thought About America

On the Irish writer’s grand tour of the Gilded Age United States.

by Rob Marland via Literary Hub on March 11, 2024

John Montgomery Ward and Helen Dauvray.

Before Taylor and Travis, There Was Helen and John

She was an actress. He was a shortstop. What we can learn from the press parade around this 19th-century power couple.

by Scott D. Peterson via Zócalo Public Square on January 11, 2024

The Fake-News Fallacy

Old fights about radio have lessons for new fights about the Internet.

by Adrian Chen via The New Yorker on September 4, 2017

Here's How Memes Went Viral - In the 1800s

The Infectious Texts project is the compilation of 41,829 issues of 132 newspapers from the Library of Congress.

by Greg Miller via Wired on November 4, 2013

Newspapers showcasing the victory of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump

Close Elections Signal a New Gilded Age

Donald Trump’s 2024 win, echoing the Gilded Age, highlights America’s volatile, close elections, partisan divides, and structural barriers shaping politics.

by Bruce J. Schulman via Made By History on December 13, 2024

Farm for sale in Kansas, 1938.

The Early History of “Selling America to Americans”

Using film and advertising to sell capitalism and nationalism to immigrants in the early 20th century.

by Caroline Jack via HNN on November 26, 2024

Illustration of an octopus with a "no talking" symbol, with its tentacles around the globe.

How Cancel Culture Panics Ate the World

A set of peculiarly American anxieties has spread across continents.

by Samuel P. Catlin via The New Republic on November 25, 2024

How Entertainment Mangled Public Discourse

Neil Postman’s jeremiad against TV seems rather quaint today—and not just because he was shouting into the wind and knew it.

by Katha Pollitt via The New Republic on November 20, 2024

Collage of different Indigenous people from the present day.

Native Narratives: The Representation of Native Americans in Public Broadcasting

A selection of radio and television programs that reinforce or reject stereotypes, and Native-created media that responds to those depictions.

by Sally Smith via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on November 16, 2024

Physicists posing in front of a 60-inch cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1944.

How Professors Helped Win World War II

College professors were vital in the fight to win WWII, lending their time and research to building bombs to creating effective wartime propaganda.

by Will Mari via The Saturday Evening Post on September 4, 2024

Censored stills of a naked man running.

The Decline of Streaking

Naked runners used to disrupt events seemingly all the time. Why’d they stop?

by Michael Waters via The Atlantic on June 13, 2024

Alt Text

A brief history of the textfile, and the production of conspiracy theories on the internet.

by Walter J. Scheirer via HNN on May 8, 2024

Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech.

The Problem With Comparing Today's Activists to MLK

Media coverage of the civil rights movement is a reminder that the deification of King has skewed public memory.

by Hajar Yazdiha via Made By History on January 15, 2024

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh

Radio and the Rise of Conservatism

Right-wing radio stations are tied to an increase in conservatism among listeners.

by Paul Matzko via Cato Institute on January 8, 2024

Kris Kringle with children from the film 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.'

A Classic Christmas Movie Offers a Lesson About Antisemitism

Nazis play a key role as villain in American collective consciousness—but without broad understanding of antisemitism.

by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Made By History on December 21, 2023

A poster of a colonial man ringing a bell in front of Independence Hall with the words "4 Minute Men" at the top

The US Propaganda Machine of World War I

As the United States prepared to enter World War I, the government created the first modern state propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information.

by Livia Gershon, Nick Fischer via JSTOR Daily on November 17, 2023

Traffic Jam

Ben Smith’s book on the history of the viral internet doesn’t truly reckon with the costs of traffic worship.

by Leah Finnegan via The Baffler on May 2, 2023

Panting of a woman lounging with a book, titled “Dolce far niente” (The Sweetness of Doing Nothing), by Auguste Toulmouche, 1877.

We’re Distracted. That’s Nothing New.

Ever since Thoreau headed to Walden, our attention has been wandering.

by Caleb Smith via The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 10, 2023

J. Edgar Hoover and two other men pose with guns.

The Cult of J. Edgar Hoover

A zealot through and through, he ran the FBI like a religious sect.

by Adam Hochschild via The Nation on March 7, 2023

Patrick ‘Ace’ Ntsoelengoe in action for the Toronto Blizzard.

How Apartheid, European Racism and Pelé Helped Cultivate a Culture of Diversity in US Soccer

Major League Soccer – which starts the 2023 season on Feb. 25 – is deemed the most diverse league in the US. Its predecessor, the NASL, led the way.

by John M. Sloop via The Conversation on February 21, 2023

Naomi Oreskes, sitting with her hands resting on her knees

America's Toxic Romance With the Free Market

How market fundamentalists convinced Americans to loathe government.

by Naomi Oreskes, Claudia Dreifus via The Nation on February 17, 2023

Cover of Ms. Magazine titled "Rage + Women = Power"

Ms. Magazine Turns 50

Looking back at half a century of truth-telling and rebelling.

via The Cut on January 3, 2023

Patrick Ewing makes a move against Larry Bird and Mark Acres on the basketball court.

The Myth of the Knicks

In Chris Herring’s recent history of the New York basketball team, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the sports commentariat’s fixation on grit and toughness.

by Zito Madu via The Nation on December 7, 2022

Roi Ottley and other African American panelists on radio quiz program.

How African Americans Entered Mainstream Radio

For nearly 50 years, commercial radio companies only employed white broadcasters to target information and entertainment to mainstream America.

by Bala James Baptiste via Black Perspectives on December 6, 2022

Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole standing alongside an elephant on Capitol Hill, 1995.

Myths of Doom

Can the origins of today’s right be traced to the 1990s?

by John Ganz via The Nation on November 29, 2022

Lord Beaverbrook and Winston Churchill on the HMS Prince of Wales during the Atlantic Conference, Newfoundland, Canada, August 1941.

The Limits of Press Power

To what extent did newspapers influence public opinion in the US and Britain before and during World War II?

by Geoffrey Wheatcroft via New York Review of Books on October 22, 2022

A picture of switchboard operators.

Intimacy at a Distance

Hannah Zeavin’s history of remote and distance psychotherapy asks us whether the medium matters more than the message.

by Danielle Carr via The Nation on June 14, 2022

Phyllis Schlafly and a group of supporters with signs and "Stop ERA" buttons.

The End of the Equal Rights Amendment

As the deadline to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment lapsed in June 1982, the amendment's foes celebrated, while its proponents looked to the future.

by Henry Kokkeler via Boundary Stones on April 20, 2022

Visitors browse newspaper front pages from the day after the 9/11 terror attacks at the Newseum in Washington, D,C., in 2016. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

When History Is Lost in the Ether

Digital archiving is shoddy and incomplete, and it will hamper the ability of future generations to understand the current era.

by Christian Schneider via The Dispatch on April 6, 2022

Art relating to the News Media by Beck & Stone.

News for the Elite

After abandoning its working-class roots, the news business is in a death spiral as ordinary Americans reject it in growing numbers.

by Mark Hemingway via Law & Liberty on February 14, 2022

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