MITWorld Panel on Disinformation

MIT just posted this event from the past spring. Other programs related to media can be found at the site.

Denialism: Media in the Age of Disinformation

April 27, 2010

A few hundred years after the Enlightenment, western civilization is rushing back to the Dark Ages. The causes are debatable, but, argue these science journalists, the public increasingly rejects the findings of science, from climate change to evolution, and is turning away from rationality and reason in general.

Speakers

Michael Specter

Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Chris Mooney

Blogger, Discover Magazine
2009-2010 Knight Journalism Fellow

Shannon Brownlee

Instructor, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
Senior Research Fellow, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation

Shankar Vedantam

National Science Writer, The Washington Post

March CommQuote

A lyric from Mark Knopfler off his latest "album" Get Lucky is our feature for this month's quote. The song expresses a simple longing for life as lived before the car and before television. Both are indirectly impugned by the speaker's nostalgia for other forms of leisure.

Before Gas And TV

Before gas and TV
Before people had cars
We'd sit round the fires
Pass around a guitar
Remembering songs
When my daddy was home
He'd play along
On the spoons and a comb

We'd go with the flow
When the weather was fine
Sometimes we'd go
Collecting scrap iron
Then we'd sit round the fires
Pass a bottle of wine
And the tales of the road
Since time out of mind

If heaven's like this
Well, that's okay with me
Where the living is fine
And living is free
If heaven's like this
Well, then here's where I'll be
On the edge of the field
On the edge of the world
Before gas and TV.

--Mark Knopfler (2009, Get Lucky)