June 9, 2017
Recent Reads is All Comey, All the Time
testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in what will likely go down as one of history’s most notable congressional hearings. We try to be mostly apolitical here at Recent Reads, but we think we can share some great journalism about what, on Twitter, was billed as #ComeyDay.
And we’re really not all Comey, all the time in this edition. We’re also reading about the 1967 war, why dieting isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution and important thoughts about “Wonder Woman.”
With that, here’s Recent Reads.
Day-Drinking to Fox News: Inside the D.C. Bars Showing Comey’s Testimony – Comey’s testimony was the story of the month, maybe even of the year, and it will be a major headline for weeks to come. As PR professionals, we’re constantly challenged to pitch the news as-is while simultaneously thinking two steps ahead about the second- or third-day stories. And while the nature of the publication perhaps allows them to write stories like this one, Rolling Stone hit the nail on the head in terms of finding a unique angle. I might not have been positioning sources to discuss the D.C. bar scene on June 8, but I certainly would have liked to be there. – Agatha Howland
How cable news networks reacted to Comey’s hearing – The video footage of Comey’s testimony was, of course, pretty much the same whichever channel you watched. So … what better way to show the biases of cable news than by matching up the chryons – those words that are on display at the bottom of the screen – throughout the hearing? It’s brilliant in its simplicity, and definitely shows how we have different realities, depending on where we get our information. – Paul Wilson
1967 war: Six days that changed the Middle East – Most of us are fully aware of the perpetual land dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians. But we may not know or fully understand how that regional instability became the norm. Many of the region’s present-day trouble can be traced back to the Six-Day War (June 5-10, 1967), which caused a backlash that has become the crux of animosity between Israel and its neighbors. This BBC piece details the numerous sociopolitical factors that continue to play out in the region today. – Rich Petrilli
‘Wonder Woman’ And Gal Gadot Have The One Thing The DCEU Has Been Missing – I love Paul Tassi’s review of “Wonder Woman” because it’s a great example of a man writing respectfully about feminist issues. He acknowledges in the opening paragraph that he’s going to leave the discussion of the importance of this movie (in the eyes of the feminist movement) to female writers and links to a Daily Beast article. His review respects that the movie is a success because of who the character is, not because Gal Gadot is beautiful or because “a bunch of women supported a woman.” At a time when fake news is everywhere, people just want the truth. As Tassi writes, that’s why people love this movie; the filmmakers let Wonder Woman be Wonder Woman, instead of changing her to be what Hollywood thinks that audiences want. – Tana Watanabe
The Weight Loss Trap: Why Your Diet Isn’t Working – There are an infinite number of articles about losing weight, but health writer Alexandra Sifferlin takes a different approach. She argues that no matter what diet program you commit to, no matter how tenacious you are, you may not receive the results you’re hoping for. Why? Well, Kevin Hall, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), goes into detail about a recent discovery he made: the best diet for you may not be the best diet for your neighbor and, believe it or not, there are people on a diet program that lose 60 pounds and keep it off for years while other people, following the same program religiously, gain 5 pounds. – Jess DuBrock
The nation watched Thursday as former FBI Director James Comey