Good Morning,
Every state keeps its own record, and every record flatters whoever is writing. Aeon’s account of how imperial China’s dynasties wrote their official histories, since the first century BCE, reliably self-serving results — reads today less like ancient history than briefing material (Aeon).
In Hungary, the new president suspended the public broadcasters Viktor Orbán spent years converting into a propaganda arm. The main TV channel went dark behind a message: “Public media should not lie. We are sorry for doing it for so long” (The Guardian). In the US, the pressure runs the other way — ABC is telling the FCC that The View‘s standing as a news show is settled law, defending the definition of news against its own regulator (The New York Times).
The Onion has finally reopened Infowars, with a declared strategy of baiting Alex Jones into wasting his own airtime (Slate). But the day’s most constructive line belongs to Patrice Lawrence, the UK’s new children’s laureate: “We say stories work — let’s show how they work” (The Guardian).
Meanwhile, aboard a cruise ship carrying 20 celebrity impersonators, Sinatra (A) shook hands with Sinatra (B) (N+1) and…
All of our stories below.
