by Wendy Davis | MediaPost
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Berkeley Media Studies Group joined the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), Color of Change, and UnidosUS in urging the federal government to establish standards to protect the privacy of food stamp recipients who purchase groceries online. According to a new report released the same day by CDD, without proper digital safeguards, grocery and e-commerce companies harvest customer data, using it to target low-income buyers with ads for unhealthy products. The report and letter to the USDA also received news coverage from Progressive Grocer, Fern’s Ag Insider, and Ag Web.
by Carter Sherman | VICE News
Wednesday, July 08, 2020
In an interview with VICE News, BMSG Head of Research Pamela Mejia discusses how films like “365 Days” feed a culture that romanticizes abusive relationships. “When you see this kind of behavior and these kinds of [actions] normalized — not only normalized but held up as the romantic ideal,” she said, “that can be very, very harmful and potentially really affect what you then are willing to accept or able to see as normal or good or healthy or loving behavior.”
by Sandee LaMotte | CNN
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Black teens saw 2.3 times as many sugary drink ads as white teens in 2018, according to new research from the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. “If the companies were serious about protecting Black lives — instead of profiting off of them — they could revamp their products and stop intensively marketing sugary drinks. It’s as simple as that,” BMSG Director Lori Dorfman told CNN.
Reuters
Thursday, May 14, 2020
BMSG is among a group of privacy and children’s advocacy organizations that filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the popular app TikTok violated a consent decree and a law protecting children’s privacy online. The complaint alleges that TikTok failed to delete personal information about users age 12 and younger, as it had promised to do as part of the consent agreement. TikTok also failed to post on its home page an easy-to-find link to its privacy policy.
Common Dreams
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Berkeley Media Studies Group is among 33 consumer protection and advocacy organizations that have called on governments and the education sector to protect children from commercial exploitation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
by Lori Dorfman and David Tuller | San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
BMSG Director Lori Dorfman and David Tuller, senior fellow in public health and journalism at U.C. Berkeley, use the opinion pages to argue that the COVID-19 pandemic requires politics to be set aside in the interest of the public’s health. When experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci correct medical misinformation but avoid commenting on the president’s political pronouncements, they lend implicit credibility to the Trump brand, Dorfman and Tuller explain. “Dedicated scientists should be able to perform their life-saving duties without having to navigate the political minefields of a presidential election campaign. The long-term consequences of placing public health officials in such an untenable position are likely to be devastating.”
by Amanda Terkel | HuffPost
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
In this piece for HuffPost, BMSG Director Lori Dorfman weighs in on what’s at stake for health when the president continually casts doubt on the credibility of the media: “It is horrifying now that we are facing a highly contagious disease that is frightening and confusing. To watch Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and Dr. Birx have to come to podium to correct — again and again — the misinformation from the mouth of a president is awful. It’s painful to watch because the consequences are huge.”
by Amanda Darrach | Columbia Journalism Review
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
As coverage of COVID-19 increases, news outlets in the United States may be driving racism against Asian people across the globe, notes BMSG’s Pamela Mejia. Articles often use exoticizing language and clichés when describing Asian culture, and images featuring Asians in face masks add to the stigma.
by Abené Clayton | The Guardian
Friday, December 13, 2019
Researchers analyzed four commonly cited public databases and found that the reported number of mass shootings in 2017 ranged from 11 to 346. The lack of a standardized definition for a mass shooting has implications for gun violence prevention policy, and some types of violence, such as domestic and community violence, get overlooked in news coverage. “The news has a big role to play in what we are and aren’t talking and thinking about,” said Pamela Mejia, the head researcher for BMSG. “We can’t solve a problem that we don’t know is happening.”
by John Washington | The Intercept
Monday, December 09, 2019
The additional family separations bring the total number of children impacted to at least 5,446, yet media attention to the issue has waned, according to an analysis by Pamela Mejia, head of research at BMSG. And although people widely view the children’s treatment as unnecessarily cruel, the separations continued, leading to a sense of futility and media burnout.
