Media

New York Times Exposes Total Information Awareness Surveillance Program, Sparking Public Outcry

| Importance: 9/10

The New York Times publishes an investigative piece by John Markoff exposing the full scope of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, a $240 million initiative that aims to create unprecedented mass surveillance capabilities by mining personal data from financial …

New York Times John Markoff DARPA John Poindexter Information Awareness Office +2 more surveillance privacy media investigative-journalism tia +3 more
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Televised Iran-Contra Congressional Hearings Begin, Riveting Nation

| Importance: 9/10

Joint congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra affair begin, launching seven weeks of televised testimony that becomes the most-watched series of congressional hearings since the Senate Watergate Committee hearings in 1973. The House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with …

Oliver North John Poindexter George Shultz Caspar Weinberger iran-contra congressional-oversight reagan-administration accountability media
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Joseph Welch Confronts McCarthy with Have You No Sense of Decency in Army Hearings

| Importance: 8/10

On the 30th day of the Army-McCarthy hearings, Boston lawyer Joseph Welch—hired by the Army to make its case—delivered one of the most famous rebukes in American political history. The hearings, which ran from April to June 1954, investigated conflicting accusations between the U.S. Army and Senator …

Joseph Welch Joseph McCarthy Roy Cohn G. David Schine red-scare political-persecution institutional-resistance media
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Ida Tarbell Begins "The History of the Standard Oil Company" in McClure's Magazine

| Importance: 9/10

Ida Tarbell began publishing her groundbreaking 19-part investigative series “The History of the Standard Oil Company” in McClure’s Magazine in November 1902, running through October 1904. Her meticulous research exposed the predatory business practices, illegal rebate schemes, and …

Ida Tarbell McClure's Magazine Standard Oil Company John D. Rockefeller investigative-journalism muckraking corporate-power antitrust media +1 more
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