“So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.” (Bible Gateway 1 Samuel 17) The consummate story of David & Goliath has often been used for exploitation and during the recent months, we have seen a new iteration of this myth with Retail & Wall Street. Through the fog of ignorance, misinformation, and conspiracy, I would like, to the best of my ability, to try explain how most claims about the situation, at least during the hype period of January, have been probably fully or partially false while giving a take on the whole situation. But first, let’s set the stage: GameStop is a North American brick and mortar video game retailer that has been struggling for the past few years, having not turned an annual profit since 2018. [1]  The price of the stock has been on the decline, having gone from 33.8 USD to less than 6...

  As the new decade approaches, it’s interesting to compare where society was technology-wise in the 2000s to where it is now. Social media, television, newspapers: sources of information are more diverse than ever nowadays. Moreover, the increase in deplorable events has hooked more and more people onto news networks. Climate change and recently elected politicians’ statements are a few examples of these news that attract public attention. Although a more aware society is always a good thing, it becomes problematic when the credibility of the sources people use to get up to date is questionable. Unfortunately, separating true from false is often easier said than done. This struggle is due to the increasingly politically and money-driven motivations of the “Breaking news!” media. First off, algorithms have become man’s best friend when it comes to sorting out what websites consider true. Be it statistics or vocabulary, every detail is considered when seeking the truth. This te...

“You are fake news!” “ The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People.” “All those people in the back are fake news.” Since the 2016 elections and with the growing rise of populism around the world, we have heard these sentence time and time again. While the first two of the above quotes can be attributed to the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the third is from a “news anchor”, Sean Hannity. What strikes me is there seems to be a consensus among conservative intellectuals around the fact that the news media is biased and not reporting the news objectively. While this question can be debated over issues such as coverage time and content disparities between different news stations, these allegations against the free press are truly damning and dangerous for the very core of our democracy. As this is a never-ending debate, we must wonder ourselves: Who is the media? What is the free press and who can we consider a journalist? Is opinion journalism a true form of jo...