Media Missing Something?

by

Article in The New Republic bu Michael Tomasky, 4/25/25

Headline:  “Trump Just Did the Most Corrupt Thing Any President Has Ever Done”

Subhead:  “He’s using the White House to get rich from anonymous investors—and it’s hardly even a news story.”

“Imagine that Joe Biden, just as he was assuming office, had started a new company with Hunter Biden and used his main social media account to recruit financial backers, then promised that the most generous among them would earn an invitation to a private dinner with him. . . .”

“Take a minute, close your eyes. Let yourself see Jim Jordan’s face go purple in apoplexy, hear the moral thunder spewing out of Jesse Watters’s mouth, feel the shock (which would be wholly justified) of the New York Times editorial board as it expressed disbelief that the man representing the purported values and standards of the United States of America before the world would begin to think it was remotely OK to do such a thing. The media would be able to speak of nothing else for days. Maybe weeks. . .”

https://newrepublic.com/post/194420/trump-memecoin-dinner-corrupt-president

 

Rt. Wing Media Women

by


Article in The Guardian by Anna Silman, 4/25/25

Headline:  “Now comes the ‘womanosphere’: the anti-feminist media telling women to be thin, fertile and Republican”

Subhead:  “A crop of conservative personalities such as Brett Cooper and Candace Owens, and outlets like Evie, are convincing young women of a gender-essentialist worldview”

“Analyses of the 2024 election widely heralded the ‘manosphere’ – the coalition of bro podcasters and YouTubers popular with male audiences – as key to delivering Donald Trump’s victory. According to an AP poll, 56% of men under age 30 went for Trump compared with 41% four years prior. . .”

“Now, there are the beginnings of an organized effort to create a similar alternative rightwing media ecosystem targeting young female US audiences – one of the few demographics that has, until now, leaned substantially Democratic.

“This new ‘womanosphere’ includes (Brett) Cooper’s channel as well as lifestyle magazines like the Conservateur and Evie, Candace Owens’s Club Candace, Alex Clark’s Maha (‘Make America Healthy Again’) talkshow Culture Apothecary, conservative Christian influencer Allie Beth Stuckey’s Relatable, and swimmer turned anti-transgender activist Riley Gaines’s podcast Gaines For Girls. . . . the female answer to Tate. . .”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/womanosphere-conservative-women

by

Article in Poynter by Angela Fu, 4/24/25

Headline:  “A majority of Americans believe press freedom is important. Far fewer believe the press is actually free.”

Subhead:  “Only 33% of Americans say the media is ‘completely’ free to report the news, according to a new Pew Research Center survey”

“Though two-thirds of Americans believe press freedom is very important, only a third say that the media is actually completely free to report the news, according to a Pew Research Center study released Thursday.

“That gap — where more people say press freedom is important than report actually having it — is found across countries as diverse as Chile and Turkey, the study finds. Pew’s study is based on surveys of more than 50,000 adults across 35 countries and covers perceptions of free speech and internet freedom in addition to press freedom.

“In the U.S., 67% of adults said it is “very” important that the media can report the news without government censorship, while 26% said it is “somewhat” important. While those figures are slightly higher than the median across the 35 countries surveyed, several countries like Sweden and Canada had higher shares of adults who said that press freedom is “very” important. . .”

https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2025/is-the-media-free-press-freedom/

Media Detergent Needed!

by


Article in Raw Story by Andrew Chapman, 4/23/26

Headline:  ” ‘Wow’: Chuck Todd floored as MAGA allies ‘air dirty laundry’ to media”

“President Donald Trump has vehemently denied any plans to get rid of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — but that resolve already appears to be cracking, former NBC anchor Chuck Todd told a CNN panel on Wednesday evening, as the scandals continue to mount and his position becomes less and less tenable. . .”

” ‘Is there ever a more straightforward sign in Trumpworld that you are on your way out the door than the president suddenly starting to ask the people around him about you?’ anchor Kasie Hunt asked Todd.

“Todd agreed. ‘By the way, for some of us in the press who have had an on-again, off-again relationship with the president, I’ve been on the receiving end of that myself,’ said Todd.”

https://www.rawstory.com/chuck-todd-2671833819/

60 Minutes CBS Shame?

by


Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 4/23/25

Headline:  “The Shaming of Shari”

Subhead:  “The public shaming of Shari Redstone has been swift and scathing—but inside CBS News, the fury is even more pronounced, as staffers blame her for undermining the crown jewel of American TV journalism.”

“On Wednesday morning, Shari Redstone found herself at the center of a media firestorm. The unyielding heiress who controls Paramount Global—and, by extension, CBS News – was the target of one of the most brutal headlines in recent memory. The Drudge Report, still an influential force in the world of media, ran a stark image of Redstone above a brutal banner headline: ‘WOMAN WHO DESTROYED CBSNEWS.’ Below it, the accusations piled on: ‘REDSTONE GREED ENDING LEGACY?’  ’60 MINUTES’ SACRIFICED FOR SALE.’ ‘FREE SPEECH BATTLE OVER TRUTH’ ”

“It wasn’t an anomaly. Over the past 24 hours, Redstone has been subjected to a remarkable public shaming. Jake Tapper delivered a stinging on-air report, asserting that in her ‘quest to sell the company,’ it’s clear she will ‘bow to presidential pressure.’. . .”

https://www.status.news/p/shari-redstone-60-minutes-cbs-news

CBS – Hegseth Making It Up

by


Article in Mediate by Micheal Luciano, 4/23/25

Headline:  ” ‘Totally Fake Story’: Pete Hegseth Denies Having Pentagon ‘Makeup Studio’ “

“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth denied a report by CBS News claiming he ordered a room near the Pentagon press briefing room to be equipped with a makeup studio to be used for TV hits.

“The modifications were reportedly set to cost around $40,000, but were scaled back. CBS News reported . . .”

” ‘Totally fake story. No ‘orders’ and no ‘makeup’ — but whatever,’ he tweeted. ‘ We should have installed tampon machines in every men’s bathroom at DoD instead — the leftist “news” media would have loved that.’ ”

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/totally-fake-story-pete-hegseth-denies-having-pentagon-makeup-studio/

– – – – –

Article in Huffpost by David Moye, 4/23/25

Headline:  “Social Media Brutally Mocks Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon Makeup Studio”

Subhead:  ” ‘Nothing screams warrior culture more than a makeup studio,’ Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu cracked.”

“Social media gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a dressing-down on Wednesday after it was revealed he’d ordered that a room next to the Pentagon press briefing room he turned into a makeup studio/

“Retrofitting the room cost several thousand dollars, according to CBS News which noted the expenditure came at a time when Donald Trump’s administration is engaging in massive funding cuts. . .”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peth-hegseths-pentagon-makeup-studio-mocked_n_68095354e4b0337d48c3bbab

 

 

Alternative to Hate-Media

by


Article in The New Republic by Virginaia Hefferman, 4/23/25

Headline:  “Liberal Media in Crisis? Not The MeidasTouch. It’s Bigger than Rogan.”

Subhead:  “For real. The podcast by Ben Meiselas and his brothers regularly outdraws Joe Rogan’s. Their secret weapon? Reason. Imagine!”

“For years, progressives have fantasized finding a Joe Rogan of their own: someone butch and sonically seductive to beguile America’s acne class with sports jabber and pronoun jokes before turning the screws and making them vote his way.

“But Blue Joe Rogan will never materialize. And that’s for the best. Blood-sport propaganda by a UFC hype man doesn’t work in defense of liberal democracy. Liberalism, after all, rejects demagoguery as coercive, infantilizing, and anathema to critical thinking. While Rogan reliably slams the id with porny language, simian posturing, and primal sounds—and of course the Goebbels combo of repetition and cartoonish lies—progressive gab needs something closer to reason.

“When Ben Meiselas, a mild-mannered lawyer who sees himself as Mr. Rogers, entered the podcast-and-video octagon with the MeidasTouch Network (pronounced Midas, like the king), he seemed plenty reasonable. But no one saw a Rogan-slayer in him. Meiselas didn’t get drunk. He didn’t drone on about kettlebells or yuk it up with Alex Jones. Instead, he sat alone in his living room and, in short intervals, registered measured anger at Trump’s malignancy.. . .”

https://newrepublic.com/article/194187/meidastouch-ben-meiselas-liberal-media-bigger-rogan

Media Can Upset Fragile People

by


Article in The Washington Post by Eric Wemple, 3/23/25

Headline:  “The Justice Department’s new argument: Trump is a snowflake”

“Why did Trump boot the Associated Press from the White House press pool? That’s an easy one.”

“President Donald Trump defaulted to his usual spiel when he discussed the expulsion of the Associated Press from the White House press pool. The wire service’s Stylebook declined to adopt Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America.’  ‘It’s called the Gulf of America now; it’s not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer,’ said Trump in a Feb. 18 news conference, a week after the expulsion.

“Piling on, the president also said that the AP has been ‘very, very wrong on the election, on Trump and the treatment of Trump,’ an apparent reference to his defeat in the 2020 election. That, of course, was a lie.

“The truth behind the sidelining of the AP, however, emerged from a hearing last Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In that charged forum, a Justice Department lawyer argued that Trump was a snowflake who needed safe spaces, free from entities like the fearsome AP. . . ”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/23/trump-ap-autonomy-access/

 

NYT – A Dubious Win?

by

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alson, 4/23/25

Headline: “Q&A: Bill Grueskin on the New York Times Beating Sarah Palin (Again)”

Subhead: ” ‘Two things can be true: you can publish something about a public figure that is clearly false, and you can avoid being held financially liable for having done so.’ ”

“. . .the gods of the media beat soon handed down another big story. Compared with the 60 Minutes and USAGM imbroglios, which are relatively recent, this one concerned a much longer-running drama and a central character—Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate—who can perhaps be seen as an ur-Trump. Back in 2017, after a gunman opened fire on a congressional baseball practice, Palin sued the Times for defamation over an editorial that wrongly suggested she had helped incite the shooting of a different member of Congress, Gabby Giffords, six years earlier. (Palin’s PAC had published a map with crosshairs drawn over Giffords’s district. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/qa_grueskin_palin_new_york_times_sullivan.php

Yet More Media Attacks

by

Article in AOL The Morning Dispatch by Charlotte Lawson and Cole Murphy. 4/22/25

Headline:  “Trump Steps Up His Media Attacks”

Subhead: “Trump V. Journalists”

“President Donald Trump isn’t getting along with the news media.

“That isn’t exactly breaking news. He directed no shortage of jabs at mainstream outlets throughout his first term, but—with notable exceptions—his ire toward the media was limited mostly to rhetoric. Trump 2.0 may be different. The president’s attacks on the media have shifted from talk to action, with news organizations facing substantive retaliation for getting sideways with the new administration. And, if the escalation continues, the Trump administration could find itself running afoul of Constitutional protections—if it hasn’t already.”

https://www.aol.com/trump-steps-media-attacks-103601409.html?guccounter=1