Article in The New Republic by Parker Molloy, 3/26/25

Headline:  “Renaming Reality: Trump’s Gulf Power Play and Media’s Timid Response”

Subhead:  “News outlets revealed their editorial backbones when covering NASA astronauts’ splashdown.”

“When NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams splashed down last week after more than nine months in space, they landed in more than just water—they landed in a live demonstration of how quickly media organizations will bend to political pressure.

“The body of water where their capsule touched down has been called the Gulf of Mexico for over 400 years. But since Trump signed an executive order renaming it the ‘Gulf of America’ earlier this year, news outlets have suddenly found themselves navigating turbulent editorial waters, revealing quite a bit about their institutional backbone in the process.

“Oliver Darcy at (the always excellent) Status captured this phenomenon perfectly in his analysis over the weekend. ‘When news anchors tiptoe around the name Gulf of Mexico,’ he wrote, ‘it’s not just semantics—it’s a glimpse at how the press starts to flinch under political pressure.’ Darcy pointed out how this kind of linguistic control is a classic authoritarian tactic: ‘In China, Taiwan doesn’t exist—at least not as a country. On official maps, it’s a province. The government enforces strict language about Taiwan’s status, shaping how its people—and the rest of the world—talk about it.’ ”

https://newrepublic.com/article/193157/trump-gulf-america-media-timid-response