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Helpful Media

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Article in The Guardian by Margaret Sullivan, 6/28/25

Headline: “Struggling in politics? Consider a war – the media will help”

Subhead:  “Trump’s Iran strike knocked everything else out of the news, including the Minnesota shootings – and it was little surprise”

” ‘You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war,’ was the storied response of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to Frederic Remington after the illustrator was sent to Cuba to cover an insurrection and cabled back to the boss that there was little going on.

Much has changed since that famous (if true) exchange of the late 19th century, in the heyday of sensationalism known as yellow journalism.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is that there’s nothing like military conflict to capture the attention of the public, with plenty of help from the media. And the media – whether a tabloid newspaper or a cable news network – benefits, too. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/28/trump-iran-war-media-support

Ask a Question – Get Yelled-At

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“The List” photo

Update:

Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 6/27/25

Headline:  “Opinion | Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth targeted a Fox reporter. The journalism community had her back”

Subhead:  “In defending Jennifer Griffin, journalists signal that truth-telling still matters — no matter the network.”

“The Trump administration continues its signature bashing of the media. This time, it was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insulting Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin. . .”

“What was noticeable, however, was just how many journalists came to Griffin’s defense, including those from rival news outlets.

Say what you will about Fox News and how many of the network’s hosts fawn over Trump and conservatives. Griffin is a top-notch, plugged-in and unbiased reporter.

During a press conference with Hegseth on Thursday, Griffin posed a completely legitimate question. . .”

“She suggested that satellite imagery showed there might have been movement from the facility leading up the attack.

“Hegseth snapped, ‘Of course we’re watching it. Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says.’

“Griffin wasn’t having it. She pushed back . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/pete-hegseth-attacks-fox-reporter-journalists-respond/

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Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 6/26/25

Headline:  “Hegseth slams Fox reporter at press conference: ‘You’ve been about the worst’ ”

Subhead:  “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked Jennifer Griffin, his former colleague at Fox News and a longtime member of the Pentagon press corps, amid a broader push to discredit media outlets reporting on intelligence laying out the extent of damages done by U.S. strikes to Iranian nuclear sites.”

“ ‘Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow mountain?’ Griffin asked Hegseth during a contentious press conference early Thursday morning. . .”

“ ‘Of course we’re watching it,’ Hegseth said before attacking the reporter. ‘Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally.’  ”

Read the full article at:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5370774-hegseth-briefing-jennifer-griffin-fox/

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Article in Huffpost by Ron Dicker, 6/26/25

Headline:  “Pete Hegseth Calls Former Fox News Colleague ‘The Worst’ In Tense Iran Presser”

Subhead:  “The defense secretary zeroed in on Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin as he continued to rail against the lack of media fawning over the Iran strikes”

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called former Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin ‘the worst’ as he faced more questions about the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on Thursday.

“The Pentagon press conference turned downright hostile as Hegseth, who once occupied the curvy couch of ‘Fox & Friends’ before he got his Cabinet gig, slammed Griffin, the network’s chief national security correspondent. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pete-hegseth-jennifer-griffin-the-worst_n_685d4e2ae4b0f78c57383fb2

 

Leave the Reporting to . . .?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Julie Gerstein and Margaret Sullivan, 6/26/25

Headline:  “Can AI Tools Meet Journalistic Standards?

Subhead:  “So far, the results are spotty.”

“Tech companies promise that AI tools can do more with less—so perhaps they can help news outlets survive declining subscription sales and evaporating advertising revenue. Certainly, AI is being used effectively by some journalists to crunch numbers at lightning speed and make sense of vast databases. . .”

But more than two years after the public release of large language models (LLMs), the promise that the media industry might benefit from AI seems unlikely to bear out, or at least not fully. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/can-ai-tools-meet-journalistic-standards.php

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Article in Poynter by Jennifer Orsi, 6/26/25

Headline:  “A lot has changed since we created AI ethics guidelines for newsrooms. Here’s what you need to know now”

Subhead:  “We’ve updated Poynter’s ‘starter kit’ for newsrooms to build AI policies,
including sections for visual journalists and product teams”

“More than a year ago, the Poynter Institute published a ‘starter kit’ for newsrooms to create their own ethics policies for using artificial intelligence in their journalism. AI use in newsrooms has grown swiftly since then — and gotten more complex — and the team behind the starter kit has just published a new update, adding more information for visual journalism and for those developing products in newsrooms. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/a-lot-has-changed-since-we-created-ai-ethics-guidelines-for-newsrooms-heres-what-you-need-to-know-now/

TV Network Validates Climate Change

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Article in The Nation by Mark Hertsgaard, 6/26/25

Headline:  “CBS News Leans Into the Climate Connection”

Subhead:  “Since Trump’s election, the network has produced more than 60 stories on the climate crisis.”

For years, most TV newscasts have neglected to make the climate connection with the kind of extreme heat blasting much of North America this week. In the summer of 2024, for example, when record high temperatures brutalized outdoor workers, withered crops, and worsened hurricanes, only 12 percent of US national TV news segments mentioned climate change, though its role in driving such extreme heat has long been scientifically indisputable.

“This week, CBS News decisively broke that pattern. David Schechter, the network’s national environment correspondent, aired two pieces that left no doubt that the ghastly heat afflicting tens of millions of Americans is climate change in action. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/cbs-news-climate-journalism/

NYT Not Caving?

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Article in Mediaite by Alex Griffing, 6/26/25

Headline: “Trump Threatens to Sue The NY Times and CNN Over ‘Unpatriotic’ Reporting”

Subhead:  “No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.”

“The New York Times struck a defiant tone in a Thursday letter in response to a personal lawyer for President Donald Trump demanding the paper ‘retract and apologize’ or be sued over a report on the state of Iranian nuclear sites following Trump’s bombings.

“The Times reported on the letter sent by Alejandro Brito, which threatened to sue the paper and CNN for publishing reports on a leaked Pentagon assessment that said Trump’s bombings only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months. . .”

Read the full story at:

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-threatens-to-sue-the-ny-times-and-cnn-over-unpatriotic-reporting-on-u-s-military-intel/

Impact of no VOA on N. Korea

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Joel Simon, 6/26/25

Headline:  “A Secret Program Allowed VOA to Broadcast Television into North Korea. Now It’s Gone.”

Subhead:  “How the Trump administration undermined its own strategic position.”

“The mission of Voice of America, to “tell America’s story to the world,” is hard to fulfill when you’re broadcasting into the void of North Korea. For decades, VOA’s Korean service struggled to meet its mandate . . .”

“Then, in January of 2023, after a decade of difficult negotiations, VOA reached an agreement with the South Korean government to use state-controlled broadcast towers along the border to send a TV signal deep into the North. . . .”

“But the demise of VOA’s Korean service—along with the USAGM-funded Radio Free Asia, whose programming also targeted North Koreans—means that information-starved North Koreans now have less access to independent news about what is happening in their country and around the world. . .’

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/news/trump-lake-secret-program-voice-of-america-north-korea-tv-broadcast-gone.php

Meltdown on the Media

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Article in Daily Beast by Sarah Ewall-Wice, 6/25/25

Headline:  “Trump, 79, Melts Down in Incoherent Rant About ‘Hero Pilots’ “

Subhead:  “The president attacked the media for reporting on the initial intelligence assessment on Iran.”

“President Donald Trump accused the media of demeaning the military after the initial U.S. intelligence report on Iran leaked.

“The president did not deny the existence of the preliminary assessment or its content, which suggested the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities resulted in limited damage, but he insisted it was wrong.

“He also claimed to have spoken to one of the pilots, who told him it was a ‘perfect’ bomb drop.
Trump first harangued reporters with claims that they attacked the brave men and women who carried out what was an operationally successful mission on Saturday night to drop the bombs and exit Iran without being fired on.

“ ‘They were maligned and treated very bad, demeaned by fake news CNN,‘ Trump claimed on Wednesday.  The media did report on the U.S. intel assessment, but it did not demean pilots who carried out the mission. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-79-melts-down-in-incoherent-rant-about-hero-pilots/

Publish a Thousand Points of View?

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Article in The New York Times by Benjamin Mullin, 6/25/25

Headline:  “The Washington Post Will Ask Some Sources to Annotate Its Stories”

Subhead:  “The program, called From the Source, will start with articles from the publication’s climate team. It could provide readers with more viewpoints but would also require moderation and vetting.”

“The Washington Post, facing serious financial shortfalls, has spent the past year working on new ways to draw more readers to its site, and encourage those who come to spend more time there.

“In November, executives rolled out ‘Ask The Post A.I.,’ an artificial intelligence tool that answers readers’ questions using published works from The Post. The publication has also been experimenting with lower-priced subscriptions, called flexible access, for readers who want to sample its journalism.

“On Wednesday, The Post’s top editor said in a memo that the publication would begin piloting another attempt to keep readers engaged: inviting some of the people quoted in its stories to annotate articles they appeared in. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/business/washington-post-annotations-comments.html

Opposing Defunding Public Media

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Public media is not state-controlled media

Article in Free Press by Staff, 6/25/25

Headline: “Republican and Democratic Senators Denounce Trump’s Move to Silence Public-Broadcasting Stations Essential to Many Rural States”

Subhead:  “A Senate Appropriations Committee hearing reveals growing concerns over a Trump scheme to end federal funding for popular NPR and PBS programming.”

“WASHINGTON — During a Wednesday hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, both Republican and Democratic senators expressed deep reservations about President Donald Trump’s plans to claw back more than a billion dollars in already-approved federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Many GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), Sen. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), said the cuts would harm programming that is important to them and their constituents . . . McConnell said the president’s entire rescission process was ‘unnecessarily chaotic’ and ‘counter-productive.’ . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/republican-and-democratic-senators-denounce-trumps-move-rescind-public-media-funding

Special Media Strategy

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Article in The New Republic, 6/25/25

Headline:  “Nancy Mace Is the Future of the Republican Party”

Subhead:  “The South Carolina representative isn’t just a bigot and a laughingstock. She’s pioneering a media strategy that her GOP colleagues will follow.”

“. . .If there is a through line connecting the incongruous halves of Mace’s political career, it is an all-consuming desire for attention . . . Mace eagerly played the right notes for reporters in search of the GOP’s next generation. . .”

“Outlets like Washingtonian and Slate claim that some congressional offices, like Mace’s, ‘have become PR firms for attention-hungry members who see their job … as building a personal brand.’  Like Trump, Mace is fashioning an identity built on short-term populism. Meanwhile, staffers spoke with Washingtonian about Mace’s mistreatment and the fact she used her office as a means to get on TV. . .”

Read the full article at:

zhttps://newrepublic.com/article/196207/nancy-mace-future-republican-party