enarcmot

Media? So-What?

by


Article in Mediaite by Zachary Leeman,, 4/4/25

Headline:  ” ‘He Doesn’t Give a F**k’: White House Official Tells Washington Post Trump Has Reached Peak ‘Not Giving a F**k’ “

“President Donald Trump has reached the “peak of not giving a fuck,” one White House official told The Washington Post for a lengthy report on what went on behind the scenes leading up to the president’s massive tariff announcement this week.

“On Wednesday — or ‘Liberation Day,’ as Trump calls it — the president announced massive tariffs on imports from a number of countries. He’s maintained that the massive shift in economic strategy will result in better trade deals and a boost in manufacturing for the United States.

“The stock market has meanwhile taken major hits since Trump’s announcement as the tariffs have led to uncertainty among companies and investors. . .”

“The Post story — by Natalie Allison, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski, and Michael Birnbaum — cites other White House officials and paints an administration that is very different from the one Trump oversaw in his first term. Despite strategizing on tariff policy up to just three hours before the president’s official announcement in the Rose Garden, there was reportedly very little disagreement with Trump making the final decisions himself. . .”

https://www.mediaite.com/news/he-doesnt-give-a-fk-white-house-official-tells-washington-post-trump-has-reached-peak-not-giving-a-fk/

Not in the News? – it Didn’t Happen

by


Article in The New Republic by Parker Molloy 4/7/25

Headline:  “Print Media to Mass Protests: ‘Please Turn to Page 18’ ”

Subhead:  “Here’s how newspapers across America minimized one of the largest demonstrations since Trump’s return to power.”

“On Saturday, April 5, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets across the nation to protest the harmful policies of Donald Trump’s second term. The ‘Hands Off!’ demonstrations represented what organizers called ‘the largest single day of protest since Trump entered office’ with more than 1,100 rallies scheduled in all 50 states. From Chicago to Washington, D.C.; Asheville to Boston; Milwaukee to Louisville—people showed up in droves.

“CNN reported that organizers estimated “millions” turned out coast to coast for these protests that united civil rights organizations, veterans, women’s rights groups, labor unions, and LGBTQ advocates. Even with conservative estimates, we’re talking about one of the largest mobilizations in recent American history.

“But if you picked up a major print newspaper the next day? You’d barely know it happened.

“The New York Times relegated the protests to an image below the fold with a caption instructing readers to turn to page 18 for more information.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/193683/print-media-downplay-mass-protests

– – – – –

Article in Fair by Miranda C. Spencer, 4/4/25

Headline: “The Resistance Will Not Be Televised ”

“. . . Their common thread is opposition to Trump’s fascistic ideology and rapid rash of likely unconstitutional executive orders, such as freezing federal budget outlays approved by Congress, the mass firing of government workers and the dismantling of institutions by the ‘Department’ of Government Efficiency by unelected ‘adviser’ Elon Musk.

But if you relied on articles and broadcasts from the legacy national news media during early 2025, you wouldn’t know the extent of grassroots action prompted by this discontent. A FAIR examination of five major outlets found that coverage of anti-Trump/pro-democracy protests . . . (January 22 to February 26) was minimal, and downplayed the significance of this opposition, especially around the inauguration. . . Mostly tepid coverage

“Broadcast coverage was abysmal. None of the four network shows in our study ran any reports focused on any of the three protest events. ABC World News Tonight mentioned none of the events, and GMA referred to only one of them in passing. In their coverage of the January 18 protests, CBS Evening News and Mornings gave more coverage to speculation about violent protest than they did to actual (nonviolent) protest. . .”

https://fair.org/home/the-resistance-will-not-be-televised/

 

Bezos Loses Another Post Star

by

Wikipedia photo, Grace Skidmore

Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 4/4/25

Headline:  “Pulitzer-winning columnist leaving Washington Post“

“Longtime Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is leaving the newspaper, he announced this week.

Robinson informed his Post colleagues of his decision Thursday, he wrote on the social platform X.  “I’m retiring from my longtime journalistic home but not from journalism, and I’ll keep you posted as I decide what my next chapter will be,” he said.

Robinson has been writing for the Post’s opinion section since 2005 and in recent years has been a regular on MSNBC and other cable news shows.

He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his columns on the 2008 presidential race.

Robinson is the latest in a slew of Post opinion writers to leave the news organization as it goes through major changes to its editorial strategy and business under billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5232097-eugene-robinson-washington-post/

Tariffs in the Media

by

Article in The New Republic by Greg Sargent. 4/4/25

Headline:  ” ‘Horrifying’: Trump’s Weird, Confused Rant to Media as Markets Tanked”

Subhead:  “As Trump’s shockingly destructive global tariffs cause the markets to crater and he rambles bizarrely about it to reporters, congressional scholar Norm Ornstein walks through how this madness can be stopped.”

“After President Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from all over the globe, prompting the markets to implode, he took a question about it on Thursday. He ranted and rambled delusionally about how everything is just great. He bizarrely likened the country to a patient that had just undergone advanced surgery without grasping why this metaphor is the opposite of reassuring. . .”

https://newrepublic.com/article/193604/horrifying-trump-weird-confused-rant-media-markets-tanked

– – – – –

Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 4/4/25

Headline:  “Jim Cramer: Trump tariff numbers ‘do not make any sense’  “

Subhead:  “CNBC host Jim Cramer tore into President Trump over the sweeping new tariffs his administration announced this week on nearly all foreign trading partners.”

“ ‘The numbers do not make any sense,’ Cramer said Thursday on CNN.  He claimed the president’s economic advisers and aides on trade ‘really screwed up’ and constructed the tariffs ‘in an ill-advised way.’

“ ‘And I was very let down as someone who really, truly believes that free trade is awful for the American working person,’ Cramer continued in the comments, first highlighted by Mediaite. ‘This is what they came up with? Jeez, come on. Have some gumption. Have some math.’ . . .”

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5232027-jim-cramer-cnbc-donald-trump-tariff-numbers/

– – – – –

Article in The Washington Post by Jeremy Barr, 4/4/25

Headline:  “Some corners of conservative media aren’t thrilled with Trump’s tariffs”

Subhead:  “The Wall Street Journal editorial board, the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro and some voices on Fox News have expressed concern about higher prices for Americans. . .”

“President Donald Trump’s global tariff plan, which has unsettled financial markets around the world since it was announced Wednesday, has so far received the backing of many of his most reliable supporters in conservative media. ‘The world’s free ride is now over,’ Fox News host Sean Hannity said in his monologue that night, and borrowed the president’s branding by calling the tariffs a ‘liberation day shake-up’ on Thursday. . .”

“Still, several prominent conservatives in media notably came out against the tariffs, citing the potential for higher prices for the American people and hits to businesses.

“Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the Daily Wire, called Trump’s tariffs ‘probably unconstitutional” and also illogical. ‘The president’s vision of international trade is, I’m sorry to say, mistaken,’ he said on his Thursday streaming show. ‘This is a massive tax increase on American consumers. That’s what it is.’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/04/04/fox-news-tariffs-ben-shapiro-conservative-media-trump/

– – – – –

Article in Media Matters by Gideon Taaffe & Noah Dowe, 4/4/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media tell Americans to embrace the tariff pain, wait for a ‘golden age’ “

“Right-wing media are predicting a ‘golden age’ as President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ hits some of the United States’ closest trading partners with sweeping tariffs.

“Economists are warning about recession, inflation, and job loss as a result of Trump’s tariffs, but right-wing media are largely ignoring these predictions as they endorse the White House’s economic agenda, downplaying the negative stock market and telling their audiences to anticipate a return of American manufacturing.

“While some right-wing personalities have voiced concern over the tariffs’ potential harms, much of the commentary has held that the U.S. must embrace ‘short-term’ pain in order to get long-term benefits, that tariffs will bolster the U.S. economy and raise revenue, or that the tariffs are just a ‘negotiation weapon.’ ”

https://www.mediamatters.org/tariffs-trade/right-wing-media-tell-americans-embrace-tariff-pain-wait-golden-age

Press Freedom Essential!

by


Article in Poynter by Ren LaForme, 4/2/25

Headline:  “Max Frankel on how news became the oxygen of our liberty”

Subhead:  “In a foreword written after 9/11, the late New York Times editor captured journalism’s essential role — and warned what happens when we forget it”

“. . .only honest and reliable news media could instruct the world in its vulnerability, summon Americans to heroic acts of rescue, and ignite the global search for meaning and response. Only trusted news teams could discern the nation’s anxiety, spread words of hope and therapy, and help to move us from numbing fear toward recovery.

Here, then, lies above all the ultimate demonstration of the danger that Americans invited when they lost their interest in the world beyond the self and in serious news coverage of those other realms. Another generation has been awakened, summoned to recognize that dependable news occupies a precious but vulnerable place in our society. . .”

“News is not neutral. Like literature, the most important news dwells on stories of conflict, on the rivalries and casualties of life. Yet while conflict is universal, so is the human desire to avoid and reduce it. And so news also serves the armies of reform and implicitly holds out hope and a faith in progress. . .”

Since a free and open society is, by definition, a constantly self-correcting organism, it is constantly nourished by news that exposes flaws and failures and so stimulates debate about how to overcome them. News is the enemy of certainty, and therefore of tyranny.

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/max-frankel-september-11-2001/

Is Fox News in Pain?

by


Article in Media Matters by Staff, 4/3/25

Headline:  “Fox Business host confused why media are covering the economic pain of Trump’s tariffs on Americans”

“Charles Payne: ‘This is mind boggling to me that the media is focused on pain, pain, pain’ ”

“STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): ‘First thing they talked about Charles, the number one issue and that is tariffs. And one of the things that Lawrence was asking about was the pain on the average American and J.D. Vance said it can’t be fixed overnight. Ultimately costs will probably go up, there will be some pain. But the big question is, do people get the idea that this is for greater good? . . .’ ”

” ‘This is what’s really amazing to me, and unfortunately I hear it on our network and a lot of networks, that somehow we all want a good GDP, we all want a good economy, but does it have to come at the expense? Is it patriotic to always stay in debt, is it patriotic to spend my entire paycheck so that the economy is good? Is it patriotic so that my kids can’t afford to go to college, I don’t have a retirement, I don’t have a decent home, is that patriotic? Is our patriotism tied to Wall Street or should it be tied to our own personal ability to achieve the American dream? We need to rethink all of this.’ ”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-business-host-confused-why-media-are-covering-economic-pain-trumps-tariffs

News is What They Make It

by

Article in The Beast by William Vaillancourt

Headline:  “Jake Tapper on WH Signal Response: ‘Nothing Matters Anymore’ “

Subhead:  “Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to wrap up the scandal, insisting that ‘this case has been closed.’  CNN’s Jake had more to say”

“Jake Tapper threw up his hands Monday in response to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declaring resolved the issue of top administration officials inadvertently revealing planned strikes in the Middle East to a journalist through a Signal group chat.

“Nothing matters anymore,” the CNN anchor said in a discussion with The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote last Monday how he had been invited into the Signal chat earlier this month by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

“Leavitt told reporters earlier in the day that “this case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned”—despite no firings and no inspectors general from any government department launching an investigation into the shocking security lapse.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnns-jake-tapper-reacts-to-white-house-signal-response-nothing-matters-anymore/

Fox – “Nothing to see here”

by

Article in Media Matters bu Matt Gertz, 4/1/25

Hedline:   “How Fox is handling reports that the Trump administration may have erroneously sent people to a foreign torture prison”

“Fox News propagandists are employing a variety of defenses in response to revelations that the Trump administration has sent people in error to a notorious foreign prison, from alleging that migrants don’t deserve due process to attacking other news outlets for reporting on the ‘one-offs’ to arguing that such mistakes are acceptable because ‘a lot of people in this country’ are ‘arrested for things that they didn’t do.’ ”

https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/how-fox-handling-reports-trump-administration-may-have-erroneously-sent-people-foreign

How to Save The News

by


A bronze sidewalk plaque on Library Way quotes Thomas Jefferson and features New York newspapers, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021 in New York. Jefferson is quoted, “Where the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe.” (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Article in Poynter by Amaris Castillo, 4/1/25

Headline:  “Concerned about press freedom? Here are some things you can do about it.”

Subhead:  “Democracy needs a free press, and a free press needs support — here’s how everyday people can help defend it.”

“Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment, which famously declares: ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’

“Nearly three-quarters U.S. adults say press freedom is extremely or very important to the well-being of society, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey. But there’s been grave concern about the state of press freedom for some time. A separate Pew survey from 2023 found that 57% of U.S. journalists reported feeling extremely or very concerned about potential restrictions on press freedoms.

“ ‘We are truly standing at a crossroads in which one of the five freedoms of the First Amendment is under unprecedented duress,’ said Ken Paulson, who directs the Free Speech Center at the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University. ‘We’ve seen, for decades, attacks by politicians on news media of all sorts. And it’s part and parcel of the relationship between a free press and those in power, but what we’re seeing now is much more aggressive and involves the use of government power directly against journalism.’ . . .”

https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2025/how-protect-press-freedom-support-journalism-first-amendment/

Bots of Media Fun

by


Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 4/1/125

Headline:  “Bloomberg and the Bots”

Subhead:  “Bloomberg insists its journalists have “full control” over its error-prone A.I. bot—but staffers tell Status they can’t stop it from publishing errors.”

“A few days ago, The New York Times published a remarkable story: Bloomberg News, one of the most powerful forces in business journalism, had introduced factual errors into at least three dozen article pages using its new “takeaways” carousel. The recently introduced artificial intelligence feature, which has been prominently affixed to the top of most stories, was designed to spotlight key points in its reporting.

“In a statement to The Times, a Bloomberg spokesperson moved to dismiss concerns about the A.I. carousel, telling reporter Katie Robertson that it is “transparent when stories are updated or corrected.” But it was what the spokesperson said next that caught the attention of reporters inside the Bloomberg newsroom.

“Journalists have full control over whether a summary appears—both before and after publication—and can remove any that don’t meet our standards,” the Bloomberg spokesperson asserted to The Times. . .”

https://www.status.news/p/bloomberg-news-ai-summaries