Censorship

Making TV Propaganda Arm?

by


Article in NPR’s ‘On The Media’ by Staff, 7/10/26

Headline: “The FCC’s Pressure Campaign to Reshape Broadcast TV”

“ABC has enlisted the help of its audience to defend The View and Jimmy Kimmel against attacks from the Federal Communications Commission. On this week’s On the Media, hear about the MAGA movement trying to shift television to the right. Plus, the legal theory that the FCC is using to put pressure on the networks. . . Host Brooke Gladstone speaks with  Jim Rutenberg, writer-at-large for the New York Times. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538775/on-the-media

 

Radioactive Magazine for 7/14/26

by

Lenny Bruce

Interview by Spencer Graves 7/14/26 on KKFI-FM

Headline:  George Carlin’s and Lenny Bruce’s Legacy on Censorship

“Tuesday’s episode of Radioactive Magazine features an interview with Robert Corn-Revere, a leading First Amendment attorney and Chief Counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). . .”

“. . .a discussion of the US Supreme Court decision in FCC v. Pacifica (1978), which saw WBAI in NYC fined for airing George Carlin’s famous ‘Seven Dirty Words’ in 1973. Roughly 9 years earlier, comedian Lenny Bruce was found guilty of obscenity in New York for a comedy routine in an adults-only night club. Corn-Revere helped secure a posthumous pardon for Bruce from New York Governor Pataki, and more recently Corn-Revere named his two dogs ‘Lenny’ and ‘Bruce’.

Listen to the episode at:

Radioactive Magazine airs Tuesdays at 6:PM CST on KKFI 90.1 FM, streaming live at http://kkfi.org

Some Media – Climate? No-Problem

by


Article in Media Matters by Evlondo Cooper, 6/29/26

Headline:   “Right-wing media could use a quieter 2026 hurricane forecast to downplay climate risk before storms form”

Subhead:  “El Niño may reduce Atlantic storm formation, but fewer expected storms does not mean lower public risk”

“Right-wing media have repeatedly cited the impacts of El Niño, short-term weather variability, and quieter stretches of hurricane season to argue that storm risks from climate change are exaggerated, and now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ‘below-normal’ 2026 Atlantic hurricane forecast gives that playbook a new opening. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/right-wing-media-could-use-quieter-2026-hurricane-forecast-downplay-climate-risk

Transporting Zines = Jail?

by

Article in The Intercept by Seth Stern and Jeremy Busby, 6/26/26

Headline:  “30-Year Sentence for Transporting Zines Is a Five-Alarm Fire for Free Speech”

Subhead: “The harsh sentence for a defendant who wasn’t even at the Prairieland protest is likely only the start of the Trump administration’s efforts to outlaw free speech.”

“The Trump administration attacking the right to publish or report information is a given at this point. The president has threatened journalists for everything from questioning the wisdom of his failed war with Iran to touching the peeled lining of his renovated reflecting pool.

“Tantrums like those may now feel routine, but this week marked a new front in Trump’s war on information: Daniel ‘Des’ Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for transporting a box of zines he didn’t even write. He’s one of eight defendants sentenced on Tuesday to a combined 450 years — the first prison sentences against so-called “antifa” handed down under the framework of NSPM-7, President Donald Trump’s sweeping ‘counterterrorism’ memorandum to clamp down on dissent from the left. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://theintercept.com/2026/06/26/daniel-sanchez-estrada-zines-prairieland-free-speech/

Killing the News?

by

Article in Democracy Now by Amy Goodman, 6/23/26

Headline:  “Remembering Ahmed Wishah, the Latest Palestinian Journalist Killed by Israel in Gaza”

“Israel is continuing to attack Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire. Israeli strikes killed Ahmed Wishah, a cameraman with Al Jazeera, and at least six people, including two children, on Saturday. Wishah’s brother Mohammed, who also worked for Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli strike this April. Israel has now killed over 260 journalists in Gaza, including at least 12 working for Al Jazeera, since October 2023. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/6/23/israel_gaza_journalists

No Questions From Her!

by

Article in Mediaite by Michael Luciano, 6/3/26

Headline:  “Kaitlan Collins Responds To Trump’s Oval Office Outburst at Her, Points Out She ‘Had Yet To Ask the President a Question’ “

“. . .the president seemed clearly irritated when he was asked earlier today why his administration says it is not moving forward with that $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, as they have called it,’ she said. ‘And just to note, as you’re about to listen to this, this first exchange actually occurred before I had yet to ask the president a question’. . . .”

” ‘CNN’s a very corrupt organization with a corrupt reporter standing right there,’ Trump said. ‘Never smiles. A young, beautiful woman. Never smiles. I never see a smile on her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/kaitlan-collins-responds-to-trumps-oval-office-outburst-at-her-points-out-she-had-yet-to-ask-the-president-a-question/

Reporting Torture Gets You Fired?

by


Article in   by Michael M. Grynbaym, 5/27/26

Headline: “60 Minutes’ Journalist Who Accused CBS of Political Meddling Loses Her Deal”

Subhead: “Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment on a brutal Salvadoran prison was pulled abruptly in December, said that CBS News and its top editor, Bari Weiss, had let her contract expire.”

“CBS News declined to renew its contract with the “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, six months after her segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly by the news division’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/business/media/cbs-sharyn-alfonsi-bari-weiss.html

FCC Wants Labels for LGBTQIA+?

by

Article in Free Press by Staff 5/26/26

Headline:  “Free Press Objects to Chairman Carr’s ‘Morally Repugnant’ Proposal on TV Warning Labels for Transgender and Nonbinary Content”

“. . .On Friday, Free Press filed comments condemning the FCC’s inquiry on warning labels for what the agency vaguely describes as ‘transgender and gender non-binary programming.’ Earlier this year, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr initiated the proceeding to inquire whether television programs featuring LGBTQIA+ themes should carry specific labels or modified ratings. More than 50 organizations and industry associations, including Free Press, have filed comments to oppose Carr’s proposal. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/free-press-objects-chairman-carrs-repugnant-proposal-tv-warning-labels-transgender-nonbinary-content

Attacking Media as the Enemy?

by

Article in Common Dreams by Scott Griffen, 5/21/26

Headline:  “When Trump Targets the Media, the World’s Autocrats Are Taking Notes”

Subhead: “Trump’s words and actions against the news media at home are inspiring copycat behavior by authoritarians and dictators around the world, fueling a growing global crisis of press freedom.“

“. . .Trump first tweeted the now-ubiquitous phrase ‘fake news’ and infamously labelled the news media the ‘enemies of the American people,’ such insults just don’t land like they used to.

“Yet Trump’s words do in fact matter. While many of Trump’s rhetorical attacks against the press during his first term were dismissed as bluster from a president known for his flair for the dramatic, they laid the groundwork for the broad attack on the media that we’re seeing under Trump 2.0. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-targets-media

Techno-Kings Controlling the Media?

by

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Emily Bell & Heather Chaplin, 5/4/26

Headline:  “Journalism in the Age of Techno-Kings”

Subhead:  “How Elon Musk is colonizing the future.”

“Before Elon Musk, there was Henry Ford: an attention-seeking car manufacturer, newspaper owner, and media celebrity who pushed reactionary views on the public and transformed society around his business interests. . .”

“In a new book, Muskism, Ben Tarnoff, a technology writer, and Quinn Slobodian, a historian at Boston University, analyze Musk in similar terms, as a maverick businessman who stands for a new type of society and a new social contract. They find that “Muskism” provides a far more dystopian package than Fordism’s offering. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/kicker/journalism-in-the-age-of-techno-kings-muskism-elon-ben-tarnoff-quinn-slobodian.php