Censorship

Selective Firing?

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Article in Free Press by Staff, 9/16/25

Headline: “The Media 2070 Project Denounces the Washington Post’s Firing of Columnist Karen Attiah”

“On Monday, Karen Attiah, a Washington Post opinion columnist, wrote on her Substack that the paper had fired her over her social-media posts on gun violence and race following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week in Utah.

“Attiah wrote she was fired for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”

“Attiah noted she was “the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions,” adding that her firing “is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/media-2070-project-denounces-washington-posts-firing-columnist-karen-attiah

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Article in The New Republic by Perry Bacon, 9/15/25

Headline:  “Black Voices Are Vital to Democracy. The Media Must Stop Firing Them.”

Subhead:   “The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah is the latest prominent Black journalist to lose her job. The trend is a sign of retrenchment in both fighting racism and saving democracy.”

“. . .And while the media changes are more subtle, the racial retrenchment is obvious. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court and lower-level courts and now the Trump administration have essentially outlawed any program that seeks to address racial disparities.

“Put these retrenchments together, and you have a very hostile environment for Black journalists. The political right is trying to basically outlaw any discussion of racial inequality—and news organizations are trying to appease the political right. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://newrepublic.com/article/200462/karen-attiah-black-voices-firing

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Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 9/15/25

Headline:  “Fired by The Post”

Subhead:  “The Washington Post said it fired Karen Attiah over comments she made about white men in the wake of Charle Kirk’s death, Status has learned”

Read the article at:

https://www.status.news/p/karen-attiah-fired-washington-post-charlie-kirk

Berg, Kirk & Violence

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 9/15/25

Headline:  “Alan Berg and Charlie Kirk; the Old Media and the New”

Subhead:  “The long string of anti-media violence in America.”

“. . .After sickening attacks like the assassination of Kirk, it can be tempting for media observers to declare, as the Times editorial board promptly did, that ‘such violence is antithetical to America,’ or that this is not who we are. As a philosophical aspiration, this is noble, but as a matter of fact, it is patently incorrect—America has a long history of violent attacks on politicians, commentators, and journalists, some of which jump immediately to mind at times like this, others of which have been lost to the mists of history. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/charlie-kirk-alan-berg-new-old-media-political-violence.php

Silencing Reporters Silences Us

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Article in The Guardian by Edward Helmore, 9/14/25

Headline:  “How the US right wing is taking over news media and choking press freedom”

Subhead:  “Takeover of broadcast companies by Donald Trump’s allies is harbinger of media capitulation to authoritarian leanings”

“The US right has appeared to increase its influence on mainstream media in America in recent weeks, especially in television news which has been a major target of the Donald Trump administration. . .”

“The moves deepened concerns among many US media critics and observers of authoritarianism that press freedoms in the US were undergoing capitulation to the Trump administration’s rightwing authoritarian leanings. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/14/rightwing-news-media-journalism

Media Gulf-Confusion

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Article in NOTUS by Dave Levinthal, 9/11/25

Headline:  “Behind the Apparent Media Blackout Around Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ Name Change”

Subhead: “New internal emails obtained by NOTUS detail confusion at the U.S. Geological Survey and the State Department.”

“Three days after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, a State Department official sent a seemingly exasperated email to Michael Tischler, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geospatial Program.

“The problem: How to manage press inquiries ‘left and right’ about Trump’s plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.notus.org/donald-trump/gulf-of-america-mexico-name-change-foia-documents

Network on the Edge?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Adan Piorem 9/11/25

Headline:  “A Tipping Point at CBS News”

Subhead:  “Who would have thought this is the piece that would get me fired?” Bill Owens, the former executive producer of 60 Minutes, said in the screening room. For the past year, CBS journalists have been up against extraordinary pressure.”

“. . .The second Trump administration would deliver an unprecedented level of deference from media leadership to a hostile president. Journalists at CBS News would come under increasing scrutiny. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/feature/cbs-news-redstone-ellison-60-minutes-trump-israel-gaza-tipping-point.php

 

Pants on Fire Not News?

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Article in The Nation by Chris Lehmann, 9/9/25

Headline:  “Why the Media Allows MAGA to Cover Up Their Lies With More Lies”

Subhead:  “The MAGA movement can “walk back” outrageous statements, and the press hardly asks a follow-up.”

“For all the justified focus on the second Trump administration’s authoritarian agenda, and the suite of debased governing protocols that go with it, the basic messaging apparatus behind it has received scant attention. As it happens, this past weekend supplied a pair of textbook illustrations showing how the MAGA power elite throttle the mediasphere to serve their purposes. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/walk-back-media-maga-trump-lies/

Disappearing Media Freedom

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Article in Al Jazeera by Mohamad Elmasry, 9/8/25

Headline:  “The capitulation of the US media is not an aberration”

Subhead:  “The Trump administration is bringing to the fore weaknesses that have long plagued US democracy.”

“American democracy is arguably in more peril than at any moment in recent history. Not only are United States President Donald Trump and his Republican allies seeking to guarantee that Americans never again participate in a truly free and fair election, but public officials and Trump-aligned figures in the media industry are also manipulating the information environment at an unprecedented scale. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/9/8/the-capitulation-of-the-us-media-is-not-an-aberration

Reporters – Forced to Flee

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Paulina Milewska & Ksenia Mironova, 9/3/25

Headline:  “How to Survive the (Media) Apocalypse”

Subhead:  “Lessons from journalists who have lived through all this”

“The ongoing deterioration of press freedom and independence in the United States is deeply concerning to many journalists who don’t know where their country is heading. That chilling uncertainty is one we have lived through ourselves. We are journalists from Russia and Poland. Ksenia has been forced to leave her home in order to continue working, and has watched countless friends and colleagues do the same. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/russia-poland-media-exile-strategies.php

Attacking Reporters in Gaza

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Article in The New York Times by the Editorial Board, 8/31/25

Headline:  “Israel’s Gaza Media Ban Is Indefensible”

“All wars are dangerous to cover, but Gaza holds a place of its own among modern conflicts for the peril faced by journalists. Some 200 journalists have been among the estimated 63,000 people killed since the Gaza war began — an overwhelming majority killed by the Israeli military. Those deaths have helped make the past two years the deadliest period for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organization, started keeping records in 1992. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/opinion/israel-gaza-media-journalists-ban.html

FCC Steamrolling Civil Rights?

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2 Articles in Fair by Jamine Jackson, 8/26/25

Headline:  “The FCC Is Trying to Roll Back Protections Won Over the Past 60 Years:”

Subhead: “CounterSpin interview with Joseph Torres on FCC and structural racism”

“Janine Jackson: CounterSpin listeners don’t need to be reminded of how central journalism is to everything we care about. Authoritarian leaders want to silence even half-awake news media, because information is so important to people’s understanding of the world, and how we might change it.

“It’s also important to see, as on many issues, that Donald Trump didn’t invent bad, racist, anti-democracy media, or the legal landscape that allows it to thrive. . .”

Read the full articles at:

https://fair.org/home/the-fcc-is-trying-to-roll-back-protections-won-over-the-past-60-years/

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8/22/25 Headline:  “Joseph Torres on the FCC and Structural Racism”

https://fair.org/home/joseph-torres-on-the-fcc-and-structural-racism/