Community Media

Citizens Fight Media Supression

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Article in AP by Jocelyn Noveck, 10/26/26

Headline:  “6 citizens sue Trump, saying media ban deprives them of news as audience stakeholders”

“In the increasingly bitter legal standoff between President Donald Trump and media outlets whose reporting he dislikes, a new and crucial third party has emerged: citizens who watch and read the news and need it to do their jobs.

“A lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of six such citizens — essentially representing the wider public audience — argues that it’s not only the rights of news organizations that are violated when Trump bans them from White House premises. Even more fundamentally, the lawsuit argues, such bans violate the public’s right to independent reporting about its president and government. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-media-ban-citizens-lawsuit-f5a70baaa97dba1bdd4cda365b5f635d

One State Advances Local Journalism

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Article in Free Press by Staff 10/21/26

Headline:  “Pennsylvania House Advances Vital Legislative Package to Support Local Journalism and Civic Information”

Subhead:  “The two bills are part of a growing national push for state-level action to address America’s local-journalism crisis”

“HARRISBURG — On Wednesday, Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives passed two important journalism and civic-information bills (HB 2047 and HB 2048). The legislation is designed to support independent public-interest news that meets the most pressing information needs of communities across the Commonwealth. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/pennsylvania-house-advances-vital-legislative-package-support-local-journalism-civic-information

Donors Saving Public Media

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Article in Poynter by Paul Farhi, 10/20/26

Headline:  “Public broadcasting found a lifeline after defunding. How long will it last?”

Subhead:  “A surge of ‘rage giving’ and philanthropy helped stave off widespread closures, but many public media organizations remain vulnerable”

“. . .President Donald Trump was urging Congress to wipe out almost all federal funding of public broadcasting — some $1.1 billion in subsidies. As many Republicans had before him, Trump demonized PBS and NPR as biased against conservatives. But the ‘rescission,’ or formal clawing back of funds appropriated by a previous Congress, would be a historic reversal: the first time Washington had withdrawn the financial support. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2026/public-broadcasting-federal-funding-cuts-donations/

Public Radio Breaks With Universities

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Luch Schillerm 10/13/26

Headline: “All They’re Going to Hear Is Capitulation”

Subhead: “The Trump administration’s ideological attacks on public media and education converge at university-based radio stations. Some are breaking free.”

“. . .Sarah Morris calls it a “conscious uncoupling.” She is the general manager of KCUR, the major NPR station in Kansas City; her station is licensed to the University of Missouri–Kansas City, and has been since 1957. The two entities—the University of Missouri and KCUR—decided in 2025 to separate in a style Morris characterized as ‘believed to be mutually beneficial, friendly and well down the path toward independence’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/feature/all-theyre-going-to-hear-is-capitulation-trump-attacks-public-media-education-university-radio-stations-kut-npr-texas.php

Independent News Needs Support

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Article in Poynter by Kristen Hare, 10/1/26

Headline:  “What does it take to make an independent local newsroom work? More than good journalism.”

Subhead:  “A new study of 112 independent publishers shows just how much local news entrepreneurs have to juggle”

“. . .A new study from Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship digs into the hard realities facing the local news entrepreneurs working to fill the huge and growing gaps left by shrinking local newspapers.

“A Hard Reality: Independent Local Journalism in the United States,” by Merrill Brown and Jacob Spudich, looks at survey responses from 112 publishers in 37 states and Washington, D.C . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2026/independent-local-newsrooms-sustainability-business-models/

Streaming Killing Public Media?

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Article in The Guardian by Mark Sweney, 9/19/26

Headline:  “‘A losing battle’: will UK public service broadcasters survive amid US onslaught?”

Subhead:  “Jobs and programme budgets in firing line at BBC, Channel 4 and ITV as they are outgunned by YouTube and Netflix“

“‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the BBC or Channel 4 disappeared,’ says one of the thousands of TV staff at risk of redundancy, as British broadcasters face what has rapidly become a fight for survival against US digital rivals.

“’My generation grew up with Netflix and YouTube … Honestly, I feel like it is a losing battle.’

“Over the course of the summer the crisis facing the UK’s biggest public service broadcasters (PSBs) – the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV – has reached fever pitch amid announcements of deep job cuts and talk of business models unfit to face up to the deep-pocketed streamers. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/sep/19/uk-public-service-broadcasters-us-bbc-channel-4-itv-netflix-disney-amazon

Local News, New Flight Path

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Article in Poynter 9/16/26,by Stephanie Edgerly and Tim Franklin

Headline:  “Local news audiences aren’t disappearing, but their habits are changing fast”

Subhead:  “A three-year Medill survey found declining TV and radio use, growing reliance on smartphones and creators, and deep skepticism about AI in news”

“In 2024, the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University conducted its first in-depth survey of Chicago-area news consumers to understand how smartphones and social media were remaking the relationship between audiences and local news. . .”

“This article was originally published by Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative. . .”

Read the full  article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2026/medill-survey-local-news-consumption-2026/

Legacy Media Not Adapting?

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Article in Poynter by Tom Rosenstiel, 8/26/26

Headline:  “Opinion | To survive, journalism must become indispensable”

Subhead:  “News organizations need to understand what audiences actually need — and build their journalism around those needs”

“One of the most important and misunderstood reasons for the crisis in journalism has little to do with revenue or technology. The problem is the journalism itself.

“. . .what made newspapers, radio newscasts and TV news programs indispensable to people in the 20th century was not the journalism but what surrounded it. . .

“Today, people find nearly all of that elsewhere. . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2026/journalism-must-become-indispensable/

FCM Event Interview on 8/26/26

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Friends of Community Media conducted a workshop in August called, “How to expose media lies and have fun doing it.”

You can hear an interview about the event conducted by Spencer Graves on  of Terresa Wilke and Ann Suellentrop exploring the workshop.

You can hear the interview on KHOI community radio in Ames, Iowa at  http://khoifm.org  by scrolling down to Wednesday August 26th – 5 am.

A Case for Print Newspapers

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Article in Common Dreams by Russell Mokhiber, 6/10/26

Headline:  “Why Print: On Newspapers, Democracy, and the Things a Screen Cannot Replace”

Subhead:  “We strive for a world in which we are informed with the paper in our hands—a world in which we run with that paper to our elected representatives and demand, ‘What the hell are you doing?'”

“Politics has become strangely empty. We sign petitions with a click, make five-dollar donations with a tap, and mistake engagement for participation.

“Capitol Hill Citizen believes that democracy requires something more substantial than that. It requires attention, presence, and involvement. It requires something tangible.

“That is why we print a newspaper.

“In the absence of tangibility, we are each reduced to data, data that corporations use to manipulate us, predict us, and sell us back to ourselves. In a world where corporations are treated as people under the law, Capitol Hill Citizen calls upon its readers to do something that a corporation cannot do: hold a newspaper. Better yet, do democracy. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/newspapers-better-than-print