Editorial Content

Former Chairs of FCC Speak

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Article in Status News by Oliver Darcy, 2/19/25

Headline:  “Carr Jacked”

Subhead:  “Former FCC chairs, Republican and Democrat alike, are sounding the alarm over Brendan Carr’s crusade against media companies. In a statement to Status, Carr responded with a GIF—and a tirade.”

“Over the weekend, Tom Wheeler, the former Federal Communications Commission chair under Barack Obama, traveled to his local theater to finally see ‘Wicked.’ The Academy Award-nominated film, a Comcast production, features Marissa Bode, an actor who uses a wheelchair, as Nessarose—a casting choice that underscores the company’s commitment to authentic representation.

Afterward, Wheeler praised NBCUniversal’s decision, telling me, ‘Someone is making an inclusive effort, and that is important.’ But then, his tone shifted. He was reluctant to criticize a successor, he admitted, but he felt compelled to speak out after Brendan Carr, the current Donald Trump-appointed FCC commissioner, announced an investigation into Comcast over its D.E.I. initiatives—the very framework that may have helped bring Bode’s casting to life.

” ‘The fact that they’re saying that because you have a corporate philosophy of inclusion, I will launch an investigation that attacks the fact that your website states this is a “core value of our business”—maybe that was my breaking point,’ Wheeler told me.

Wheeler is part of a growing group of former FCC chairs who have decided that they have a responsibility to speak out…

https://www.status.news/p/brendan-carr-fcc-chairs-criticism

 

 

L.A. Times Anxiety

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Article in Status News by Oliver Darcy, 2/11/25

Headline:  “Soon-Shiong’s La-La Land”

Subhead:  “Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong is building out a new media venture that has had conversations about partnering with right-wing extremist Candace Owens, Status has learned.”

“Inside the Los Angeles Times, anxiety is running high as demoralized staffers worry about buyouts and the looming threat of layoffs — all while cringing as red-pilled owner Patrick Soon-Shiong embodies the personality of a MAGA clown on social media. But while Soon-Shiong’s attention in the immediate wake of the election was focused on remaking the Times, lately it has been somewhere else entirely. While forcing cost cuts at the newspaper he once promised to breathe new life into, the pharmaceutical billionaire, I’m told, has been directing his focus — and his resources — toward a new media venture.

“Indeed, I’m told that Soon-Shiong has been working over the last few weeks in concert with Republican consultant Eric Beach on building out a new entity that will prominently feature digital-first personalities, many of whom will appeal to the MAGA base”

https://www.status.news/p/patrick-soon-shiong-lat-next

 

Anti-Musk Ads Not Allowed?

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Article in The Hill by Alexaner Bolton, 2/17/25

Headline:  “Washington Post backs out of ‘Fire Elon Musk’ ad order”

“The Washington Post this week backed out of a ‘Fire Elon Musk’ advertising order that was to run as a wrap on some of its Tuesday editions, according to the advocacy group Common Cause.

“The group said it signed a $115,000 agreement with the Post to run the ad that would have covered the front and back page of the Tuesday paper, as well as a full-page ad with the same theme inside the paper. It said it planned to purchase the ad in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.”

https://thehill.com/media/5148497-washington-post-backs-out-of-fire-elon-musk-ad-order/

Reporting Exposes Tesla State Dept. Proposal?

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Artocle in MSNBC by Erik De La Garza, 2/12/25

Headline:  ” ‘Paperweights’: Rachel Maddow unleashes mockery on $400M award for ‘armored Teslas’ “

“Reports that the State Department appears poised to award a $400 million contract to none other than President Donald Trump’s top campaign donor Elon Musk was met with unabashed mockery by an exasperated Rachel Maddow.

“The MSNBC host during her show’s opening monologue Wednesday delivered a scornful rebuke of Musk’s Tesla Motors as she launched into a deep criticism of the development involving spending taxpayer funds to buy armored Teslas – but not without having a little fun at the tech billionaire’s expense.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/paperweights-rachel-maddow-unleashes-mockery-on-400m-award-for-armored-teslas/ar-AA1yWtVc

Monsters Against Media

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 2/4/25

Headline: “USAID and the Media in a ‘Time of Monsters’ ”

Sunhead: “What the aid funding freeze means for independent journalism around the world.”

“. . . In the recent past, USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries—and yet, RSF notes, the full impact of the freeze is hard to measure, since many recipients are “hesitant to draw attention for fear of risking long-term funding or coming under political attacks.”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/usaid-and-the-media-in-a-time-of-monsters.php

Noted Journalist Flees NYT

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Article in The Contrarian by Paul Krugman, 1/29/25

Headeline: “Departing the New York Times”

Subhea:  “I left to stay true to my byline”

“As many people reading this know, last month I retired from my position as an opinion writer at the New York Times—a job I had done for 25 years. Despite the encomiums issued by the Times, it was not a happy departure. If you check out my Substack, you will see that I have by no means run out of energy or topics to write about. But from my perspective, the nature of my relationship with the Times had degenerated to a point where I couldn’t stay.”

“. . . (I) believe that the story of why I left says something important about the current state of legacy journalism.”

“. . .I feel sorry about abandoning loyal readers who still rely on legacy media and who may not follow me to Substack. But my situation had become intolerable, and I haven’t felt a moment’s regret over the new direction and recovering my freedom.”

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/departing-the-new-york-times

 

Media Overload

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 1/27/25

Headline:  “Too Much News, Redux”

Subhead:  “Trump floods the zone in his first week back in power.”

“Exhausted yet?” Last Thursday, The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser posed that question at the beginning of a column about the frantic pace of news generated in President Trump’s first half-week or so back in power, before reeling off a long list of major things he had done already, from pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord through the sweeping pardons for January 6 insurrectionists to his ‘pissing match’ with an Episcopalian bishop. Trump ‘loves to drown us in outrage,’ Glasser wrote. ‘The overwhelming volume is the point—too many simultaneous scandals and the system is so overloaded that it breaks down. It can’t focus.     It can’t fight back . . .’ ”

“. . . In the summer of 2020, toward the end of Trump’s last term in office, I wrote a column arguing that there was “too much news”—a joking refrain among exhausted journalists that was also literally true, in ways that limited the news media’s ability to cover major stories as extensively as they individually merited; such stories, I wrote, weren’t just coinciding randomly, but existed in ‘a messy ecosystem of cause, effect, suggestion, escalation, and acceleration,’ with one big story triggering another and so on. I wrote at the time that the pace of developments made the news cycle of 2018—which had felt ‘impossibly frenetic’ at the time—feel ‘quaint’ in hindsight . . .”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/too-much-news-redux.php

Some Media Destroying Democracy?

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Article in Common Dreams by Thom Hartman, 1/15/25

Headlline: “Right-Wing Control of Media Has Crushed the Promise of US Democracy”

Subhead:  “If progressives want to slow this speeding train heading toward single-party rule of America, they must get with the program and begin to support existing and build out new and powerful policy think tanks and media operations.”

“Republicans are using their massive structural media and social media advantage to try to destroy Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, and the California Democratic Party.

It follows an old script, that’s recently been played out in Russia and Hungary, among other nations: Want to seize control of a nation and turn it into a neofascist state with the consent of the people? Just take control of the channels of public information and news, and then turn lies about your opponents and their supporters into a perceived reality. ”

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/right-wing-control-of-media

Cartoon Kowtowing

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 10/10/25

Headline:  “Moderating Content”

Subhead:  “What the genuflection of billionaires means for the press.”

“Before Christmas, Ann Telnaes, an editorial cartoonist at the Washington Post, submitted a drawing that depicted four billionaire media and tech executives and one mouse genuflecting before Donald Trump, shown standing on a garlanded dais. The cartoon, Telnaes wrote last weekend, was inspired by recent reports of “men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-Lago” to visit Trump in the wake of his election win in November.

“. . .Meta is not the news media, but its latest policy change will clearly have ramifications for our industry. (For starters, many newsroom fact-checking initiatives have received financial support from Meta, the withdrawal of which is unlikely to be good for their free speech. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/bezos_zuckerberg_altman_soon-shiong_billionaires_media_telnaes.php

Snake Oil in the Media

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Article in Raw Story by Carl Gibson, 1/4/25

Headline: ” ‘Failing to tell the central story’: Reporter reveals what media misses in Trump coverage”

“n a recent post to his blog, veteran journalist Dan Froomkin argued that mainstream media outlets’ coverage of President-elect Donald Trump has been dismal in its grasp of who Trump is on a fundamental level. He then relayed advice from another experienced reporter on how journalists can more accurately cover the incoming administration over the next four years.

“On his website Press Watch, Froomkin argued that Trump should be viewed not merely as a politician, but as a ‘proverbial snake-oil salesman.” He opined that media outlets that failed to ‘situate Trump’s words and actions in the context of an ongoing con” were engaging in ‘deception’ by ‘failing to tell the central story.’ Froomkin cited Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, who referred to the 45th and 47th president of the United States as ‘the greatest con artist in the history of the world.’ ”

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-media-coverage/