Events

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 6/3/25

Headline:  “The Insidious Spread of ‘Foreign Agent’ Laws Continues”

Subhead:  “Hungary and other nations are pushing a Russian-style crackdown on the press.”

“. . .Last month, Fidesz, Orbán’s party, introduced a bill, with the innocuous-sounding title ‘On the Transparency of Public Life,’ that essentially aims to legislate his rant. The bill would allow Hungary’s (decidedly less innocuous-sounding) ‘Sovereignty Protection Office’ to recommend the blacklisting of organizations, including news outlets, that receive funding from abroad and are deemed a threat to sovereignty—an incredibly broad designation that, per Politico, includes activities such as ‘influencing public opinion, promoting democratic debate, or challenging state-defined values like Christian culture and traditional family roles.’ . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/insidious-spread-foreign-agent-laws-continues-hungary-orban-trump-fara.php

Friends of Community Media presented an award to the Mississippi community radio station which was the only radio station in the area that stayed on the air during Hurricane Katrina and provided vital information.

Article in Poynter by Paul Farhi, 6/2/25

Headline: “This radio station was a lifeline during a hurricane. Now it’s fighting to survive.”

Subhead:  “In rural towns and emergency zones, public radio is often the only source of critical information. Without federal funding, they could vanish.”

“As Hurricane Helene ravaged the mountain communities of western North Carolina last fall, Blue Ridge Public Radio remained a beacon in the storm.

“With power knocked out throughout the region, the organization turned to portable generators to keep its two stations on the air. For days during and after the deluge, BPR was the only source of lifesaving news: weather updates, road closures, potable water locations.

“BPR now confronts a different kind of calamity. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/president-trump-public-broadcasting-funding-cuts-effects/

Article in Poynter by Mark Caro, 5/12/25

Headline:   “Tech entrepreneur Jeremy Gulban is betting on small-town newspapers to challenge Big Tech’s media dominance”

Subhead:  “Gulban’s CherryRoad Media is racing to prove that small-town newspapers can survive — while the industry battles Big Tech’s growing control”

“With the 2020 purchase of the Cook County News Herald in Northeast Minnesota, Jeremy Gulban launched the fast-growing CherryRoad Media chain of community newspapers. The company’s portfolio has ballooned to 94 newspapers — all but one print, most weekly — as CEO Gulban tries on the fly to make his business model sustainable for CherryRoad and a greater local news industry working in the shadows of Big Tech. . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/cherryroad-media-jeremy-gulban-local-newspapers-mail-print/

Article in The Guardian by Norman Soloman, 4/30/25

Headline:  “The US left Vietnam 50 years ago today. The media hasn’t learned its lesson”

Subhead:  “The myth that news coverage turned Americans against the war persists. In fact, it was largely complicit in perpetuating the conflict”

“The last helicopter liftoff from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon on 30 April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam war. Fifty years later, mythology about US media coverage of the war is locked into the faulty premise that news outlets were pivotal in causing Americans to turn against it. Some say that mainstream media undermined a noble war effort, while others say that coverage alerted the public to realities of an unjust war. Both assertions are wrong.

“Scapegoating the media fits neatly into ‘stab in the back’ theories of Americans who can’t stand the fact that their country lost a war to impoverished Vietnamese fighters. And praising the media as catalysts for the nation’s roused conscience gives undue credit while fostering illusions about mainstream news coverage of America’s wars . . .”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/01/us-vietnam-war-media

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Peter Schwartzsteibm 4/22/25

Headline: “How Climate Change Foils Climate Reporting”

Subhead: “Floods are hard to cover when the road is washed out.”

“. . .Climate change is replete with brutal ironies. To those must be added the ways in which climate is increasingly sabotaging journalists’ attempts to cover it. Places are being rendered inaccessible by extreme weather events. Gear is failing or breaking or simply proving unfit for purpose in tougher conditions. In this sometimes literal morass of mud and mind-boggling temperatures, this all-important story is getting harder to tell. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/climate-change-reporting-challenges.php

Article in The Nation by Victor Pickard, 4/15/25

Headline:  “We Must Save Public Media to Change It”

Subhead:  “We need public media more than ever—it’s too precious to let Trump defund it. But to live up to its democratic promise, we must support public media to serve our needs.”

“he US public media system is under a multi-pronged attack from a hostile government. It’s under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for purportedly airing commercials, and by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently led a congressional hearing—dubbed the “Anti-American Airwaves”—to target what she claims is public media’s liberal bias. . .”

“Government attacks on public media are as old as Big Bird. Ever since Richard Nixon feuded with public broadcasting during its earliest days, every Republican administration, except Gerald Ford’s, has tried to cut public media funding. . .”

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/public-broadcasting-media-democracy/