Events

Current Activites of FCM and in the past

Paranoid About Media?

by


Article in VOX by Rebecca Jenninga, 1/24/25

Headline:  “It’s not conspiratorial to be worried about social media’s rightward swing”

Subhead:  “Meta denies any funny business on Instagram in the aftermath of Trump’s inauguration. Should we believe them?”

“Many Instagram users this week had their scrolling interrupted by the bearded visage of our newly elected Vice President JD Vance. Suddenly it seemed that on the week of their inauguration, everybody on the app was following or being suggested to follow the official accounts of President Donald Trump and Vance (@POTUS and @VP, respectively).

“Chaos ensued. In group chats, on Instagram Stories, on X, and Bluesky, people frantically wondered what was up. Some, like pop stars Gracie Abrams and Demi Lovato, said that when they tried to unfollow the VP and POTUS accounts, the app wouldn’t let them until they attempted multiple times.

Meta, meanwhile, has been busy assuring users that nothing new or weird is going on here. The accounts for the POTUS and VP, including their followers, were automatically handed over to the new administration as is customary during a presidential transition, while the accounts for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris previously under those usernames would be duplicated in an archive account. They’ve said it ‘may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through’ but did not provide details when asked by the New York Times why that might be. Hashtags like #democrat were hidden, Meta said, due to ‘an error’ that affected many hashtags, not just left-leaning ones (those hashtags are now visible).”

https://www.vox.com/culture/396686/facebook-instagram-tiktok-conservative-trump

Saturday Media Event

by

For Immediate Release                                                                                                                                                                                   Contact:  Spencer Graves  (408) 655-4567

PROTECTING OUR FREE-SPEECH RIGHTS

 Kansas City, 1/24/25 –  A townhall event to support defend free speech will be held at Simpson House, 4509 Walnut, KC MO, 6-8 pm (Central time), on Sat., Jan. 25.

The event is a response to the recent pronouncements of the Trump Administration concerning the media, censorship, and free speech.  It is both in-person and nationally available on a Zoom link from PeaceWorks at http://pwkc.org/dfs1.

The Saturday program features speakers which include: Professor Gerald Home, pre-eminent historian and host of Freedom Now! on KPFK FM; Elisa Mejia of Insurgencia Femenina; and the chair of the African People’s Socialist Party/Uhuru, Omali Yeshitela.

Cosponsors of this national and local gathering include Friends of Community Media, PeaceWorks KC, Pacifica Fightback, and the African People’s Socialist Party/Uhuru. A lead organizer of the gathering, Spencer Graves, is president of Friends of Community Media & secretary of PeaceWorks KC.

Friends of Community Media is a Kansas City group which promotes non-commercial, community-based media of all types; to educate citizens on the nature of the media; and to encourage all media to be responsive to the public in coverage.

-30-

Townhall on The Media Saturday

by

Join us Saturday, 1/25


The event is at Simpson House, 4509 Walnut, KC MO and on-line over Zoom

Stop the Non-Profit Killer Bill & Protect Non-Commercial Community Media!

January 25, 2025, 4-6 PM Pacific / 6-8 Central / 7-9 Eastern

Co-sponsored by Friends of Community Media, Pacifica Fightback, PeaceWorks KC

Register now in person, or on Zoom at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/VE-Hxs0kRw6qZrmBMs3TuA

After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with information on joining the meeting.

ACCESSIBILITY: A-I captioning in English or A-I translation of your choice is available.

Lies Win Over Actual Facts

by

Article in the Washington Post by Dan Diamond, 1/13/25

Headline:  ” ‘I can’t go toe to toe with social media.’ Top U.S. health official reflects, regrets.”

Subhead:  “Xavier Becerra, who has led the Department of Health and Human Services, says federal agencies are outmatched in a world of “instantaneous information and disinformation.”

“. . .Sitting in his office at HHS headquarters, America’s top health official identified a culprit: a media climate that he says drowns out reliable information. False claims about vaccines run rampant online; government health experts at news conferences barely make a dent compared with influencers who have huge followings.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/01/12/xavier-becerra-hhs-secretary/

 

Tracking the Right-Wing Press

by

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Howard Polskin, 1/9/25

Headline:  “Will Progressive and Mainstream Audiences Keep Switching off the News?”

Subhead:  “Post-election, my newsletter saw a big dip. It is not alone.”

“For the past seven years, I’ve been publishing TheRighting, a free newsletter for mainstreamers and progressives that informs them about thinking from the right. A daily collection of headlines from right-wing sources forms the beating heart of my enterprise. My modest subscription list has grown over the years from a handful of friends and family in year one to thousands of faithful readers scattered around the country. The growth trajectory has almost always pointed north.

“Readers subscribe because they want to know what the right is saying by scanning the seventeen headlines I aggregate every morning. For them, it’s like a polar-bear swim in the chilly waters of right-wing media. A quick dip—two minutes to scan the headlines and absorb a sentence or two, and then it’s back to the warm welcome of MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or wherever they get the news that affirms their political beliefs.”

https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/progressive-mainstream-righting-news-deserters-avoidance-trump-bump.php

 

Freedom of Press or Freedom to Surveil?

by

Article in TechXplore by Jared Wadley, 1/7/25

Headline:  “Q&A: TikTok’s case could set a precedent for social media app bans”

“The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this week about a pending ban on social media app TikTok, an outcome of a law signed by President Biden last April that would take effect Jan. 19.

“Oliver Haimson, assistant professor of information at the University of Michigan, said the stakes are high not only for China-based owner ByteDance to sell the app—which the company says violates First Amendment rights—but also for the reported 170 million TikTok users in the United States. The federal government has said the app threatens national security.”

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-01-qa-tiktok-case-social-media.html

Social Media Facts Aren’t Real

by


Article in The Guardian by Blake Montgomery, 1/7/25

Headline:  “Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program?”

Subhead:  “The social media giant enters a more partisan political era as its CEO pursues Donald Trump’s approval”

Meta is shifting to the right, following the prevailing political winds blowing through the United States. A more partisan era now looms for the social media giant and its corporate leaders, though Mark Zuckerberg himself has few personal politics other than ambition.

“On Tuesday morning, Meta disbanded Facebook and Instagram’s third-party factchecking program. The company will also recommend more political content across its social networks.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/why-did-mark-zuckerberg-end-facebook-instagram-fact-checking

No Media-Boss Criticism Allowed

by

Censored cartoon by Ann Telnaes

 

On this coming anniversary of the Charlie Hedbo cartoonist assassination, another cartoonist is censored.

Article in The Guardian by Ramon Antonio Vargas, 1/4/25

Headline:  “Washington Post cartoonist resigns over paper’s refusal to publish cartoon critical of Jeff Bezos”

Subhead:  “Pulitzer prize winner Ann Telnaes had drawn a cartoon of the paper’s owner kneeling before Donald Trump”

“The Washington Post’s Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from her position at the newspaper after its refusal to publish a satirical cartoon depicting the outlet’s owner, Jeff Bezos – along with other media and technology barons – kneeling before Donald Trump as he gears up for his second US presidency.

“ ‘I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,’ Telnaes wrote on Friday in an online post on the Substack platform detailing her decision to quit. ‘Until now.’ ”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jan/04/washington-post-cartoonist-resigns-jeff-bezos