Media History

Frenemies in the Media

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Article in Media Matters by Jack Wheatley & Gideon Taaffe, 11/11/25

Headline:  “Following Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, fault lines have emerged as right-wing media battle over the future of MAGA”

Subhead:  “Some in MAGA media have tried to distance their movement from Fuentes and his ideas while others have suggested the white nationalist streamer is ‘mainstream now’ “

“Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes has precipitated a right-wing media struggle over the future of the MAGA movement.

“While many traditional right-wing media figures criticized Carlson for platforming Fuentes and not pushing back strongly enough on his rhetoric, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted in support of Carlson, calling the former Fox host’s detractors a ‘venomous coalition” and Carlson a “close friend” to The Heritage Foundation. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/nick-fuentes/following-tucker-carlsons-interview-nick-fuentes-fault-lines-have-emerged-right-wing

 

 

Pardon the Media Too?

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Article in Mediaite by Colby Hall 11/10/25

Headline:  “Trump’s Pardons Are Rewriting His 2020 Failed Coup — And the Media Is Letting Him”

“President Donald Trump is betting you’ve already forgotten how close the nation came to an abject election meltdown in 2020. Judging by the way the media will almost certainly cover his latest wave of pardons — speed-run through the news cycle and treated like just another Trump social media post — he may be right. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/trumps-pardons-are-rewriting-his-2020-failed-coup-and-the-media-is-letting-him/

Media Undiversifying?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Riddhi Getty, 11/10/25

Hedline:  “Has the Media Reached the End of Its DEI Era?”

Subhead:  “Layoffs at CBS, NBC, and Teen Vogue show a shift in newsroom priorities away from the promises of 2020.”

” ‘Where’s all the Black journalists at now?’ Rendy Jones, a freelance journalist, asked on X last week. He was referring to a wave of recent layoffs at CBS News, McClatchy, NBC News, Axios, and Teen Vogue, which was absorbed into Vogue. Jones is one of many in the industry who observed that these cuts have hit journalists of color in particular. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/has-media-reached-end-dei-era.php

Media History Disappearing?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Liam Scott, 10/28/25

Headline:  “Who’s Going to Save Local Newspaper Archives?”

Subhead:  “Archivists worry in particular about photographs that have never been digitized.”

“The Smokehouse Creek Fire burned through the Texas Panhandle in 2024. . .”

“As it consumed the rolling hills around Canadian [Texas], Brown, whose family has owned the paper since the 1940s, was overcome by a different fear: that the fire would destroy the [Canadian] Record’s archive. “I would have been devastated,” she said. “It’s not just the history of this community. It’s the history of my family. It’s who we are. It’s what we’ve done. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/digitize-save-local-news-archives-prevent-lost-history.php

Community Radio Our Last Hope?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Luch Shiller, 10/7/25

Headline:  “Too Small to Mess With”

Subhead:  “Against the precipitous backdrop of funding cuts to public media, low-power radio emerges as a lesser-known source of inspiration.”

“Years ago, in Louisville, “people just didn’t understand this concept of having a radio station where people could just walk in and play what was interesting to them, or talk about what was on their mind,” Sharon Scott told me. ‘This was just totally radical.’ Scott started ART-FM, otherwise known as WXOX 97.1 FM, in 2011, out of her family’s living room. Her husband, Sean Selby, a carpenter, helped put it together. She served as the general manager. . .”

More at https://www.kkfistory.org/ Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/feature/public-media-funding-cut-low-power-radio-lessons-community-broadcasting.php

Shape of Things to Come?

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(Penguin Books)

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jem Bartholomew, 10/6/25

Headline:  “Unbelievable Stupidities”

Subhead:  “How the press can rise to the moment.”

“In April 1944, in one of his early Tribune columns, George Orwell described the feeling of coming across a newspaper from before the outbreak of World War II, which at the time had been raging for almost five years, and ‘marvelling at its almost unbelievable stupidity.’

“The stupidity that Orwell saw was a naive disregard—or in some cases a willful downplaying—of the danger signs of the coming global war. . .”

“. . .Ten years from now, or eighty years from now, what might future observers look back on as the media’s ‘unbelievable stupidities’? Will they think the press of today rose to the moment? . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/unbelievable-stupidities.php

Media Give Knowledge

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Article in UPI by Karen Butler, 9/30/25

Headline: “ ‘Morning Show’ newbie Cotillard: It’s important to study the media”

“. . .Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard says she was eager to join The Morning Show for Season 4 because she is a massive fan of the inside-television drama and how it empowers women in the wake of the MeToo movement.

“It’s very important to study how the media works,” the 50-year-old French actress told UPI in a recent Zoom interview, emphasizing how journalism is a critical tool for holding people accountable for their actions.

“It’s a very, very powerful thing to deliver the news and how you can manipulate the news or how you can be driven to seek the truth, especially today when the big medias are owned by big companies and very powerful people who want to use the medias for their own interest . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/T V/2025/09/30/marion-cotillard-morning-show-interview/9281759192908/

Free Speech – or No Speech?

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Mario Savio Free Speech Movement – Bettman via Getty Images

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 9/22/25

Headline:  “Freedom And/or Speech”

Subhead:  “The boundaries of free speech have always been contested. That’s not what’s going on this time.”

“. . .Trump’s recent rhetoric about ‘illegal’ coverage and all the rest is, on one level, very scary. But for those interested in protecting their First Amendment rights—including, hopefully, the entirety of the press—it might also be preferable to the alternative: namely, the arbitrary and opaque cranking of oppressive bureaucratic machinery. Trump’s threats are so explicit that news organizations have no excuse but to identify them for what they are. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/freedom-andor-speech-douthat-kilroy-disney-kimmel-censor-abc-trump.php

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 9/22/25

Headline:  “Opinion | Trump’s escalating war on speech raises a chilling question: Where does it end?”‘

“. . . CNN’s Brian Stelter summed it up really well in his ‘Reliable Sources’ newsletter by writing, “Imagine we’re all stuck in an elevator together. The elevator is only moving in one direction — downward. Every time the doors open, we’re at some new, lower level. No one knows how to reverse course. No one knows what awaits us at the very bottom.’

“I’ll add this: No one knows where the very bottom is. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/trump-attacks-free-speech-jimmy-kimmel-abc-fcc-press-freedom/

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

Checkmate, Media!

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Article in Poynter by Ren LaForme & Alex Mahadevan, 9/10/25

Headline: “Gamergate was a warning that the media failed to heed”

Subhead:  “Before QAnon and MAGA, Gamergate pioneered a decentralized playbook for undermining the press”

“In the mid-2010s, loosely organized online movements began spilling into the real world, catching popular culture off guard and leaving many journalists flat-footed in unfamiliar internet territory.

“You know their names. Pizzagate. QAnon. And the most consequential of all, MAGA: a mainstream political movement fueled in part by a fervent online contingent. But before all that came Gamergate, the proving ground where the tactics were tested. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/what-was-gamergate-controversy-ethics-games-journalism/