Media Intimidation

Local Small Stations Hurt the Most?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Andrew Mercein, 5/8/25

Headline:  “Rural and Tribal Public Radio Stations Brace for Funding Cuts”

Subhead:  “Small broadcasters fear they will be unintended victims of national culture wars.”

“Today, stations like KSTK (Wrangell, Alaska) are facing an existential crisis. Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to cease all funding to NPR and PBS and to eliminate indirect sources of public financing like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars annually to stations nationwide. The move could wipe out funding appropriated through 2026 and 2027, endangering stations that already operate on razor-thin margins. “If CPB funding disappears, I don’t know how we’d survive,” said Cindy Sweat, KSTK’s general manager. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/news/npr-pbs-cpb-trump-public-radio-funding.php

How Dare They Ask A Question?

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Article in Huffpost by Lee Moran, 5/5/25

Headline:  “Donald Trump Flips Out At Wall Street Journal Reporter: ‘You Hear Me? What I Said?’ “

Subhead:  “The president melted down over a simple question on board Air Force One.”

“Donald Trump flipped out at a journalist for The Wall Street Journal on board Air Force One on Sunday.

“The journalist drew Trump’s ire after asking about talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the U.S. president’s effort to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine over the former’s invasion of the latter.

“Trump asked which outlet the reporter worked for, a tactic he’s resorted to frequently during his second term.

“When told The Journal, he then railed: ‘That’s what I thought. Boy, you people treat us so badly. Wall Street Journal has truly gone to hell. Go ahead, yeah. Rotten newspaper. You hear me? What I said? It’s a rotten newspaper.’ . . .”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-wall-street-journal-reporter-question_n_681857cee4b08041c58c79f1?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=us_main

Student Journalists Under Threat?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Meghnad Bose, 5/6/25

Headline:  “A Student Journalist Covered a Pro-Palestine Protest. Soon, Her Graduation Came Under Threat.”

Subhead:  “A botched challenge to press freedom at Columbia University’s Barnard College.”

“. . .In early April, Georgia Dillane, a Barnard senior who works at WKCR, Columbia’s radio station, got a “fact-finding” email from Barnard’s Community Accountability, Response, and Emergency Services (CARES) that would eventually place her graduation under threat.”

“. . .Gary Maroni, the director of CARES, had written to each of them requesting a meeting ‘to provide any information you would like to share, including information that refutes any suggestion that you were involved, are a witness, or have information about this incident’ . . .”

“Dillane, Gamble, and the rest of the WKCR team were taken aback. “There would potentially be questions about what I knew as a journalist having an ear to what was going on, and they would try to extract that from me,” Dillane said. She didn’t want to violate journalistic ethics, or her sources’ trust. “I owe it to those that I report for, WKCR and its listeners, to be honest, truthful, and objective,” she said. “To pander to the calls of the administration to extract information to then target students is not something that I feel morally aligned with. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/news/student-journalist-columbia-covered-a-pro-palestine-protest-graduation-under-threat.php

Happy World Press Freedom Day!

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Article in The Guardian by Michael Savage, 5/3/25

Headline:  ” ‘A cocktail for a misinformed world’: why China and Russia are cheering Trump’s attacks on media”

Subhead:  “Today on World Press Freedom Day, there are warnings that US attempts to withdraw from promoting independent journalism will have far-reaching effects”

“As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) – the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda – he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration.

“Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be ‘eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law’. The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. . .”

“It used to be that the US would put pressure on other countries for undermining free expression. . .”

“In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the state broadcaster RT described it as an “awesome decision”. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese state media publication, crowed that the broadcasters had been discarded by the White House “like a dirty rag”, ending their “propaganda poison’ ”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2025/may/03/a-cocktail-for-a-misinformed-world-why-china-and-russia-are-cheering-trumps-attacks-on-us-media

Another Newspaper Attack

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 5/2/25

Headline:  “Opinion | Trump threatens The New York Times as his press attacks continue”

Subhead:  “He lashed out after a Times report said Paramount may settle his baseless lawsuit — a move tied to its pending sale”

“President Donald Trump unleashed more unhinged attacks on the press Wednesday, going after both CBS’s “60 Minutes” and The New York Times — even going so far as to threaten legal action against the Times.

“His “60 Minutes” attacks are nothing new. He already is suing CBS’s owner, Paramount, claiming the network deceptively edited an interview last October with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to, in effect, help her win the election. . .”

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/trump-nyt-liable-tortious-interference/

 

 

Broiling the Media?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Kelly Stout, 5/2/25

Headline:  “Chat, Are We Cooked?”

Subhead:  “Trump and the people who work for him don’t care about journalistic norms. Is it time for journalists to rethink them, too?”

“he first hundred days of Trump 2.0 brought forth more material than infinity reporters typing on infinity laptops for infinity years could possibly report. The ‘flood the zone’ strategy—brought to us from the mind of Steve Bannon, the MAGA media strategist—has been around since at least 2018, but now, as the New York Times put it, ‘the flood is bigger, wider and more brutally efficient’; the same article also included the phrases ‘overwhelming sensory overload,’ ‘drinking from a fire hose,’ and ‘gasping in outrage.’ Each of these metaphors hit the news media directly, and hard. And then, on March 11, they gushed into the Signal chat of one journalist in particular. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/feature-2/signal-chat-atlantic-goldberg-trump-norms-ethics.php

Don’t Like What the Media Say?

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Article in Washington Post by Scott Hover, et al, 5/2/25

Headline:  “Public media ready to fight ‘unlawful’ Trump order defunding PBS, NPR”

Subhead:  “Legal scholars say the executive order may exceed presidential authority and violate First Amendment, while local stations fear impact on communities.”

“President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end federal funding for NPR and PBS — because of news coverage he called “biased and partisan” — triggered a fierce backlash from public broadcasters that appears poised to expand the White House’s larger legal battleground with the media industry.

“Issued Thursday night, the order instructs the congressionally chartered Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cut off direct funding to the venerable public media giants — producers of long-running news shows such as “All Things Considered” and “PBS NewsHour” — as well as any grants to local stations that might underwrite the national broadcasters’ programming. . .”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/05/02/trump-npr-pbs-executive-order-funding-cut/

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Article in The Nation by John Nichols, 5/2/25

Headline: “Trump’s Assault on PBS and NPR Chooses Oligarchy Over Press Freedom and Democracy”

“As the supporters of speaking truth to power celebrate World Press Freedom Day, Trump seeks to defund public media in the United States. . .”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-npr-pbs-threat/

Erasing References Ensures Survival?

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Article in Poynter by Kelly McBride, 4/30/25

Headline:  “People who fear the Trump administration are asking editors to remove their names from old news stories.”

Subhead:  “Here are some questions to ask while managing these requests”

“Government workers, teachers and green card holders across the country are asking editors to remove their names — and the record of their support for causes now targeted by the Trump administration — from old stories.

“Journalists from around the country routinely ask me for ethics help. In the last month, I’ve heard from the editor of a gay newspaper, several alternative publications, a newsroom that covers immigrant issues, student newspapers and several mainstream commercial newsrooms.

“Kevin Naff, the editor of the Washington Blade, the nation’s oldest gay newspaper, reached out to me for advice in March. Government employees were asking that their names be scrubbed from his archives. They feared that an open record of their sexual orientation, or their views on issues that run contrary to President Donald Trump’s, could make them targets for job cuts. . .”

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/how-handle-source-removal-requests-journalism/

PBS is Subversive?

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Article in Mediaite by Michael Luciano, 4/30/25

Headline:  ” ‘Ok, But Sesame Street?’ Jake Tapper Taken Aback When House Republican Likens PBS to North Korean Media”

“CNN’s Jake Tapper sparred with Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) over funding for PBS, which the lawmaker compared to state-sponsored propaganda à la China and North Korea.

“Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said he is looking to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which administers PBS and NPR, and receives about $500 million a year from Congress. The CPB is also funded by individual donors, grants, and sponsorships. Still, a loss of federal funding would be the biggest hit to PBS since Larry David attacked Elmo on live television last year.. . .”

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/ok-but-sesame-street-jake-tapper-taken-aback-when-house-republican-likens-pbs-to-north-korean-media/

Questions by the Media are ‘Stupid’

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Article in Raw Story by Erik De La Garza, 4/29/25

Headline:  ” ‘ Stupid question’: Trump lashes out at reporter in new exclusive interview”

“President Donald Trump didn’t hold back his frustrations with a journalist during a heated moment in an exclusive ABC News interview, where he refused to say whether he had “100% confidence” in his embattled defense secretary.

“The tense exchange came in a new interview with ABC’s Terry Moran, who pressed Trump about ongoing turmoil inside the Pentagon involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“ ‘Do you have 100% confidence in Pete Hegseth? Moran asked Trump in the Oval Office moment previewed on CNN Tuesday evening.

“ ‘I don’t have 100% confidence in anything, okay? Anything,’ Trump said as he bristled between his responses. ‘It’s a stupid question. ‘ . . .”

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-lashes-out/?utm_source=superhead