Media Intimidation

Closing the Window to the World

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Article in The Hill bySarah Fortinsky, 9/14/25

Headline:  “TV Academy chair scolds Congress for shuttering Corporation for Public Broadcasting”

“Television Academy Chairman Cris Abrego criticized Congress for voting to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), in a speech paying tribute to the organization at the Emmy Awards on Sunday evening.

“ ‘For more than 50 years, CPB has been the backbone of American Public Media, bringing us everything from ‘Sesame Street’ to ‘Mr. Rogers Neighborhood’ to ‘Finding Your Roots’ and keeping free local stations alive across the nation,’ Abrego said in his speech.

“ ‘And in many small towns, those stations weren’t just a cultural lifeline, they were the only emergency alert system families could count on,’ he continued. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5503327-corporation-public-broadcasting-emmys-congress/

Wounded Public Stations

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Public media is NOT state-controlled media

Article in The New York Times, 9/13/25 by Benjamin Mullin, et. al., 9/13/25

Headline:  “After Trump’s Cuts, ‘Crippled’ NPR and PBS Stations Must Transform”

Subhead:  “Radio and television stations, facing enormous budget holes, are pleading with NPR and PBS to lower their fees as they examine whether to drop national programming altogether.”

“On the windswept prairie of South Dakota, a tribal public radio station is selling off its old records to pay the bills. In Warm Springs, Ore., the NPR affiliate is considering dropping ‘All Things Considered” ‘o focus on tribal issues. . .”

“Some stations are beginning to go off the air, as Congress was warned before it went ahead and eliminated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the taxpayer-backed company that supports public media, ultimately shutting it down. . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/us/politics/public-broadcasting-cuts.html

Media Gulf-Confusion

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Article in NOTUS by Dave Levinthal, 9/11/25

Headline:  “Behind the Apparent Media Blackout Around Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ Name Change”

Subhead: “New internal emails obtained by NOTUS detail confusion at the U.S. Geological Survey and the State Department.”

“Three days after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, a State Department official sent a seemingly exasperated email to Michael Tischler, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geospatial Program.

“The problem: How to manage press inquiries ‘left and right’ about Trump’s plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.notus.org/donald-trump/gulf-of-america-mexico-name-change-foia-documents

How to Respond to Reporters?

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Article in the New Republic by Greg Sargent, 11/110/25

Headline: “Trump Press Sec Seethes as Epstein Spin Falls Apart in Briefing Fiasco”

Subhead:  “As Karoline Leavitt’s responses to the latest Jeffrey Epstein revelations go awry, a media observer explains why the MAGA disinformation machine’s treatment of this scandal is more unnerving than usual.”

“. . .The upshot: White House spin looked comically awful throughout. Leavitt flashed anger at other points, accusing reporters of ignoring serious crimes and of being dishonest about Trump’s militarization of Washington, D.C. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://newrepublic.com/article/200234/trump-press-sec-seethes-epstein-spin-falls-apart-briefing-fiasco

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/

Disappearing Media Freedom

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Article in Al Jazeera by Mohamad Elmasry, 9/8/25

Headline:  “The capitulation of the US media is not an aberration”

Subhead:  “The Trump administration is bringing to the fore weaknesses that have long plagued US democracy.”

“American democracy is arguably in more peril than at any moment in recent history. Not only are United States President Donald Trump and his Republican allies seeking to guarantee that Americans never again participate in a truly free and fair election, but public officials and Trump-aligned figures in the media industry are also manipulating the information environment at an unprecedented scale. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/9/8/the-capitulation-of-the-us-media-is-not-an-aberration

CBS Watchdog Has Master?

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Article in FAIR by Saurav Sarkar, 9/9/25

Headline: “CBS Drifts Further Toward Right-Wing State Television”

“After Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (X, 8/31/25) complained that several minutes of her August 31 Face the Nation interview had been ‘shamefully edited…to whitewash the truth,‘ CBS News announced that its flagship Sunday morning program will no longer edit its interviews, except for ‘legal or national security’ reasons (AP, 9/5/25). . .”

Read the full article at:

https://fair.org/home/cbs-drifts-further-toward-right-wing-state-television/

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Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 9/9/25

Headline:  “CBS’ Conservative Cop”

Subhead:  “David Ellison’s new CBS News ombudsman tried to erase parts of his digital trail – but a Status review of what remains reveals him to be a Trump-supporting advocate”

“Donald Trump ‘is the ultimate outsider.’ He’s a “bold businessman who asks uncomfortable questions that typical policymakers are too squeamish to ask. People may dislike Trump’s methods, but they should appreciate his clarity about power dynamics.’ . . .”

“Those words aren’t from Fox News host Sean Hannity’s nightly sycophantic monologue. They come from Kenneth Weinstein, who lavished Trump with praise in a column published this summer. On Monday, David Ellison’s Paramount named Weinstein the new ombudsman of CBS News. . .”

Read the article at:

https://www.status.news/p/cbs-news-ombudsman-kenneth-weinstein

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

Headline:  Opinion | Paramount named an ombudsman to oversee CBS News. Who is he?

Subhead:  “The new ombudsman, Kenneth Weinstein, steps into a role created to safeguard fairness, though political questions linger”

“. . . On the surface, an ombudsman should be a welcome addition to any network newsroom, which should be practicing fair and honest journalism free of bias.

“But this particular announcement came off as a bit suspicious. It has been seen as a way to placate President Donald Trump, whose FCC had to sign off on the sale. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/cbs-ombudsman-kenneth-weinstein-who/

FCC Getting in Range of Networks

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Article in NOTUS by Violet Jira, 9/3/25

Headline:  “Trump Is Targeting Broadcast Networks. The FCC Is Poised to Help Him.”

Subhead:  “Federal Communications Commission decisions ‘were meant to be beyond the reach of the current occupant of the White House,’ the agency’s sole Democratic commissioner told NOTUS.”

“As President Donald Trump continues to attack media organizations, the Federal Communications Commission is uniquely positioned to weaponize its regulatory framework to help him. Critics say it’s already started.

“The FCC is turning into a “wing of the MAGA movement” under its Trump-appointed chair, Brendan Carr, said Timothy Karr of Free Press, a nonprofit that promotes free speech and press freedom. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.notus.org/policy/trump-media-fcc-brendan-carr

Reporters – Forced to Flee

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Paulina Milewska & Ksenia Mironova, 9/3/25

Headline:  “How to Survive the (Media) Apocalypse”

Subhead:  “Lessons from journalists who have lived through all this”

“The ongoing deterioration of press freedom and independence in the United States is deeply concerning to many journalists who don’t know where their country is heading. That chilling uncertainty is one we have lived through ourselves. We are journalists from Russia and Poland. Ksenia has been forced to leave her home in order to continue working, and has watched countless friends and colleagues do the same. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/russia-poland-media-exile-strategies.php

Evil CBS in Trouble Again!

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Update:

Article in The New Republic by Greg Sargent, 9/2/25

Headline: “ICE Barbie Kristi Noem’s Ugly New Attack on CBS Exposes Big Trump Scam”

Subhead:  “The network was right to edit out her lies about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The rest of the media should do the same.”

“If you need more evidence that there’s zero percentage in trying to appease or bargain with authoritarians, check out what happened this weekend when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem attacked CBS News for supposedly editing her Face the Nation appearance in a deceptive way. Unsurprisingly, it concerned the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, about whom Noem and other Trump officials have lied relentlessly for months on end. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://newrepublic.com/article/199889/kristi-noem-attack-cbs-kilmar-garcia-trump-scam

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Article in The Hill by Sarah Fortinsky, 9/1/25

Headline: “Noem accuses CBS of ‘deceptively’ editing interview about Abrego Garcia”

“Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused CBS News of selectively editing footage from her Sunday interview, cutting some of her remarks about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national who was mistakenly deported and returned to the U.S. to face separate charges. . .”

“CBS News, however, maintains that the interview was edited to fit its allotted time slot in the hourlong broadcast and that the full interview was published online. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5480324-noem-abrego-garcia-cbs-interview-editing/