Media Intimidation

Kancel Kulture Kimmel?

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Article in Free Press by Staff, 9/17/25

Headline: “Federal Censorship Commission Reaches New Low in Push to Force Jimmy Kimmel Off the Air”

“. . .The move followed threats Trump FCC Chairman Brendan Carr made in an interview with right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson. ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ Carr said. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/federal-censorship-commission-reaches-new-low-push-force-jimmy-kimmel-air

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Article in Raw Story by Matthew Chapman, 9/17/25

Headline:  ” ‘Terrible’: Ex-White House strategist issues chilling alarm at Trump’s ‘media takeover ‘ “

“Former White House strategist Ben Rhodes sounded the alarm on MSNBC’s “All In” Wednesday evening, following the Trump administration’s successful strong-arming of ABC News into indefinitely suspending late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show.

“Kimmel was yanked after he criticized how the media bent to pro-Trump narratives about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk following his assassination. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.rawstory.com/jimmy-kimmel-2674004901/

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Article in Daily Kos by Lisa Needham

Headline:  “Federal government forces Jimmy Kimmel off the air. RIP First Amendment.”

“Man, you gotta hand it to ABC. The speed with which it will knuckle under to President Donald Trump is really impressive.

“It took only a few hours for the powers that be to indefinitely sideline award-winning late-night host Jimmy Kimmel after the Trump administration expressed displeasure with Kimmel’s recent monologue. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/17/2344089/-Federal-government-forces-Jimmy-Kimmel-off-the-air-RIP-First-Amendment?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=web

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Article in New York Times by By John KoblinMichael M. Grynbaum and Brooks Barne, 9/17/25

Headline: “ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Off Air for Charlie Kirk Comments After F.C.C. Pressure”

Subhead: “Mr. Kimmel faced criticism from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission for remarks about the motives of the man who is accused of killing Mr. Kirk, the conservative activist . . .”

Read the fill article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/business/media/abc-jimmy-kimmel.html

Trial Times

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Article in Daily Kos by Oliver Willis, 9/16/24

Headline: “The New York Times has done so much for Trump—but it’s never enough”

“Following months of mainstream media capitulation toward President Donald Trump and his administration, Trump filed a $15 billion lawsuit on Monday night against The New York Times. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/16/2343832/-The-New-York-Times-has-done-so-much-for-Trump-but-it-s-never-enough?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=web

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Article in Poynter by Angela Fu, 9/16/25

Headline:  “Legal experts doubt Trump’s chances in his $15B defamation suit against The New York Times”

Subhead:  “The case, filed in Florida, faces high hurdles under longstanding defamation precedent”

“President Donald Trump sued The New York Times Monday, demanding at least $15 billion in damages for what he alleges has been defamatory coverage of his rise to power. . .”

“Regardless of venue, Trump must meet a high burden to prove he was defamed. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/trump-sues-new-york-times-lawsuit/

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Article in The Guardian by Michael Savage, /16/25

Headline:  “Donald Trump files $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times”

Subhead:  “Title says it will not be ‘deterred by intimidation tactics’ after US president announces latest legal action”

“Donald Trump has filed a $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times in his latest use of legal action targeting a major media outlet. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/16/donald-trump-says-he-is-suing-new-york-times-15bn-lawsuit-against-newspaper-ntwnfb

Selective Firing?

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Article in Free Press by Staff, 9/16/25

Headline: “The Media 2070 Project Denounces the Washington Post’s Firing of Columnist Karen Attiah”

“On Monday, Karen Attiah, a Washington Post opinion columnist, wrote on her Substack that the paper had fired her over her social-media posts on gun violence and race following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week in Utah.

“Attiah wrote she was fired for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”

“Attiah noted she was “the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions,” adding that her firing “is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/media-2070-project-denounces-washington-posts-firing-columnist-karen-attiah

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Article in The New Republic by Perry Bacon, 9/15/25

Headline:  “Black Voices Are Vital to Democracy. The Media Must Stop Firing Them.”

Subhead:   “The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah is the latest prominent Black journalist to lose her job. The trend is a sign of retrenchment in both fighting racism and saving democracy.”

“. . .And while the media changes are more subtle, the racial retrenchment is obvious. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court and lower-level courts and now the Trump administration have essentially outlawed any program that seeks to address racial disparities.

“Put these retrenchments together, and you have a very hostile environment for Black journalists. The political right is trying to basically outlaw any discussion of racial inequality—and news organizations are trying to appease the political right. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://newrepublic.com/article/200462/karen-attiah-black-voices-firing

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Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 9/15/25

Headline:  “Fired by The Post”

Subhead:  “The Washington Post said it fired Karen Attiah over comments she made about white men in the wake of Charle Kirk’s death, Status has learned”

Read the article at:

https://www.status.news/p/karen-attiah-fired-washington-post-charlie-kirk

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/