Media Literacy

Some Media Spread Lies

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Article in Mediaite by Isaac Schorr, 2/20/24

Headline:  “Conservative Media Should Tell the Unvarnished Truth About Donald Trump’s Ghastly Attacks on Ukraine”

Subhead:  “Nefarious forces are at work in the shadows.”

According to Mark Levin, there are ‘a handful of pseudo-intellectuals funded by the likes of George Soros and Charles Koch’ who are ‘adopting policies that in many ways are un-American’ and would have once made others wonder if they were working for a foreign government. . .

“On Wednesday’s edition of his radio show, Levin ably debunked a series of misleading and outright false claims about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. . .

“Stating the obvious, Levin observed that ‘Ukraine did not invade Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine. What were they supposed to do? Roll over and play dead?’ he asked incredulously.

“Who are these Soros-funded pseudo-intellectuals? Who are these un-American, pro-Putin knaves?

Over the last few days, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk have taken turns assassinating the character of Ukrainian leadership and parroting the propaganda of Russian leadership..”

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/conservative-media-should-tell-the-unvarnished-truth-about-donald-trumps-ghastly-attacks-on-ukraine/

 

All News is Fake! Delete it!

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review in The Media Today by Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen, 2/13/25

Headline:  “Fighting the Great Federal Website Purge”

Subhead:  “Journalists, judges, and archivists are keeping government data online.”

“Two weeks ago, when the new administration instructed agencies to scrub content related to ‘gender ideology’ from government websites, federal workers scrambled to comply, temporarily, and in some cases permanently, taking pages offline so that they might be monitored for language related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. As reported by Popular Information this week, the National Security Agency is reportedly now executing a purge of pages that contain terms including ‘privilege’ and ‘bias’ — a dragnet that is also affecting ‘mission-related’ work, according to a source and documents. The discussion around so-called ‘banned words,’ as well as the deletion of datasets inconsistent with the administration’s ideology, has left data archivists concerned.

The news media has been busy keeping track of many of the webpages that have gone dark. At the beginning of this month, the New York Times put the number of removed pages at eight thousand; Wired is periodically scanning more than a thousand government domains for their accessibility. Such projects may prove especially useful down the line, not just to the public, but to the media industry itself . . . ”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trump_administration_website_purge_court_order_cdc.php

Information Source in Danger?

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Article in The Verge by Chris Welch, 2/13/25

Headline: “Wikipedia looks to shield its editors from “an increase in threats.”

“Wikimedia Foundation will likely soon have to contend with ‘the rising noise of criticism from Elon Musk and others,’ as founder Jimmy Wales recently put it. It’s already taking measures to safeguard the identity of those who edit pages on Wikipedia. One of those is a temporary accounts program that, as 404 Media describes it, will ‘give editors who are not logged in a temporary username rather than showing an IP address. . .

” ‘Some of these tools have previously been implemented to protect users in authoritarian countries. Now they’ll be used more widely as Wikipedia faces an unfavorable political climate in the US.. . .’ ”

https://www.theverge.com/web/612713/wikipedia-looks-to-protect-its-editors-from

Facts & Media at Odds?

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Article in Poynter by Angela Fu, 2/12/25

Headline: “Journalists have a ‘messaging problem’ when it comes to defending fact-based media”

Subhead:  “At a time when trust in the media is low, journalists must be more transparent about their work, experts say”

“Trust in the media and fact-based journalism is at a record low. Politicians are attacking the press, while audiences turn to alternative platforms, like entertainment podcasts and social media, for their news.

“One way journalists can combat this issue is by treating it as a messaging problem, NPR TV critic Eric Deggans said Tuesday at a panel discussion during the annual meeting of Poynter’s National Advisory Board. (The entire discussion can be viewed on poynter.org).”

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/journalists-have-a-messaging-problem-when-it-comes-to-defending-fact-based-media/

 

Playing 3-Card Monte With Press Corps

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Article in The Daily Beast by William Vaillancourt, 2/1/25

Headline:  “Hegseth Replaces Mainstream Media With MAGA Sites at Pentagon”

“Four members of the Pentagon Press Corps will no longer have office space in that building in order to make room for outlets that haven’t had that opportunity, according to a Defense Department memo Friday obtained by CNN. “Each year, one outlet from each press medium—print, online, television, and radio—that has enjoyed working from a physical office in the Pentagon will rotate out of the building,” the memo states. On February 14, The New York Times, NBC News, National Public Radio, and Politico will vacate their office space. They will be replaced by the New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network, and The Huffington Post.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/four-media-outlets-stripped-of-office-space-in-pentagon/

Saturday Media Event

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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.

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Right Wing Media Questions

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Article in The Righting by Howard Polskin, 1/22/25

Headline:  “10 Questions About Right Wing Media in 2025”

“Right wing media backed the right pony in 2024. After many websites and pundits flirted with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023, almost all outlets planted themselves behind Donald Trump and against the aging Joe Biden who became a right wing media punchline and punching bag. On the surface, all seems well in MAGA media world today. But there are questions large and small that could reshape the conservative landscape for years to come. Some questions may seem crazy, but in a world where Matt Gaetz was nominated as the country’s Attorney General, anything is possible.

https://therighting.com/original/10-questions-about-right-wing-media-in-2025/

News Needs Watering

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Article in Poynter by Mark Caro, 1/23/25

Headline:  “In America’s news deserts, Meta’s retreat from fact-checking severs a last link to fact-based news”

Subhead:  “Meta’s policy reversal and increase in political content could mean more misinformation for communities lacking local news”

“Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook is eliminating fact-checking may amount to a double whammy for people living in this country’s ever-expanding news deserts.

“Having lost their primary local news sources, these communities often turn to social media and other alternatives to try to stay informed. Now one of those key sources is removing safeguards against the spread of misinformation.

“It’s absolutely correct that it’s in areas that are underserved by professional journalism that this move will have the harshest impact,” said Lucas Graves, author of the 2016 book ‘Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism.’ ”

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2025/effect-facebook-fact-checking-partnership-news-deserts/

Lies Win Over Actual Facts

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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/

 

Using Disaster for Media

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Article in Media Matters by Allison Fisher, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media push Trump’s false claim that California water policies are hurting efforts to suppress LA fires”

Subhead:  “Casting blame on environmental policies in an attempt to distract from increasingly deadly climate impacts is core to right-wing media’s extreme weather playboo”

“Right-wing media are falsely blaming the reports of low water pressure or dry hydrants in Los Angeles on state and local mismanagement – including suggesting that local authorities refused to fill the reservoirs – and conflating the hydrant issue with the false claim that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water policies are to blame.

“On January 8, the Los Angeles Times reported that “as wildfires raged across Los Angeles on Tuesday, crews battling the Palisades blaze faced an additional burden: Scores of fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water flowing out.” Later that day, President-elect Donald Trump in a post on Truth Social falsely claimed that Newsom had deprived Southern California of water in order to protect the smelt fish.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-push-trumps-false-claim-california-water-policies-are-hurting-

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Article in Huff Post by Lee Moran, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Donald Trump’s Disaster-Hijacking Playbook Exposed By Expert On Right-Wing Media”

Subhead:  “Nicole Hemmer also explored the potent cocktail — involving the president-elect — that means ‘everything just feels worse all the time.’ “

“Nicole Hemmer — an expert on conservative and right-wing media, and the effect they have had on American politics — this week explained Donald Trump’s penchant for whipping up anger and causing division amid tragedies and disasters.

“ ‘It definitely is the case that this is something Trump does, right?’ Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, asked The New Republic’s Greg Sargent in the latest episode of his podcast, ‘The Daily Blast,’ which was released Thursday.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nicole-hemmer-donald-trump-talent_n_6780e6cde4b01ffef2482ddd