Media Literacy

Disappearing Climate Coverage

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Article in FAIR by Olivia Riggio, 3/14/26

Headline: “Climate Coverage Plunges, Though Crisis More Dire Than Ever”

“The UN just released its 2025 Global Climate Report, and, predictably, the outlook for our earth is incredibly dire.  . .”

“There is no shortage of urgent climate news right now. The scientific consensus that we need to phase out fossil fuels fast has not changed, despite President Donald Trump’s anti-climate policies rolling back environmental protections and clean energy growth. But data shows coverage about climate change in US news outlets has plunged. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://fair.org/home/climate-coverage-plunges-though-crisis-more-dire-than-ever/

 

Democracy Needs Journalism

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Article in FAIR by Janine Jackson, 4/10/26

Headline:  ” ‘Local News Is a Genuine Public Good We Need for Our Democracy’ “

Subhead:  “CounterSpin interview with Alex Frandsen on Local News Day”

“Janine Jackson: News media can be like the old joke about the weather: Everybody complains, but nobody does anything. But as we’ve seen billionaire owners turning news into yet another profit-driven enterprise—not, to be clear, entities that need to sustain themselves, but that need to generate ever-higher quarterly profits for shareholders—the truth is there has been plenty of, not just protest and criticism, but ground-level organizing to find other ways to support the work we need from journalism in the public interest. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://fair.org/home/local-news-is-a-genuine-public-good-we-need-for-our-democracy/

Betting on the News

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Klaudia Jazwinska, 4/3/26

Headline:  “The Problem with Binding News and Prediction Markets”

Subhead:  “Polymarket and Kalshi are quickly making deals with news publishers, with potential implications for the regulation of prediction markets. It’s unclear how journalism wins.”

“Prediction markets—platforms where users can place wagers on the outcomes of future events —are suddenly all over the news. Every day we’re seeing headlines—allegations of insider trading, states accusing prediction markets of violating gambling laws, warnings about the “depravity economy.” We’re also seeing prediction markets’ efforts at becoming part of the news ecosystem. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/the-problem-with-binding-news-and-prediction-markets-polymarket-kalshi-regulation-cftc-insider-trading.php

Watching Who’s Watching You

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Luch Scholler, 3/18/26

Headline:  “Look Who’s Tracking”

Subhead:  “A growing number of reporters and researchers are covering immigration through the lens of surveillance.”

” ‘Look for the margarita machine,’ Francesca D’Annunzio’s source told her. D’Annunzio, an investigative reporting fellow at the Texas Observer, was delving into Operation Lone Star, Texas governor Greg Abbott’s more-than-eleven-billion-dollar anti-immigration crusade that the American Civil Liberties Union has flagged in a report for ‘unchecked cruelty’. .”

“That ‘so much can be learned about us and our patterns of life without a warrant,’ she said, ‘is something that should concern everybody, regardless of their political persuasion’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/tracking-surveillance-immigration-coverage-cobwebs-trangles-penlink-ice-dhs.php

Nonprofit Lifeline for Journalism?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Emily Bell and Heatger Chaplin, 2/19/26

Headline: “Profit or Nonprofit? A Debate over Journalism’s Future”

Subhead: “While the newspaper industry continues to contract, nonprofit news outlets have proliferated over the past decade. But dismissing profitable models for journalism is premature. “

“How can journalism survive? Perhaps the question would once have sounded unduly panicked, but it has only grown more pressing over the past twenty years. Between 2004 and 2019, newspapers lost an astonishing 77 percent of their jobs—more than any other industry on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/kicker/profit-nonprofit-debate-journalism-future-amazon-washington-post-bezos-bureau-labor-statistics.php

Local Minneapolis Journalists

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Article in Poynter by Kristen Hare, 1/26/26

Headline:  “What’s happening in Minneapolis? Hear it from the journalists who live there.”

Subhead: “In a moment of national attention, local reporters are offering clarity, context and accountability from the ground”

“Even after more than a decade of covering the local news industry, it still takes me time to remember to get off social media, my phone, national news and wherever else I’m getting information and go directly to the source — the people who live there, who pay taxes there, who worship and shop and vote and raise their families there.

“In the last few weeks, that source has been journalists and newsrooms in Minnesota after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot and killed Renee Good and Border Patrol officers shot and killed Alex Pretti. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/local-news/2026/minneapolis-ice-shootings-local-journalists-news/

Negative vs. Biased News

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Article in Daily Kos by Trenz Pruca, 1/20/26

Headline:  “Media Bias, Negative News, and a Persistent Myth”

Subhead:  “You must be a Republican if you believe that: Fox News, MAGA influencers, and professional outrage merchants tell the truth; scientists, judges, journalists, and civil servants are the deep state.”

“Is the media biased? — the Patterson Study. (2018). . .”

“. . .What the study does examine is the long-term trend toward negative news coverage in broadcast media, a shift that began in the early 1960s as television news expanded in length and became increasingly image-driven. Negative events—conflict, scandal, disaster—are simply easier to visualize. This is why automobile accidents receive more coverage than random acts of kindness. The accident happened. Reporting it is neither fake nor biased; it is merely well suited to the medium.

“Patterson explicitly warns against conflating negative news with biased news. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/20/2364428/-Media-Bias-Negative-News-and-a-Persistent-Myth?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Media Kidnapped or Captured?

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Article in FAIR by Gregory Shupak, 1/20/26

Headline: “Labeling Kidnapping a ‘Capture,’ Media Legitimate Violation of International Law”

“Corporate media have deployed a lexicon of legitimation in their coverage of the deadly US invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife and fellow politician Cilia Flores. Major news outlets have routinely described these events using words like ‘capture’ (New York Times, 1/3/26) or ‘arrest’ (BBC, 1/3/26), which presents them as a matter of enforcing the law against fugitives or criminals, and carries the built-in but false assumption that the US had the right or even duty to conduct its operation in the first place.

“The ludicrous premise is that any time an arrest warrant is issued somewhere in the United States, the US has the right to do anything, anywhere in the world, in pursuit of the subject—including bombing another country, invading it, killing its citizens, and spiriting away its president and first lady. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://fair.org/home/labeling-kidnapping-a-capture-media-legitimate-violation-of-international-law/

Hope For Local News?

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Article in The New York Times by Sarabeth Berman, 1/18/26

Headline:  “Local Newspapers Are Closing. Local News Is Surviving.”

“The consequences of the collapse of the local newspaper business have been severe. When communities lose their local news outlets, civic engagement drops, corruption rises, government waste increases and political polarization worsens. Communities no longer know themselves. No number of headlines about goings-on in Washington can change that. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/opinion/local-newspapers-closing.html

Document the Truth Before it’s Suppressed

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Article in Poynter by Kelly McBride, 1/15/26

Headline:  “This moment will be defined by what we choose to record”

Subhead:  “Local press and local residents must document history as federal force grows routine”

“When unmarked, masked federal agents grabbed an international student and forced her into an SUV on a public street in the spring of 2025, the United States entered into a new era of federal policing.

“At first, it was alarming — a move more commonly associated with authoritarian dictatorships than a democratically elected government with checks and balances. Now that this tactic, and others like it, have become routine, it is no longer enough to react in alarm. It is time to extensively document everything that is happening. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2026/documenting-history-as-federal-force-expands/