Media obsequiousness

Journalists – Not So Happy

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Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 10/28/25

Headline:  “Comcast’s Ballroom Bash”

Subhead:  “NBC News and MSNBC journalists are appalled after learning their parent company, Comcast, helped bankroll Donald Trump’s ballroom—prompting behind-the-scenes venting and on-air rebukes of the corporate giant.”

“Last week, as NBC News and MSNBC staffers navigated the awkward mechanics of their impending corporate split, an unexpected development briefly united the two camps. The White House released a list of donors bankrolling Donald Trump’s ballroom project in which, buried among the corporate names, was Comcast. The revelation stunned staff inside both newsrooms. . .”

Read the cull article at:

https://www.status.news/p/comcast-ballroom-msnbc-nbc-news-outrage

 

Don’t do it CNN!

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Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 10/27/25

Headline:  “CNN boss told staff to scale back White House demolition coverage: Report”

“CNN is denying a recent report that its head Mark Thompson recently met with officials in President Trump’s administration and afterward urged staff at the network to ease up on its coverage of the White House renovation project, which has torn down the East Wing.”

The report, published in the media-news outlet Status, cited people familiar who said staffers at the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned cable channel were ‘taken aback,’ after Thompson, who they said generally does not weigh in on daily editorial matters, suggested CNN’s viewership ‘isn’t all that interested in the story’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5574665-cnn-white-house-east-wing-ballroom/

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Article in Daily Beast by Cameron Adams, 10/27/25

Headline:  “CNN Boss Ordered Teardown Censorship After West Wing Visit”

Subhead:  “CNN CEO said to be the latest media boss bending the knee before Donald Trump.”

“CNN chief Mark Thompson reportedly told the cable network’s reporters to ease up on coverage of the controversial demolition of the East Wing after a visit to the White House last week.

“Although denied by CNN, the report from the Status newsletter appears to be the latest example of media bosses bending the knee before the Trump administration.

“The historic White House East Wing was bulldozed last week to make way for President Donald Trump’s $300 million vanity project, a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that will be more than twice the size of the rest of the White House. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-boss-mark-thompson-told-reporters-to-ease-up-on-teardown-coverage-after-white-house-visit/

CBS News Moving Right Along

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Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 10/24/25

Headline:  “Bret Baier touts CBS News’ move toward ‘more balance’ and ‘coverage that’s fair’ ”

Subhead:  “In an interview with Sean Hannity, Baier denounced the ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ of mainstream reporters”

“Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier — who is reportedly under consideration to take over CBS Evening News — spent part of Thursday afternoon praising CBS News’ rightward shift and his Trumpist colleague Sean Hannity’s coverage of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ panning mainstream reporters for purportedly demonstrating ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ in an interview on Hannity’s radio show.

Oliver Darcy reported Thursday for his Status newsletter that Bari Weiss, the CBS News editor-in-chief recently installed to move the network to the right, ‘has spoken to associates about bringing Baier into the CBS News fold, potentially for the ‘CBS Evening News’ anchor chair.’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/bret-baier/bret-baier-touts-cbs-news-move-toward-more-balance-and-coverage-thats-fair

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Article in Common Dreams by Laura Flanders, 10/18/25

Headline: “Why Can’t the Corporate Media See the Trump-GOP Shutdown Plan Lying in Plain Sight?”

Subhead: “The power struggles that animate this shutdown are meant to outlast it, leveraging legal ambiguities, executive fiat, and congressional paralysis to redefine “essential” as that which survives unchallenged.”

“What is it about an insidious, long-term plan that causes commercial media to ignore what’s lying in plain sight?

“With Congress at a standstill, the Republican-led House refusing to return to session, and the Senate unable to pass any bill to reopen the government, reporters seem stuck in a loop. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/what-s-behind-the-government-shutdown

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Article in Raw Story by Robert Reich, 10/9/25

Headline:  “Opinion – How our media became so vulnerable to Trump — and what we can do about it”

“. . .today’s media ecosystem is far more vulnerable to authoritarianism than it was decades ago. . .”

“Today I want to explore three structural changes in our political economy that have made it so, and suggest what must be done to strengthen media independence.

” 1. Media concentration has facilitated censorship. . .; 2. Ultra-wealthy individuals are now controlling major media. These are people likely to be biased against the public’s right to know. . .; 3. The shift from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.rawstory.com/bari-weiss-2674169028/?utm_source=breaking

 

Media Consolidation & Intimidation

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Article in FAIR by Pete Tucker, 10/8/25

Headline:  “MAGA’s Little Helpers: Sinclair, Nexstar and the Consolidation of Broadcast TV”

“When Jimmy Kimmel made his dramatic return to ABC’s airwaves on September 23, I was eager to be one of the over 6 million who tuned in. Only I couldn’t, at least not on TV.

That’s because the local ABC station in the DC area, WJLA, is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Network. And the right-wing network refused to air the Jimmy Kimmel Show! on any of its 38 ABC affiliates. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://fair.org/home/magas-little-helpers-sinclair-nexstar-and-the-consolidation-of-broadcast-tv/

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Article in Mother Jones by Monika Bauerlein, 10/8/25

Headline: “Nice Little TV Network You Got There”

Subhead: “How easily has Trump rolled corporate media? So much more easily than he probably expected.”

“The most basic American freedom, the first one enumerated in the Constitution, the right to say whatever the hell we please, including and especially about the powerful, was no longer reliable—for a celebrity employed by one of the world’s biggest media corporations, and thus for any of us.

Read the full article at:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/cbs-news-bari-weiss-free-press-corporate-media-nice-little-tv-network-trump/

Shape of Things to Come?

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(Penguin Books)

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jem Bartholomew, 10/6/25

Headline:  “Unbelievable Stupidities”

Subhead:  “How the press can rise to the moment.”

“In April 1944, in one of his early Tribune columns, George Orwell described the feeling of coming across a newspaper from before the outbreak of World War II, which at the time had been raging for almost five years, and ‘marvelling at its almost unbelievable stupidity.’

“The stupidity that Orwell saw was a naive disregard—or in some cases a willful downplaying—of the danger signs of the coming global war. . .”

“. . .Ten years from now, or eighty years from now, what might future observers look back on as the media’s ‘unbelievable stupidities’? Will they think the press of today rose to the moment? . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/unbelievable-stupidities.php

Hiding Under Fox

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Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 9/23/25

Headline:  “How Fox covers for Trump administration malfeasance”

Subhead:  “Monday night was a perfect case study”

“The job of a Fox News evening host isn’t to cover President Donald Trump and his administration, it’s to give them cover. The network’s stars are shameless propagandists who employ a variety of tactics to hide the president’s misdeeds from their viewers.

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/how-fox-covers-trump-administration-malfeasance-0

All the Eggs in Someone’s Basket

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Article from Poynter by Angela Fu , 9/15/25

Headline:  “Media consolidation is shaping who folds under political pressure — and who could be next”

Subhead:  “ABC sidelining Jimmy Kimmel and Paramount canceling Stephen Colbert underscore how corporate interests weigh on free speech in the Trump era”

“. . .Media watchers called Kimmel’s sidelining an alarming act of capitulation — one that fit into a larger pattern of media giants self-censoring in anticipatory obedience to President Donald Trump and his administration.

“Kimmel’s show, though popular, was just one cog in the Disney media empire (ABC’s parent company), and its distribution relied in part on two other media behemoths, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcasting Group. That made it especially vulnerable to political pressure since both Nexstar and Sinclair are exploring acquisitions regulated by Carr’s agency, the Federal Communications Commission. . .”

Rad the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/which-media-outlets-could-capitulate-to-trump/

The Media “Enforcer”

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Article in The Washington Post by Tom Benner, 9/22/25

Headline:  “Brendan Carr, the FCC muscle behind Trump’s anti-media crusade”

Subhead:  “FCC chair Brendan Carr has emerged as one of the top lieutenants in President Trump’s war against the media. How much power does he really hold?”

“Hours before the suspension was announced, Carr seemed to threaten FCC action against networks, saying ‘we can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ and advising Disney and other media companies to ‘find ways to change conduct.’ Carr denies playing a direct role in the Kimmel suspension, but critics say Carr has emerged as Trump’s top enforcer in the president’s war against the media. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/brendan-carr-the-fcc-muscle-behind-trumps-antimedia-crusade/