Media Politicize

MAGA Hates Fox News?

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Article in Daily Beast by Jack Revell, 6/20/25

Headline:  “Trump Has a Fiery New Excuse for Why MAGA ‘Hates’ Fox News”

Subhead:  “It’s all the fault of a single host who won’t toe the line.”

“President Donald Trump has taken a fresh swipe at Fox News, claiming his MAGA base ‘hates’ the network, following the stinging rejection of recent polling. Trump has appeared to pin the blame for falling ratings—which he describes as the ‘highest ever’—on a single Fox News critic who is ‘soiling’ his otherwise ‘record-breaking’ performance.

“ ‘Why does Fox News allow failed TV personality Jessica Tarlov to “soil” The Five?’ Trump raged on Truth Social. ‘Her voice, her manner, and above all else, what she says, are a disgrace to television broadcasting’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-has-a-fiery-new-excuse-for-why-maga-hates-fox-news/

No Voice for America

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Article in The Guardian by Marian Dunbar, Maya Yang, and Tom Ambrose, 6/20/25

Headline:  “Trump administration lays off hundreds of Voice of America employees”

Subhead:  “The layoffs will reduce the staff at the agency to fewer than 200, around one-seventh of its total at the start of 2025”

“The Trump administration sent layoff notices today to more than 600 employees at Voice of America, a federally funded news organization that provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom, the New York Times reports.

“The layoffs will reduce the staff at the agency to fewer than 200, around one-seventh of its total at the start of 2025. The notices put journalists and support staff on paid leave until they are officially let go on 1 September.

“In March, Donald Trump accused Voice of America of spreading ‘anti-American’ and partisan ‘propaganda’ and called it ‘the voice of radical America’. . .”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jun/20/us-politics-latest-news-donald-trump-national-guard-ice-republicans-democrats-live

Report and . . . Off You Go

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Article in Common Dreams by Brett Wilkens, 6/18/25

Headline:  “Journalist Who Decried Trump’s ‘Deportation of Dissent’ Says He Was Deported for Dissent”

Subhead:  ” ‘Alistair Kitchen’s deportation is a clear case of retaliation in connection with his reporting, and such action sends a chilling message to journalists,’ said one press freedom defender.”

“A leading press freedom advocate on Tuesday condemned the United States’ “disturbing pattern” of screening and expelling international visitors for their political viewpoints following the detention and removal of an Australian journalist who criticized the Trump administration’s targeting of Palestine defenders on college campuses.

“Alistair Kitchen said he was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Los Angeles International Airport while en route from Melbourne, Australia to New York last week. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alistair-kitchen

Media Driving War?

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Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 6/18/25

Headline:  “Trump’s Fox News obsession is driving the U.S. toward war with Iran”

“President Donald Trump appears to be careening toward a U.S. military strike on Iran as current and former Fox News figures — from posts on the network’s airwaves, elsewhere in the right-wing media ecosystem, and within his administration — fight to influence his decision.

“For years, Trump’s obsession with the Fox universe has driven policy decisions, administration staffing, and countless stream-of-consciousness social media posts. Now, the network will have an outsized role in determining America’s potential involvement in a spiraling regional military conflict.

” ‘The George W. Bush administration spent months “following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein’ before finally launching that war in March 2003. That strategy — based on cooked intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction dishonestly sold to American people — resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. service members and more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians as well as a massive financial cost. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trumps-fox-news-obsession-driving-us-toward-war-iran

FCC Being Blown Up?

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Article in Free Press, press release by Staff, 6/17/25

Headline:  “Senate Confirmation of Olivia Trusty Paves a Path for Trump’s Campaign to Control the Media”

Subhead:  “Her confirmation gives the FCC the Republican majority Chairman Carr needs to carry out the president’s dangerous agenda”

“WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Olivia Trusty as a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. Trusty previously served as a top congressional staffer for Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Bob Latta, both Republicans.

“Upon her swearing in, Trusty will be the third member of the five-person Commission, with two recently created vacancies remaining. Her arrival will give FCC Chairman Brendan Carr a 2–1 Republican majority, likely allowing him to advance a number of controversial initiatives . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/senate-confirms-olivia-trusty-fcc-paves-path-trump-control-media

Still Attacking Media

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Article in Poynter by Editorial Staff, 6/17/25

Headline:  “Opinion | 10 years of Trump, 10 years of media attacks”

Subhead:  “Donald Trump has turned phrases like ‘fake news’ and ‘enemy of the people’ into rallying cries to undermine the free press”

“It was 10 years ago Monday that Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and announced that he was running for president. . .”

“But the world and our country — and the media — have definitely changed. . .”

“Among Blake’s items is “The decline of truth.” Blake writes, “At this point, Trump’s falsehoods often aren’t even treated as news. And that’s because, strictly speaking, they’re not new. He spouted more than 30,000 false and misleading claims in his first term, according to The Washington Post. That averages out to nearly one every hour for four years. And it hasn’t stopped. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/decade-donald-trump-fight-free-press/

Media History Repeated?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by John Alsop, 6/16/25

Headline:  “The Other Echoes of 2020”

Subhead:  “How this media moment mirrors the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, beyond police attacks on the press.”

Last week, I wrote in this newsletter about attacks, mostly perpetrated by law enforcement, on journalists covering the protests that followed the recent immigration raids in Los Angeles, and how they echoed the summer of 2020, when police assaulted journalists covering the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd: an Australian TV reporter was hit while talking to camera, which also happened in 2020; ditto the on-air detention of a CNN correspondent; as of last Monday, the US Press Freedom Tracker was working to document at least twenty-six anti-press incidents in LA . . . As last week progressed, the echoes continued: the confirmed number of injured Australian journalists alone jumped to three; an LA police officer was caught on camera shoving and screaming at an ABC journalist; as of Friday, the Press Freedom Tracker was working to document at least fifty anti-press incidents.  . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/other-echoes-2020-floyd-padilla-australia.php

Media Caused War?

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Article in The Guardian by Jason Stanley, 6/13/25

Headline:  “The mainstream media has enabled Trump’s war on universities”

Subhead:  “For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic over leftists on campus while failing to report on the right’s assault”

“. . .The US mainstream media has waged a decade-long propaganda campaign against American universities, culminating in the systematic misrepresentation of last year’s campus anti-war protests. This campaign has been the normalizing force behind the Trump administration’s attack on universities, as well as a primary cause of his multiple electoral successes. Unless the media recognizes the central role it has played, we cannot expect the attack to relent. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/13/mainstream-media-trump-universities

Should Media Lie for a President?

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Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 6/11/25

Headline:  “Fox’s bizarre lies shield viewers from the fact that Trump was wrong about Newsom call”

“A Fox News anchor, the network’s White House correspondent, and two of its prime-time hosts all apparently decided to lie to their audiences on Tuesday about a dispute over when Donald Trump last spoke to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with each dissembling over what Trump or Newsom said rather than admitting that the president was wrong. And Trump’s own furious response to an inaccurate Fox chyron apparently set off that Orwellian chain of events. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/foxs-bizarre-lies-shield-viewers-fact-trump-was-wrong-about-newsom-call

Rt. Wing Calls Protestors “Invaders”?

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Article in The Guardian by Adam Gabbatt, 6/11/25

Headline:  “As military is deployed to LA, rightwing media decry protesters as ‘invaders’”

Subhead:  “From Newsmax to Charlie Kirk, outlets and podcasts are calling for ‘hard actions’, arrests and the Insurrection Act”

“There were unsavory scenes in Los Angeles over the weekend, as police used teargas and ‘less-lethal munitions’ on thousands of people gathered to protest against the arrest of undocumented immigrants.

The events playing out on rightwing TV channels and in the conservative podcasting realm were almost as miserable, as excitable media figures decried protesters as “invaders”, called for both the mass arrest of elected officials and the invocation of a two-century old laws and used the chaos to push racist conspiracy theories.

It came as the Trump administration said the military will remain on the ground in LA for two months . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/11/la-ice-protests-trump-rightwing-fox-charlie-kirk