Media Turmoil

Do Words Matter in Journalism?

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Article in The Guardian by Seth Stern & Clayton Weimers, 12/18/25

Headline:  “Brendan Carr admits his FCC is Trump’s journalism police”

Subhead:  “It is clear that the FCC is not an independent agency, but an instrument of the president’s political agenda”

“The Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, admitted at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that there had been a political “sea change” and he no longer viewed the FCC as an independent agency. Commissioners, he says, serve at the pleasure of the president. . .”

“By scrubbing references to independence from the FCC website after admitting the agency answers to Trump, Carr has made explicit what his actions already demonstrated. He could not have made a better argument for the dangers of letting the public interest standard serve as the government’s backdoor into the newsroom.”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/18/brendan-carr-fcc-trump-journalism-police

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 12/18/25

Headline:  “Opinion | Why a single word disappearing from the FCC’s website matters for press freedom”

Subhead:  “FCC Chair Brendan Carr says the agency is not ‘independent,’ sharpening concerns about political pressure on the media”

“If you went to the Federal Communications Commission website first thing Wednesday morning, you would have read the following:

“ ‘An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.’

“Note the word: independent. . .”

“. . . Carr stunned everyone by saying, ‘The FCC is not an independent agency, formally speaking.’

“A short time later, the word ‘independent’ was removed from the FCC’s site. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/fcc-chair-brendan-carr-independent/

Media in Crisis?

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Interview in The New Republic by Perry Bacon, 12/17/25

Headline:  “Transcript: America’s Three Media Crises and How to Fix Them”

Subhead:  “University of Pennsylvania media scholar Victor Pickard says that a robust system of public-funded media is essential for America democracy. “

“Victor Pickard: . . .’So I would identify the three major problems facing the U.S. today in terms of our media system and how it functions within a democratic society would be the collapse of local journalism, the defunding of our public media, and the what we might think of as runaway consolidation of our news media’. . .”

Read the full interview at:

https://newrepublic.com/article/204495/transcript-america-three-media-crises-fix

Report on Journalist Attacks

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jem Barthomew, 12/15/25

Headline:  “Reporting with One Hand Tied”

Subhead:  “A new report documents a hostile environment for US journalists this year, with 32 arrests and 170 assaults.”

“. . .The report, shared exclusively with CJR, also records one hundred and seventy assaults against journalists this year—nearly as many as across the previous three years combined. Reporters have been bludgeoned and shot at and pepper-sprayed and shoved by officers of the law this year. Multiple instances saw equipment seized, or damaged to the cost of thousands of dollars. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/reporting-with-one-hand-tied.php

Where Are Media Mergers Heading?

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Article in Electronic Frontier Foundation by Katherine Trendacosta, 12/10/25

Headline: “The Best Big Media Merger Is No Merger at All”

“. . .It’s important to recognize this as we see more and more media mergers. These mergers are not about quality, they’re about control. . .”

“. . .Media companies keep announcing mergers and acquisitions. They’ve been doing it for a long time, but it’s really ramped up in the last few years. And these mergers are bad for all the obvious reasons. There are the speech and censorship reasons that came to a head in, of all places, late night television. There are the labor issues. There are the concentration of power issues. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/best-big-media-merger-no-merger-all

Media Decimation

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Article in Status by Natalie Korach, 12/10/25

Headline:  “Media’s Unhappy Holidays”

Subhead:  “Penske Media cuts mark the latest tremors in a brutal year for media jjobs, as rolling layoffs and mergers leave newsrooms across the country in an anxious holding pattern.

“Barely a few months after imposing a new return-to-office mandate—a move seen internally as an effort to thin the ranks—Jay Penske has quietly moved to initiate another round of cuts within his Hollywood media empire, Status has learned. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.status.news/p/media-layoffs-penske-washington-post-cbs-news

MAGA Media and Women

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Article in Media Matters by John Knefel, 12/10/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media are poised to escalate attacks on women as MAGA cracks emerge”

Subhead:  “As MAGA begins to fracture, elements of the coalition may seek to rally behind anti-feminism”

“The right-wing media and policy ecosystem appears poised to escalate its attacks on the basic rights of women as a weakened President Donald Trump lurches toward the end of the first year of his second term. The campaign to roll back decades of material gains for women is coming from both the gutter sexists and the would-be high-brow elements of the conservative media world, and it could serve as a rallying point for an increasingly fractured MAGA movement. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/right-wing-media-are-poised-escalate-attacks-women-maga-cracks-emerge

Mega-Media Monsters Good?

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Article in Democracy Now! by Staff, 12/9/25

Headline:  ” ‘Merger Madness’: Trump at Center of Rival Netflix-Paramount Bids for Warner Bros.”

“President Donald Trump says he will be personally involved in the potential sale of Warner Bros. Discovery, with two enormous buyout offers on the table that risk further exacerbating U.S. media concentration. Netflix announced an $83 billion deal last week to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which would give the tech giant control of the Warner Bros. movie studio and rival streaming service HBO Max. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/9/warner_bros_discovery_sale

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Article in Business Insider by Paige Bruton, Sarah Jackson, and Henry Chandonnet; 12/9/25

Headline: “Meet David Ellison, the 42-year-old Paramount Skydance CEO trying to throw a monkey wrench in Netflix’s plan”

“David Ellison is officially the CEO of Paramount Skydance. After a successful Paramount merger, next on his wish list is Warner Bros. Discovery — and he’s launched a hostile takeover bid in an effort to scoop it out from Netflix’s hands. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-david-ellison-paramount-skydance-ceo-2025-12?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=BusinessInsider-post-rentertainment

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Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 12/8/25

Headline: “Ellison’s Endgame”

“What began as quiet courtship by David Ellison has morphed into a hostile takeover attempt of Warner Bros. Discover – with the battle only likely to get messier in the days ahead. . .”

Read the article at:

https://www.status.news/p/david-ellison-david-zaslav-warner-bros-paramount-bids

No Room in the Basket?

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Article in New York Times by John Koblin, 12/25/25

Headline:  “CNN, Unwanted by Netflix, Is Excluded From a Sale, for Now”

Subhead:  “The prospect of Paramount buying Warner Bros. Discovery had led CNN journalists to wonder if the channel might be combined with CBS News. Instead, CNN will remain in a separate corporate entity.”

“Netflix’s mega $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery has major implications for the entertainment industry, as well as the Warner Bros. film and TV studios and HBO.

“The fallout, at least for now, will be far less significant for CNN.

“The 24-hour news channel is conspicuously absent from the media entities that Netflix said on Friday it planned to acquire in its proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. . . ”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/business/media/cnn-netflix-warner-bros-discovery-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U8.DPP4.1A8q34iR9fB9&smid=url-share

Lack of Accurate News Bites Back?

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Article in The Washington Post by the editorial board, 12/5/25

Headline:  “Trump’s closure of Voice of America is coming back to bite him”

Subhead:  “As the president threatens Venezuela, Russia and China are filling the information vacuum.”

“President Donald Trump has said he won’t rule out anything when it comes to removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power. Yet he is missing an important tool from the arsenal: the Voice of America.

“Since Trump’s March executive order dismantling the news agency, most of VOA’s 1,300 staff members and contractors have been fired or placed on administrative leave, its website has been frozen and the 83-year-old broadcaster has gone dark for the first time since its founding during World War II. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/05/venezuela-voa-voice-of-america-maduro-trump/

Documenting Frivolous Press Lawsuits

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Liam Scott, 12/4/25

Headline:  “The SLAPP Problem Is Worse Than We Thought”

Subhead:  “As Donald Trump tests the limits of anti-press litigation, a new initiative aims to document the wave of nuisance suits.”

Press freedom advocates and media lawyers in the United States have long warned about the rise of frivolous lawsuits intended to intimidate and silence journalists through expensive legal battles. But despite anecdotal evidence, the problem has remained amorphous. No one has been able to say just how bad it is because no one has closely tracked the filings, known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs.

“A free speech group at New York University is trying to change that. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/slapp-lawsuit-problem-worse-trump-test-nuisance-limits-litigation.php