Media in the Cauldron?


Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 6/30/35

Headline:  “Boiling Frogs”

Subhead:   “How the press is faring halfway through a turbulent year.”

“Around a year ago, I tried, in this newsletter, to zoom out and take stock of what sort of media moment we were then in, roughly halfway through a hugely consequential year. I concluded that the moment felt muddled. At the time, a variety of right-wing media grifters and conspiracy theorists appeared to be facing long-awaited accountability for blatant lies, leading some observers to conclude that it was a good moment for the truth. And yet mainstream news organizations often seen as guarantors of the truth appeared to be in a state of malaise, too, at least compared with the energy and purpose they exhibited in the early part of Donald Trump’s first term. . .”

“. . . I’m not seeing a complacent journalistic corps failing to understand the stakes of this moment. I just wish those had been more universally understood earlier. Around this time last year, say.

“Fortunately for us all, the old saw about boiling frogs is a myth. When the water around them gets hot enough, they tend to jump out of it.”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/boiling-frogs-how-press-doing-halfway-year-2025.php

A Media Icon Has Died

“Democracy Now” photo – Public media is NOT state-controlled media

Article in Common Dreams by Steven Harper, 6/30/25

Headline:  “A Personal Tribute to Bill Moyers, Who Never Stopped Pushing”

Subhead: “I would never claim to be an heir to Bill Moyers’ legacy, but I am among the millions of ordinary Americans for whom he was a powerful source of inspiration:

“A partial summary of Bill Moyers’ impressive life fills entire pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post—treatment reserved for royalty and rock stars. Bill was both.

“In those pages you’ll read about his illustrious political career as President Lyndon Johnson’s special assistant, press secretary, and key architect of the “Great Society”—a collection of programs that are now in danger, including the War on Poverty that produced Medicare, Medicaid, the Food Stamp Act, and the Economic Opportunity Act; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965; and more.

Read the full article at:

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/bill-moyers

– – – – –
Article in The Washington Post by Fred A. Bernstein, 6/26/25

Headline: “Bill Moyers, eminence of public affairs broadcasting, dies at 91”

“He was White House press secretary under Lyndon B. Johnson and Newsday publisher before becoming an acclaimed television journalist, mostly for PBS.”

“Bill Moyers, who served as chief White House spokesman for President Lyndon B. Johnson and then, for more than 40 years, as a broadcast journalist known for bringing ideas — both timely and timeless — to television, died June 26 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 91. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/06/26/bill-moyers-lbj-pbs-broadcasting-dead/

– – – – –

Article in Democracy Now by Staff: 6/26/25

Headline:  “Remembering Bill Moyers: Public Broadcasting Legend Dies at 91”

“The legendary journalist Bill Moyers has died at the age of 91. In the 1960s, Moyers was a founding organizer of the Peace Corps and served as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson. . .”

“In 2011 Bill Moyers said on Democracy Now: ‘I think this country is in a very precarious state at the moment. I think, as I say, the escalating, accumulating power of organized wealth is snuffing out everything public, whether it’s public broadcasting, public schools, public unions, public parks, public highways. Everything public has been under assault since the late 1970s, the early years of the Reagan administration, because there is a philosophy that’s been extant in America for a long time that anything public is less desirable than private. . ”

Read the full article at:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/26/remembering_bill_moyers_public_broadcasting_legend

Changing Media Horses?


Article in Status by Jon Passantino, 6/28/25

Headline:  “Gavin Takes Off the Gloves”

Subhead:  “Gavin Newsom spent months cozying up to MAGA media – now he’s suing Fox News for $787 Million, signaling a sharp break from his flirtation with the far right”

“After months of cozying up to the far right—hosting MAGA extremists on his podcast where he offered them praise, and trying on a strange ‘reach across the aisle’ persona—the California governor made a sharp reversal. On Friday, the likely 2028 contender filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, alleging the network manipulated video footage to falsely portray him as lying about a phone call with Donald Trump. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.status.news/p/gavin-newsom-fox-news-lawsuit

 

Leave the Reporting to . . .?


Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Julie Gerstein and Margaret Sullivan, 6/26/25

Headline:  “Can AI Tools Meet Journalistic Standards?

Subhead:  “So far, the results are spotty.”

“Tech companies promise that AI tools can do more with less—so perhaps they can help news outlets survive declining subscription sales and evaporating advertising revenue. Certainly, AI is being used effectively by some journalists to crunch numbers at lightning speed and make sense of vast databases. . .”

But more than two years after the public release of large language models (LLMs), the promise that the media industry might benefit from AI seems unlikely to bear out, or at least not fully. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/can-ai-tools-meet-journalistic-standards.php

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Article in Poynter by Jennifer Orsi, 6/26/25

Headline:  “A lot has changed since we created AI ethics guidelines for newsrooms. Here’s what you need to know now”

Subhead:  “We’ve updated Poynter’s ‘starter kit’ for newsrooms to build AI policies,
including sections for visual journalists and product teams”

“More than a year ago, the Poynter Institute published a ‘starter kit’ for newsrooms to create their own ethics policies for using artificial intelligence in their journalism. AI use in newsrooms has grown swiftly since then — and gotten more complex — and the team behind the starter kit has just published a new update, adding more information for visual journalism and for those developing products in newsrooms. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/a-lot-has-changed-since-we-created-ai-ethics-guidelines-for-newsrooms-heres-what-you-need-to-know-now/

TV Network Validates Climate Change


Article in The Nation by Mark Hertsgaard, 6/26/25

Headline: CBS News Leans Into the Climate Connection”

Subhead:  “Since Trump’s election, the network has produced more than 60 stories on the climate crisis.”

For years, most TV newscasts have neglected to make the climate connection with the kind of extreme heat blasting much of North America this week. In the summer of 2024, for example, when record high temperatures brutalized outdoor workers, withered crops, and worsened hurricanes, only 12 percent of US national TV news segments mentioned climate change, though its role in driving such extreme heat has long been scientifically indisputable.

“This week, CBS News decisively broke that pattern. David Schechter, the network’s national environment correspondent, aired two pieces that left no doubt that the ghastly heat afflicting tens of millions of Americans is climate change in action. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/cbs-news-climate-journalism/

Old Media Blowing in the Wind?


Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop 6/24/25

Headline:  “Old Media Meets New on Primary Day in New York”

Subhead:  “Is the race between Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani a proxy for changes in our media environment?”

“. . . If old media is now irrelevant in shaping voter perceptions, someone seemingly forgot to tell the Mamdani supporters (and others) who have criticized coverage of the candidate in major outlets, particularly when it comes to his positions on Israel. (Writing for In These Times earlier this month, Adam Johnson accused the Times of trying to manufacture tension between Mamdani and Jewish voters when he was not polling notably badly with that group; Lach, of The New Yorker, wrote yesterday that ‘outlets like the New York Post and the Free Press have tried to make him a bogeyman,’ though Lach allowed that ‘part of the reason that reporters have kept asking Mamdani about Israel is because his answer isn’t very convincing.’ . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/old-new-media-new-york-primary-cuomo-mamdani-brad-lander.php

– – – – –

Article in AP by David Bauder, 6/24/25

Headline:  “Life on the other side: Refugees from ‘old media’ flock to the promise of working for themselves”

“Six months ago, Jennifer Rubin had no idea whether she’d make it in a new media world. She just knew it was time to leave The Washington Post, where she’d been a political columnist for 15 years.

The Contrarian, the democracy-focused website that Rubin founded with partner Norm Eisen in January, now has 10 employees and contributors like humorist Andy Borowitz and White House reporter April Ryan. Its 558,000 subscribers also get recipes and culture dispatches.

“In the blink of an eye, Rubin became a independent news entrepreneur. ‘I think we hit a moment, just after inauguration, when people were looking for something different and it has captured people’s imaginations,’ she says. ‘We’ve been having a ball with it.’

YouTube, Substack, TikTok and others are spearheading a full-scale democratization of media and a generation of new voices and influencers . . .”

read the full article at:

https://apnews.com/article/new-media-mainstream-substack-youtube-influencers-076dfb132475aa42c3e4ebe81f63eb9a

Media Caught Off-Guard


Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 5/23/25

Headline:  “Opinion | ‘Extraordinary and unprecedented’: The media reaction to Trump’s Iran attack”

Subhead:  “Trump’s order to bomb Iran drew sharp media scrutiny over its timing, global risks and potential to drag the US into war”

“Stunning news broke Saturday night when it was learned the United States, under the orders of President Donald Trump, bombed three sites in Iran in an effort to dismantle that country’s nuclear program. . .”

“So, what has been some of the media reaction?. . .”

“Speaking on MSNBC, host Rachel Maddow said, ‘There have been factions within U.S. politics who have advocated for the United States to go to war with Iran for decades. President Trump is generally politically credited with standing in opposition to those kinds of factions in U.S. politics. But he has now made their dreams come true without really making a case to the U.S. public that there is a need to urgently act right now, to have done this — and that has a few different consequences’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/trump-iran-airstrikes-media-reaction/

Sinking Media Outlet?


Article in AP by Staff, 6/23/25

Headline:  “With its stock in sharp decline, Trump’s media company will buy $400 million of its own shares”

“President Donald Trump’s media company plans to buy back up to $400 million of its stock, which have lost 46% of their value this year. . .”

“The company said early this year that it lost $400.9 million in 2024 and its annual revenue declined 12% to $3.6 million.

“After winning the U.S. presidential election in November, Trump transferred all of his shares in the company — worth around $4 billion on paper — as a gift to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Trump’s shares amounted to more than half of the company’s stock. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-media-buyback-stock-truth-social-385a1389bbc8508477fb272a4bfcf179

Run or Collaborate?


Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 6/18/25

Headline:  “Opinion | Should journalism embrace AI? Or run from it?”

Subhead:  “In the latest episode of ‘The Poynter Report Podcast,’ Alex Mahadevan explores what AI means for journalism and why reporters may not need to panic”

“. . .Should journalism run from AI? Or embrace it? Why are we scared of it? How can we put AI to good use? And how can we avoid the dangers of AI?

“And, what I wanted to know most of all: Are journalists someday going to become obsolete b . . .”cause some AI tool is going to produce its own newspaper? (And, gulp, newsletter?). . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/should-journalism-embrace-ai-or-run-from-it/

Media History Repeated?


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