Media News

News about the media.

Peaceful Tourists Visit Media

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Article in Media Matters by Payton Armstrong & Jack Winstanley, 1/24/25

Headline:  “January 6 participants are touring right-wing media and calling for retribution following Trump’s pardon”

Subhead:  “Some say those who prosecuted the crimes should be “put behind bars” and face “extreme accountability”

Trump issued “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to January 6 participants, including “violent offenders,” and commuted the sentences of members of extremist groups who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. According to The New York Times, “The pardons will also wipe the slate clean for violent offenders who went after the police on Jan. 6 with baseball bats, two-by-fours and bear spray and are serving prison terms, in some cases of more than a decade. ”

“. . . Right-wing media praised the move while glossing over pardons and commutations granted to those previously convicted of violent crimes or seditious conspiracy. On War Room, Steve Bannon celebrated “blanket” pardons. On Fox News, OutKick founder Clay Travis declared, ‘I love the pardon of the Jan 6 political prisoners.’ [Media Matters, 1/21/25; Real America’s Voice, War Room, 1/21/25; Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 1/21/25]

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/january-6-participants-are-touring-right-wing-media-and-calling-retribution

Media Hiding Out Now?

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Article in The Nation by Jeet Heer, 1/24/25Headline:  “CNN Surrenders to Trump”

Headline:  “The corporate media’s commitment to fighting autocracy proves fickle.”

“US President Donald Trump points to journalist Jim Acosta from CNN during a postelection press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on November 7, 2018. ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome journalist?’ (Jim Watson / AFP)

“CNN anchor Jim Acosta is fated to be a barometer of his network’s relationship with Donald Trump. During Trump’s first term, Acosta’s tough questioning at press conferences gave CNN credibility as a news outlet uncowed by the president’s bullying and willing to uphold the principle of accountability. In 2018, Trump denounced Acosta as a ‘rude, terrible person’ and the White House revoked Acosta’s press pass. CNN sued Trump and his top aides on behalf of Acosta, successfully forcing the White House to give the reporter back his press pass.

“If Acosta’s jousting with Trump was once celebrated by CNN, it has now become a source of shame. With Trump winning not just a second term but also having, for the first time, a popular vote victory (however narrow), CNN and other corporate media outlets have been thoroughly cowed.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/cnn-surrender-trump-corporate-media/

Saluting the Media?

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Article in Common Dreams by Pete Tucker, 1/24/25

Headline:  “Why Won’t the US Corporate Media Call a Nazi Salute a Nazi Salute?”

Subhead:  “The mainstream press failed to accurately describe the hand gesture that Elon Musk made twice at Trump’s Inauguration Day rally, setting a troubling precedent for the second Trump era.”

“There’s something about the start of a Trump presidency that makes grown men do strange things, like heiling Hitler.

“Eight years ago, after President Donald Trump’s first election, white nationalist Richard Spencer couldn’t resist flashing a Nazi salute as he addressed a rally just blocks from the White House (PBS, 11/22)”

“This time around, a more prominent Trump supporter gave a Nazi salute in a bigger forum. “I never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the presidential seal,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter/X (1/20/25).”

“. . .The Times story was headlined, “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture.”

“But speculation wasn’t needed. ‘Whoever on a political stage, making a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler salute,’ wrote journalist Lenz Jacobsen. His story for the German newspaper Die Zeit (1/21/25) is headlined ‘A Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute.‘ ”

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-musk-nazi-salute

 

Right-Wing Media All Wet

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Article in Media Matters by Alison Fisher, 1/24/25

Headline:  “Trump’s executive order on California water policy canonized right-wing media misinformation about the LA fires”

Subhead:  “CNN’s Daniel Dale fact-checks Trump’s claims that CA water policy exacerbated LA fires “

“On January 20, as part of his day one executive orders, President Donald Trump directed several U.S. agencies to restart a policy from his first term that reroutes water from Northern California to Southern California. The order ties Trump’s policy to the devastating fires in California that are so far responsible for 28 deaths and more than $250 billion in damages, effectively canonizing the false right-wing media claim that current California water policy impeded efforts to contain the LA fires.

“Right-wing media wildfire misinformation underpins Trump’s executive order on California water policy

“At the outset of the LA fires, the most costly in California history, Trump blamed “federal and state protections for California’s endangered delta smelt fish. He falsely claimed that those regulations led to inadequate water availability for firefighting efforts.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/wildfire/trumps-executive-order-california-water-policy-canonized-right-wing-media-misinformation

Press Secretary & Media

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 1/22/25

Headline:  “On Free Speech and Speaking Freely”

“Yesterday, Karoline Leavitt, the new White House press secretary, appeared on Fox & Friends. She was asked whether, at her first press briefing, she would have to painstakingly consult a binder before answering reporters’ questions—a snarky reference to her Biden-era predecessor Karine Jean-Pierre. Leavitt replied that she might bring in some notes, but that ‘my binder is in my brain, because I know President Trump’s policies, and we have truth on our side’—but she then revealed that there wouldn’t actually be a briefing later on; instead, the press would be hearing directly from Trump, who would be making a ‘big infrastructure announcement.’ Online, liberal pundits quipped that it must be ‘infrastructure week’ again.”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/free_speech_executive_order_trump.php

Right Wing Media Questions

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Article in The Righting by Howard Polskin, 1/22/25

Headline:  “10 Questions About Right Wing Media in 2025”

“Right wing media backed the right pony in 2024. After many websites and pundits flirted with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023, almost all outlets planted themselves behind Donald Trump and against the aging Joe Biden who became a right wing media punchline and punching bag. On the surface, all seems well in MAGA media world today. But there are questions large and small that could reshape the conservative landscape for years to come. Some questions may seem crazy, but in a world where Matt Gaetz was nominated as the country’s Attorney General, anything is possible.

https://therighting.com/original/10-questions-about-right-wing-media-in-2025/

News Needs Watering

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Article in Poynter by Mark Caro, 1/23/25

Headline:  “In America’s news deserts, Meta’s retreat from fact-checking severs a last link to fact-based news”

Subhead:  “Meta’s policy reversal and increase in political content could mean more misinformation for communities lacking local news”

“Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook is eliminating fact-checking may amount to a double whammy for people living in this country’s ever-expanding news deserts.

“Having lost their primary local news sources, these communities often turn to social media and other alternatives to try to stay informed. Now one of those key sources is removing safeguards against the spread of misinformation.

“It’s absolutely correct that it’s in areas that are underserved by professional journalism that this move will have the harshest impact,” said Lucas Graves, author of the 2016 book ‘Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism.’ ”

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2025/effect-facebook-fact-checking-partnership-news-deserts/

Tik Tok Media Clock Not Ticking Now

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Article in Mother Jones by Anna Merlan, 1/20/25

Headline:  “As TikTok Negotiates with Trump, Every Major Social Media Company Has Caved to the New President”

Subhead:  “Online life has “been taken over by the right wing,” warns Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”


“. . . Over the weekend, Tik Tok very briefly died in the United States before being reborn some 12 hours later, bearing a jaunty new banner. ‘As a result of President Trump’s efforts,’ it read, in part, ‘ Tik Tok is back in the U.S.’ The biggest tech and social media companies have consolidated behind Trump. . .”

“Trump was not yet president on Sunday, when TikTok began restoring U.S. access despite a Supreme Court ruling Friday upholding a law meant to ban it. But the deeper message was unmistakable: the Chinese-owned company ByteDance and its CEO Shou Zi Chew would do anything to placate Trump and keep its most profitable app online for American users. . .”

“. . . A day after the app’s American resurrection, Chew came to Washington for Trump’s inauguration, along with two other social media giants, Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Also present was Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple’s Tim Cook. . .”

“All of this, of course, points to one simple fact: the total consolidation of the biggest tech and social media companies behind the new president. ‘What this effectively means is that every social media platform, mass social media platform in the United States, has been taken over by the right wing,’ Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said in a Sunday video posted—ironically, but unavoidably—to Meta-owned Instagram.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/social-media-donald-trump/

Conservative Media Under Water?

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Article in Mediaite by Isaac Schorr, 1/21/26

Headline:  “Can Conservative Media Survive Trump’s Presidency?”

“. . .“Journalists exist to seek the truth, to tell people’s stories, to lift up voices that may not be heard otherwise, to shine a light on injustice and to hold the powerful accountable,” declared Acosta during a monologue. “We are not the enemy of the people. We are the defenders of the people. Walter Cronkite once said, ‘freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.’”

“. . . Right-wing publications and TV — supplemented now by podcasts, and Substacks, and social media addicts — rose out of the recognition that mainstream media was left-wing media. The groupthink was bad when National Review announced itself in 1955, worse when Fox News came on the block in 1996, and is downright intolerable now; a 2023 Syracuse University study found that just 3.4% of American journalists are Republicans. In such an environment, conservative truth-seeking is an imperative, not a luxury, not just for the GOP’s political prospects, but for the health of the country.

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/can-conservative-media-survive-trumps-presidency/

Fair-Weather Media

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Article in The Nation by Wen Stepenson, 1/21/25

Headline:  “In Our New Climate Reality, There Is No Getting Back to Normal”

Subhead:  “The media is failing to warn us about the scale of the disasters that lie ahead. In Los Angeles, as everywhere, we need more than liberal technocratic tweaks”

” ‘We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt.… We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.’ ”

So begins the latest “State of the Climate Report” by an international group of 14 leading climate scientists from the United States, Europe, Australia, China, and Brazil, declaring in no uncertain terms that we have entered what’s coming to be known as the Age of Consequences. . .”

You might think the harrowing scenes of Los Angeles burning would elicit a similar reckoning in our national conversation, but almost nothing resembling those stark, factual, and, yes, alarming sentences will be found in the pages of our august organs of elite opinion. Rather than such clear language about our global emergency—the all-important context in which LA’s situation must be understood—the mainstream response has largely sought to contain the wildfire narrative within an Overton window of acceptable, i.e., unalarming, discourse. Much of the media is treating LA’s tragedy as extraordinary, yes, and somehow related to climate change, but ultimately manageable and preventable—if only smarter state and local policies and protocols are implemented.

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/climate-reality-fires-los-angeles/
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