News about the media.
Article in Daiy kos by Lincoln Green, 1/4/25
Headline: “Mainstream media downplays pro-Trump terrorist bombing in Las Vegas”
“In “Why Are Publications Sugar-Coating Livelsberger’s Political Minifestos?”, Talking Points Memo’s ever-astute Josh Marshall points out something that’s been bugging me for a day about the Las Vegas Cybertruck suicide bombing by Matthew Livelsberger. ”
“. . . But why isn’t this pro-Trump terrorism being reported as such in the mass media?”
Article in Slashdot by Editor David, 1/4/25
Headline: “Advertisers Expand Their Avoidance to News Sites, Blacklisting Specific Words”
” ‘The Washington Post’s crossword puzzle was recently deemed too offensive for advertisers,’ reports the Wall Street Journal. ‘So was an article about thunderstorms. And a ranking of boxed brownie mixes.’
” ‘Marketers have long been wary about running ads in the news media, concerned that their brands will land next to pieces about terrorism or plane crashes or polarizing political stories.’ But That advertising no-go zone seems to keep widening.
“It is a headache that news publishers can hardly afford. Many are also grappling with subscriber declines and losses in traffic from Google and other tech platforms, and are now making an aggressive push to change advertisers’ perceptions… News organizations recently began publicizing studies that show it really isn’t dangerous for a brand to appear near a sensitive story. . . ”
Article in AP by Staff, 01/3/24
Headline: “Algerian social media influencer detained in France accused of calling for attacks”
“PARIS (AP) — French police on Friday detained a social media influencer from Algeria who is accused of calling on his followers to carry out attacks in France, Interior Minster Bruno Retailleau said.
“The arrest in the Brittany port city of Brest on France’s western coast comes as the country is preparing to mark the 10th anniversary next week of deadly January 2015 attacks in Paris against the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket.
“On Jan. 7, 2015, two French-born al-Qaida extremists stormed Charlie Hebdo’s newsroom and killed 12 people, including the chief editor, cartoonists and a policeman in a nearby street.”
https://apnews.com/article/france-algeria-tiktok-terror-arrest-8401d12ec0bd79140acbcb8cac543637
Article in Common Dreams by Phil Wilson, 1/2/25
Headline: “Why Don’t Lefty Media Emphasize Capitalism’s Greatest Crime—the Climate Crisis?”
Subhead: “The cause and effect linking industry to extinction ought to be the greatest horror story ever told. Our hands should be sweating as we shakily turn the pages.”
“If climate overheating is the biggest threat to life on Earth, one might expect that progressive platforms would be all over this issue. Of all the great crimes of capitalism—war, imperial conquest, siphoning pocket change from workers into bloated coffers of corporate wealth, shaking down ordinary people for a false promise of healthcare, buying up housing with private equity to spike rents, etc.—the baking of the biosphere stands out as an act of unprecedented, monstrous proportions.”
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/lefty-media-climate-crisis
Article in New York Times by Cecelia Kang, 1/2/25
Headline: “Net Neutrality Rules Struck Down by Appeals Court”
Subhead: “After nearly two decades of fighting, the battle over regulations that treat broadband providers as utilities came to an end on Thursday.”
“A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s landmark net neutrality rules on Thursday, ending a nearly two-decade effort to regulate broadband internet providers as utilities.
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, said the F.C.C. lacked the authority to reinstate rules that prevented broadband providers from slowing or blocking access to internet content. In its opinion, a three-judge panel pointed to a Supreme Court decision in June, known as Loper Bright, that overturned a 1984 legal precedent that gave deference to government agencies on regulations.
“Applying Loper Bright means we can end the F.C.C.’s vacillations,” the court ruled.
“The court’s decision put an end to the Biden administration’s hallmark tech policy, which had drawn impassioned support from consumer groups and tech giants like Google and fierce protests from telecommunications giants like Comcast and AT&T.”
Article in Poynter By Rick Edwards, 12/23/24
Headline: “Opinion | The most-read news stories of 2024? Lots of politics but some surprises, too”
Subhead: “On one major list, half of the top 10 were from CNN — including several true romance stories about ‘chance encounters’ “
“You would expect that in the feverish year now closing, politics would draw digital readers like no other topic. And you would be right. But audiences also spent a lot of time on engaging narratives, often about murders and violence, but not always.
“That’s the pattern in the 10th edition of Chartbeat’s annual ‘most engaging stories’ list — as measured in story-by-story minutes each is read on its 60,000 publisher client sites. Five of the top 10 stories were about the presidential race. But at the very top of the list was something else entirely: a CNN story on the arrest of the father of a school shooter near Atlanta who provided the gun.”
https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/top-news-stories-2024-chartbeat-cnn-new-york/
Article in The Guardian by Margaret Sullivan, 12/20/24
Headline: “US media is in big trouble – but I find far less to be worried about at the Guardian”
Subhead: “The US is in urgent need of well-funded, truly independent journalism in 2025”
“As a media critic and longtime journalist, I have serious worries about today’s news environment and its effect on democracy.
“I’m concerned about corporate or chain ownership of news outlets that can skew the decision-making and priorities of media leaders. The bottom line seems to loom larger, at times, than tried-and-true journalistic standards do.
“I’m concerned about declining trust in the press, which causes citizens to decide that they can’t believe anything they read or hear. That’s a dangerous situation for democracy, which must have truth as its firm foundation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/31/us-media-guardian
R. Crumb
Article in the Daily Beast by Janna Brancolini, 12/27/24
Headline: “Right-Wing Media’s Hilarious Self-Own Over Tulsi Gabbard”
Subhead: “Writers for the National Review are duking it out in print over Trump’s pick for head of national intelligence.”
“A writer for the right-wing National Review has eviscerated his own magazine for two editorials it ran in support of Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for head of national intelligence.
“The conservative-media stalwart had previously published pieces by former CIA counterterrorism director Bernard Hudson and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) arguing that decades of instability in the Middle East have eroded Americans’ faith in the intelligence community.”
Article in The Giardian by Cecelia Nowell, 12/28/24
Headline: “Trump’s threat to defund all US public media has NPR and PBS on the back foot”
Subhead: “President-elect’s agenda and Project 2025 playbook align in stripping Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s license”
“On the campaign trail this year, Donald Trump routinely criticized US media. The president-elect called for CBS to be stripped of its broadcast license after it aired an interview with Kamala Harris, refused to participate in an interview with 60 Minutes and routinely called journalists the “enemy of the people”.
“But perhaps no American media has attracted as much ire from the president-elect as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – a non-profit corporation created by federal law in 1967 to distribute funding to public media organizations like PBS and NPR. . . ”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/28/trump-npr-pbs-funding-cut
Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 12/27/24
Headline: “Kari Lake sparks concerns at Voice of America”
“President-elect Trump has nominated GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake to lead Voice of America (VOA), a decision that is renewing worries of partisan meddling at the government-funded global news agency.
“Lake, who ran for governor and senator in Arizona and previously was a local news anchor, is one of a number of loyalists Trump has called on to serve in his Cabinet and administration.
“. . .But Lake’s attacks on the media and history of floating unfounded theories about voter fraud are sparking widespread concern that the outlet could be used by the federal government as a megaphone to push pro-Trump propaganda around the world.”
https://thehill.com/media/5048504-trump-nominates-lake-voa-concerns/