News about the media.
Article in the Washington Post by Eric Wemple, 3/3/25
Headline: “Erik Wemple answered your questions on the media”
Subhead: “Erik’s Q&A with readers was at 12 p.m. ET on Monday, March 3. Read the transcript.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/03/erik-wemple-media-live-chat/
Article in The Guardian by Lois Beckett, 3/3/25
Headline: “LA Times to display AI-generated political rating on opinion pieces”
Subhead: “Los Angeles paper’s ‘Insights’ tool comes after months of public debate between opinion staff and billionaire owner”
“Some Los Angeles Times opinion pieces will now be published with an artificial intelligence-generated rating of their political content, and an AI-generated list of alternative political views on that issue, the paper’s biotech billionaire owner announced on Monday.
“The new AI “Insights” feature will only be applied to a range of opinion content in the paper, not its news reporting, according to a public letter announcing the change from Patrick Soon-Shiong, the medical entrepreneur who bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018.
“he AI-generated tool “operates independently” from the paper’s human journalists, and “the AI content is not reviewed by journalists before it is published”, the Los Angeles Times noted in a summary of the new feature.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/03/la-times-ai-opinion-rating
Podcast on NPR On he Media, by staff 2/28/25
Headline: “The New ‘State Media.’ Plus, Podcasters Are Running the FBI.”
“Breaking from a century of tradition, the White House says it will seize control of the press pool covering the president. On this week’s On the Media, the new administration is prioritizing access for an array of far-right influencers and news outlets. . . ”
“Host Brooke Gladstone sits down with Anna Merlan, senior reporter at Mother Jones covering disinformation, technology, and extremism, to discuss the White House’s latest move to control the press pool covering the president. Host Micah Loewinger speaks with Brandy Zadrozny, senior reporter at NBC News covering the internet, to discuss the rise of Dan Bongino, from right wing podcaster to Donald Trump’s new pick for Deputy Director of the FBI, and his history of anti-FBI rhetoric.”
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538775/on-the-media
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Article in Mother Jones by Anna Merlan, 2/25/25
Headline: “Meet the New State Media”
Subhead: “How the second Trump administration grants access and status to conspiracy theorists, propagandists, and far-right influencers.”
“. . . From the moment Trump returned to office, his second administration has prioritized giving access and status to an array of far-right influencers and news outlets, including figures with checkered pasts and thin or nonexistent journalistic credentials. In doing so, the administration has created a swell of flattering media coverage, a gauzy bubble around its every decision, no matter how destructive or incoherent. This new state media displays unquestioning loyalty, and its propaganda pipeline is speedier than ever, ensuring that every executive order or new move by the Department of Government Efficiency is greeted with rapturous pseudo-reporting the moment it’s announced.
As part of this new order, the White House press briefing room is now chock-full of conservative podcasters, influencers, and representatives of right-wing media outlets. Nine days after Trump reassumed office, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to the podium for her first briefing to announce that the White House would encourage what she called ‘new media voices’ to apply for press passes, including ‘independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators.’
“ ‘Starting today,’ she added, ‘this seat in the front of the room, which is usually occupied by the press secretary staff, will be called the “new media” seat. . .’
“This new crop of people who have been given extremely good access are not journalists.
“ ‘For the most part, this new crop of people who have been given extremely good access are not journalists in the traditional sense ‘ says Margaret Sullivan, executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia University and a former public editor for the New York Times.
“ ‘They’re closer to propagandists than journalists,’ Sullivan adds. ‘I don’t know if you could call it ‘coverage. It’s positive exposure for the Trump administration. They’ll be part of a cheering squad.’ ”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/donald-trump-press-room-conservative-media/
Article in FAIR by Ari Paul, 2/26/25
Headline: “FCC’s Knives Are Out for First Amendment”
“Brendan Carr, newly appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, is waging a war on the news media, perhaps the most dangerous front in de jure President Donald Trump and de facto President Elon Musk’s quest to destroy freedom of the press and the First Amendment.
“Trump’s FCC has revived right-wing requests to sanction TV stations over their election coverage—complaints that had previously been dismissed by the FCC as incompatible with the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press. . .”
https://fair.org/home/fccs-knives-are-out-for-first-amendment/
Article in The Guardian by Anna Betts, 2/28/25
Headline: “Ex-Washington Post editor Marty Baron rebukes Bezos: ‘betrayal of free expression’ “
Subhead: “Lauded former editor ‘appalled’ by billionaire newspaper owner’s overhaul of opinion section to narrow focus”
“Marty Baron, a highly regarded former editor of the Washington Post, has said that Jeff Bezos’s announcement that the newspaper’s opinion section would narrow its editorial focus was a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression” that had left him ‘appalled’.
“In an interview with The Guardian, Baron also said: .’I don’t think that [Bezos] wants an editorial page that’s regularly going after Donald Trump.’
“On Wednesday, the billionaire newspaper owner and Amazon founder sent an email to Post staffers announcing that the newspaper’s editorial section would shift its editorial focus and that only opinions that support and defend “personal liberties” and “free markets” would be welcome, and other viewpoints ‘will be left to be published by others’.
“Bezos’s announcement was met with criticism and resulted in the departure of the newspaper’s opinions editor, David Shipley. Baron, who was executive editor of the Washington Post from 2012 until 2021 and is one of the most esteemed figures in American journalism, blasted Bezos’s decision.
“There’s been a long tradition at the Post of having a variety of opinions on the opinion pages and that’s part of its heritage,” Baron said. ‘Bezos supported that since he acquired the paper, he advocated for that internally, but his most recent decision represents a real betrayal of the heritage of the Post and a betrayal of the very idea of free expression.’ ”
“Baron said that news organizations including the Post have traditionally honored the principle of free expression by allowing a wide variety of views on the opinion pages, but that Bezos’s decision on Wednesday ‘does exactly the opposite’ and ‘dishonors free expression, which is the most fundamental personal liberty of American citizens’ ”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/marty-baron-jeff-bezos-washington-post
Article in The New Republic by Staff, 2/26/25
Headline: “Trump vs. the Media: He Won Round One, but He’s Going to Lose Bigly”
Subhead: “A judge kinda-sorta found for the White House against the Associated Press. But Trumpworld is pushing things way too far.”
“The White House has been wrongly emboldened by Monday’s District Court decision denying a request by the Associated Press to immediately restore its full access to the White House press pool. The White House pulled AP’s access because the news organization continues to employ the term ‘Gulf of Mexico’ rather than Trump’s preferred ‘Gulf of America.’
In the wake of the decision, press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced a general policy of the White House determining which news outlets can staff the pool. The change breaks with a practice of over 100 years in which the White House Correspondents’ Association determined the press pool membership. New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker, one of the most eminent reporters in the country, wrote on social media, ‘Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access.’
“. . .The adjudication of the press pool exclusions will be a major test of the courts and not just district judges like Judge McFadden but the Courts of Appeals, where the issue will be decided. And if those courts, including the Supreme Court, fail to come through and issue lawless rulings upholding Trump’s tyrannical moves, our best hopes were already misplaced.
https://newrepublic.com/article/192015/trump-won-associated-press-media-lose
Article in The New York Times by Peter Baker, 2/26/25
Headline: “In Trump’s Washington, a Moscow-Like Chill Takes Hold”
Subhead: “A new administration’s efforts to pressure the news media, punish political opponents and tame the nation’s tycoons evoke the early days of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reign in Russia.”
“She asked too many questions that the president didn’t like. She reported too much about criticism of his administration. And so, before long, Yelena Tregubova was pushed out of the Kremlin press pool that covered President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“In the scheme of things, it was a small moment, all but forgotten nearly 25 years later. But it was also a telling one. Mr. Putin did not care for challenges. The rest of the press pool got the message and eventually became what the Kremlin wanted it to be: a collection of compliant reporters who knew to toe the line or else they would pay a price.
“The decision by President Trump’s team to handpick which news organizations can participate in the White House press pool that questions him in the Oval Office or travels with him on Air Force One is a step in a direction that no modern American president of either party has ever taken. The White House said it was a privilege, not a right, to have such access, and that it wanted to open space for “new media” outlets, including those that just so happen to support Mr. Trump.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/us/politics/trump-putin-russia.html#
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Article in the Columbia Journalism Review by Paul Farhi, 2/26/25
Headline: “Will Others Dive into the White House Press Pool?”
Subhead: “Given the expense of traveling with the president, Trump’s efforts to replace mainstream outlets with far-right media may fail.”
“From its semiformal beginning, in the late 1930s, the White House press pool solved a basic problem of physics: How could a lot of reporters have access to the president’s words and images when only a few of them could fit into the room he was occupying? . . .”
“For decades, pool members have been chosen by an independent organization, the White House Correspondents’ Association. Drawing from a list of volunteers, the WHCA organizes the print, audio, and TV pools that tail the president when he travels or speaks inside the White House. The White House hasn’t had a direct role, other than distributing the print pool’s periodic reports to thousands of recipients from a central email account. This noninvolvement was by design; it left reporters free to make their own decisions about who was qualified to report.
“The Trump White House now wants to blow all that up. . . ”
Article in The Guardian by Staff, 2/26/25
Headline: “Trump threatens to sue media after Wall Street Journal editorial criticizes tariffs”
Subhead: “Journal argued Trump’s tariff plans would harm ‘US auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan’ “
“Wall Street Journal editorial slamming Donald Trump’s tariff plans as terrible for the US economy and auto industry prompted a broadside from the president on Wednesday followed by threats to sue the media.
“In an opinion piece titled Trump’s Tariffs Will Punish Michigan, the Journal argued Trump’s tariff plans would harm ‘US auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan’.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/feb/26/trump-wall-street-journal-tariffs
Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Steven Mufson, 2/25/25
Headline: “The Real Story of the Washington Post’s Editorial Independence”
Subhead: “When the Kamala Harris endorsement was spiked, the publisher cited tradition. A closer reading of history tells a different story.”
“Not far from the last desk I occupied after thirty-five years at the Washington Post was the wall that lists all of the paper’s Pulitzer Prizes, trophies of its journalistic success. Tour guides would walk visitors up there and note with reverence the stars—the Woodwards and Bernsteins—as well as dozens of other staffers recognized for international affairs, investigative digging, criticism, the attack on the US Capitol, and more. . .”
“ ‘We all of us know, finally and fundamentally, that freedom of speech, freedom of education, freedom of the press, are the essential guarantees of that liberty without which a nation is only a hollow shell,” Morley said in accepting his Pulitzer, “regardless of the size of its army, the extent of its territory, or the millions of poor sheeplike helots which it may harbor.’
“Ninety years later, Morley and Meyer would be dismayed to see what has happened to the newspaper they did so much to reshape. Competitors—the New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal—are poaching many of the Post’s most talented reporters, and large portions of its readership have dropped their subscriptions. . .”
But what’s needed isn’t a new platitude or slogan (Bezos gave the Post “Democracy Dies in Darkness”) or unrealistic financial goals. What’s needed is a simple declaration like the one Meyer and Morley placed atop the editorial page: ‘The Washington Post: An Independent Newspaper. . .’ ”
Article in The New York Times by Michael M. Grynbaym, 2/25/25
Headline: “White House Moves to Pick the Pool Reporters Who Cover Trump”
Subhead: “In announcing plans to handpick the reporters who can ask the president questions, the White House is breaking decades of precedent.”
“The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential pool, the small, rotating group of journalists who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public.
The change announced by Ms. Leavitt breaks decades of precedent. The White House Correspondents’ Association, a group representing journalists who cover the administration, has long determined on its own which reporters would participate in the daily pool.
“Because presidents often hold events in smaller settings like the Oval Office, where not every reporter who covers the president can fit, the pool format has long been used to ensure that journalists accurately record a president’s comments. The reporters who witness the events distribute a series of ‘pool reports’ to a wider group of journalists, including hundreds of news outlets that cover his daily activities and remarks.
Ms. Leavitt said that the new policy was intended to allow “new media” outlets — such as digital sites, streaming services and podcasts — “to share in this awesome responsibility.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association rebuked the move in a blistering statement.
“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” Eugene Daniels, the president of the association, wrote. “It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps. . . .”
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5163291-white-house-press-pool-ap/