Bleak Media Landscape in U.S.


Aricle in Daily Kos by Gdevo, 11/23/24

Headline:  “Why The Media Landscape in the United States is hard for Democracy”

“Is the internet & social media been good for our country or society? Our free press has always been a vulnerability, it is an opportunity for nefarious people to inject false and harmful ideas into the public domain, but the truth has mostly won by being right. The old adage ‘You can fool some of the people some of the time…’ is true until possibly today when the massive overpopulation of mis- and dis- information in conservative media may have the ability to fool most of the people most of the time.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/23/2288187/-Why-The-Media-Landscape-in-the-United-States-is-hard-for-Democracy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Bought the Election, Next All the Media?

R. Crumb

A real knee-slapping “joke”.

Article in The Hill by Filip Timotija, 11/23/24

Headline:  “Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk joke about purchasing MSNBC”

It started with Trump Jr., President-elect Trump’s oldest son, sharing a meme about MSNBC being up for sale. Trump Jr. quote-tweeted the meme Friday on X and said “Hey @elonmusk I have the funniest idea ever!!!”

“How much does it cost,” Musk replied.

Musk later responded to the viral interaction, saying the sale would be “the most entertaining outcome,” while suggesting it would be “ironic.”ump Jr. and tech billionaire Elon Musk joked on Friday about purchasing MSNBC.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5006095-trump-jr-musk-joke-about-buying-msnbc/

No Progressive Media Machine?


Article in the Raw Story by John Stoehr, 11/21/24

Headline:  “Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, the Democrats will live in Trump’s America”

“. . . critics are missing the real lesson from the 2024 election – that her policies were not the determining factor in her defeat. It was the ear-splitting volume of the accusations against her and the absence of equal and opposite accusations against him.”

“. . . It didn’t matter because what she said, the substance of her message wasn’t as important to the outcome of the election as the volume of it, which is to say, the substance of what she said could not be heard through the din of the rightwing media apparatus. As media expert Matthew Sheffield said today, nothing was going to get through that, not even the shared reality of the economy. “Through seven TV channels, more than 1,500 talk-radio stations, and millions of social media posts. . .”

“. . . Trump’s attack ads worked in tandem with thousands of media sites, including the one formerly known as Twitter, that have been operating around the clock since 2020, often in parallel with the Washington press corps. They were able to take one small thing Harris said years ago and turn it into a caricature so ridiculous that a convicted felon like Donald Trump could look like a viable candidate by comparison. . . ”

“. . . The volume of the rightwing media apparatus, especially when it’s in sync with the Washington press corps, is so loud that it can feel like the ultimate arbiter of our political reality. As one CNN anchor put it this morning, this is Donald Trump’s America. We’re just living in it. Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, one that can meet bad info with good info, the Democrats will continue living in Trump’s America, too.

https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/liberal-media/

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Josh Hersh, 11/20/24

Headline:  “Why Traditional Media Can’t Have Its Own Joe Rogan”

Subhead:  “Vulture’s Nicholas Quah on the lessons from Donald Trump’s foray into podcast-land.”

” . . . sometimes when people say that these platforms are not journalistic, there is a very specific and very narrow idea of journalism they are referring to, according to the old rules. Whereas we now live in a world where there’s an increasing number of people who are just not familiar with, or maybe aren’t even exposed to the value of, the old rules. . . ”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/why-the-media-cant-have-its-own-joe-rogan.php

We Need More Media Consolidation?

Article in LA Times by By Stephen Battaglio, 11/21/24

Headline: “How Trump’s FCC chief pick could make life more difficult for media companies”

“President-elect Trump’s nomination of Brendan Carr as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is bringing both hope and fear to the media industry.

“For media executives, the hope comes in the promise of industry consolidation.

“Companies such as Fox Television Stations, Nexstar Media Group, Tegna and Gray Media are eager to buy more TV stations to better compete against deep-pocketed tech firms that are aggressively pursuing viewers and ad dollars. Carr is expected to support revisiting the rule on ownership of TV stations. Brendan Carr answers questions during a hearing.”

“. . . Big media companies are bracing for the possibility that he will do Trump’s bidding when the president-elect threatens retribution against media outlets that are unfriendly to him.”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-11-21/how-trumps-fcc-chief-pick-could-make-life-more-difficult-for-media-companies

Internet and Right-Wing Media


Article in Axios by Shannon Vavra, Sara Fischer, 11/23/24

Headline: “The recent explosion of right-wing news sites”

Axios mapped the launch date of 89 news websites over the past quarter century. The data shows there has been an explosion of right-leaning news sites, coinciding with the rise of the Tea Party and alt-right movements beginning in 2010. Many of these sites, in turn, were instrumental in spreading pro-Trump news during the 2016 elections”

“Why it matters: According to experts, digital technology has made it easier to exploit the political divisions that have always existed. . . .’The technological, regulatory, and media space has shifted into one in which this is profitable, and profit is the driving force.’ ”

https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/the-recent-explosion-of-right-wing-news-sites-1513300575

A Future for Independent Media?

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Feveb Marid, 11/22/24

Headline:  “The Promise of IndyMedia”

Subhead:  “Twenty-five years after its founding, a much-diminished community journalism organization may still offer a model for the future.”

After the Battle in Seattle in 1999 “. . . posts appeared on a website under the name IndyMedia, reaching more than a million people worldwide.”

“The site was intended to last only as long as the demonstrations. ‘The resistance is global,’ the opening post went. ‘The web dramatically alters the balance between multinational and activist media. With just a bit of coding and some cheap equipment, we can set up a live automated website that rivals the corporates.’ In the twenty-five years that followed, IndyMedia revealed the extent of that promise well beyond its early bloggers’ imaginations, as it grew into a full-fledged open publishing network of activist journalism, with some two hundred community centers and national and global online hubs.”

It still survives as this website:   https://indymedia.org/

https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/local-news-indymedia-network-25-anniversary.php

 

Media Climate Depresses People


Article in the New Republic by Heather Souvaine Horn, 11/22/24

Headline: “How to Make Your Daily Media Consumption Less Depressing
A guide to postelection “takes” for climate-concerned readers”

“Climate-concerned readers and voters are in a tough spot. They don’t have the postelection coping options – escapism, despair, biding one’s time till the next election – open to some other people. The Biden administration’s climate policy”

“. . . If we are truly in an all-hands-on-deck moment (I think that we are), and if, as numerous experts have emphasized, every fraction of a degree of warming matters, then postelection analyses and prescriptions that don’t offer some discernible and actionable kernel of wisdom, lighting (however dimly) one plausible path forward, are pointless, and can be discarded without further ado.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/188694/climate-democrats-election-reading

Economic Reporting in Conservative Media

 

Article in FAIR by Conor Smyth, 11/20/21

Headline:  “It’s the Economic Reporting, Stupid”

“Conservative media, unsurprisingly, appears to be a major culprit in the miseducation of the American public, with people whose primary media source is conservative media registering lower familiarity with reality than those who stuck mainly to other media sources. (Reliance on social media, too, was associated with less knowledge of basic facts.)

“But even among those who primarily get their news from the more general category of cable/national newspapers, a third didn’t realize that inflation had declined over the past year. Voters’ lack of knowledge, therefore, cannot simply be laid at the feet of the conservative press. Corporate outlets more broadly must share the blame.”

https://fair.org/home/its-the-economic-reporting-stupid/

Conservative Media Extremists in Ascendance

Article in Media Matters by Staff, 11/19/24

Headline: “On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains the role extremists in conservative media are playing in the Trump transition”

“ICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): At a time when global tensions are high, the war in Ukraine is intensifying, Donald Trump’s decision to tap Tulsi Gabbard as his incoming Director of National Intelligence is raising alarms, as you heard there. New reporting uncovers how she has become a favorite among the state media, of one of America’s adversaries, Russia.

“That’s according to The New York Times, which reports, “In Russia, the reaction to her potential appointed has been gleeful, even if Putin’s government remains weary of American policies, even under a second Trump administration. ‘The CIA and the FBI are trembling,’ a Russian newspaper wrote on Friday in a glowing profile of Ms. Gabbard, noting positively, that Ukrainians consider ‘an agent of the Russian state.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/msnbcs-deadline-white-house-angelo-carusone-explains-role-extremists-conservative

On the Media Roller Coaster – Resist or Comply?

Article in Mother Jones by David Corn, 11/20/24

Headline:  “The Media and Trump: Not Resistance, But Not Acceptance”

“. . . My hunch is that a line will form across the media landscape between those entities that cover the Trump crowd in a relatively normal fashion—What is the president thinking? What are his advisers telling him? What is happening between the White House and Congress? What’s the latest palace intrigue? Who’s invited to the state dinner? What do the polls say?—and those who view as the overarching story the profound threat of authoritarianism posed by Trump and his henchmen and henchwomen. Do the usual political stories matter as much if Trump moves ahead with plans to deport millions and to place in power assorted extremists? Or if he moves to undermine democracy?”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/donald-trump-robert-kennedy-jr-media-press-accommodationist-sanewashing/