Media News

News about the media.

Press Secretary & Media

by


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

by

 


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

by

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

by


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?

by


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

by


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/
.

Right Wing Media Like Pardons

by


Article in Media Matters by Lis Power & Gideon Taffe, 1/21/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media gloss over Trump’s pardons for violent January 6 rioters”

“Right-wing media have been quick to obscure the facts about President Donald Trump’s pardon of January 6 rioters, suggesting that he pardoned only nonviolent offenders and ignoring the pardons that went to violent offenders who assaulted police and carried weapons.

“The list of people pardoned by Trump includes at least one person who was charged with seditious conspiracy and hundreds more who were “convicted of assaulting police, carrying firearms, destroying property or otherwise contributing to the violent rampage.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/right-wing-media-gloss-over-trumps-pardons-violent-january-6-rioters

Media Bowing Down

by


Article in Daily Kos by Oilber Willis, 1/21/25

Headline:  ” ‘Great president’: Mainstream media slobbers all over Trump”

“Early in Donald Trump’s new presidency, mainstream media outlets confirmed fears of how they would cover him—by avoiding the truth, equivocating on his abuse of power, and even praising him.

“The actions by widely read and watched outlets was the continuation of a recent trend that has seen outlets like ABC News, MSNBC, and The Washington Post cave to Trump, even before he was sworn in.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/21/2298201/-Mainstream-media-fails-the-Trump-test-on-his-first-day-back?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_4&pm_medium=web

Dark Clouds Over FCC

by

Headline in Slashdot by Mishmash, 1/21/25

Headline:  “Brenden Carr is Officially in Charge of the FCC?”

“Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency’s agenda and usher through a host of regulations with major implications for the tech and media industries as soon as he has a Republican majority.  . .”

“Carr’s priorities might also be gleaned from a document you might have already heard about: Project 2025. That’s because he authored the FCC chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s wishlist for a Donald Trump presidency. In that chapter, Carr proposes actions including: limiting immunity for tech companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, requiring disclosures about how platforms prioritize content, requiring tech companies to pay into a program that funds broadband access in rural areas, and more, quickly approving applications to launch satellites from companies like Elon Musk’s Starlink.”

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/21/1424225/brendan-carr-is-officially-in-charge-of-the-fcc

In the Eyes of the Media

by


Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 1/21/25

Headline:  “Pomp, Policy, and Pardons”

Subhead:  “How the media saw Trump’s return to power.”

“. . .According to Punchbowl News, only twenty reporters were allowed inside to cover the proceedings, due to space restrictions. Whether they were the only journalists present, however, depends on how you define the term. Tucker Carlson was there, as was Joe Rogan. So were media moguls, plural: Rupert Murdoch, who needs no introduction; Bernard Arnault, who needs no introduction as the CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH but perhaps does as a French media tycoon; Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post. Bezos bought another journalist in with him: his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, a former local TV anchor in California. . .”

“. . .Kid Rock was on Fox News talking to Sean Hannity. He still had a cigar in hand, but was now dressed in black tie. After extolling the January 6 pardons as ‘great’—and dismissing Biden’s as a ‘clown show’—he turned his attention to the press and what he perceives as its unfair treatment of Trump. ‘I think people are really starting to see through what the mainstream media has tried to do to this man,’ he said. ‘It’s a travesty.’

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/pomp-policy-and-pardons.php