Media News

News about the media.

WAPO – Going No-Po?

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Article in The Guardian by Michael Sainto, 1/6/25

Headline:  “Washington Post expected to lay off dozens of staffers in coming week – report”

Subhead:  ” ‘Cuts will be deep’, media reporter writes, after paper faced scrutiny for halting endorsement of Harris in October”

“Dozens of employees are expected to be laid off at the Washington Post in the coming week in what is another of several tumultuous episodes in recent months for the storied title, according to a report by the media reporter Oliver Darcy.

“The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned … newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees,” Darcy, the former CNN reporter, wrote in his newsletter Status.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jan/06/washington-post-layoffs

The Law vs. The Media

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Article in Axios by Felix Salmon, 1/3/25

Headline:  “The hot new publishing platform is a legal filing”

“Filing a legal complaint is rapidly becoming the self-publishing option of choice for individuals looking to make explosive public allegations — regardless of whether they actually care about a judge finding in their favor.

“Why it matters: In an era of steadily declining trust in media, the dry formalities of a legal template provide not only an imprimatur of institutional credibility, but also the freedom to go into extreme amounts of detail without seeming petty, tedious or self-indulgent.”

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/02/lawsuits-publishing-platform-lively-baldoni

Snake Oil in the Media

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Article in Raw Story by Carl Gibson, 1/4/25

Headline: ” ‘Failing to tell the central story’: Reporter reveals what media misses in Trump coverage”

“n a recent post to his blog, veteran journalist Dan Froomkin argued that mainstream media outlets’ coverage of President-elect Donald Trump has been dismal in its grasp of who Trump is on a fundamental level. He then relayed advice from another experienced reporter on how journalists can more accurately cover the incoming administration over the next four years.

“On his website Press Watch, Froomkin argued that Trump should be viewed not merely as a politician, but as a ‘proverbial snake-oil salesman.” He opined that media outlets that failed to ‘situate Trump’s words and actions in the context of an ongoing con” were engaging in ‘deception’ by ‘failing to tell the central story.’ Froomkin cited Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, who referred to the 45th and 47th president of the United States as ‘the greatest con artist in the history of the world.’ ”

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-media-coverage/

What’s Ahead for the Media, 2025?

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Article in The Columbia Journalism Review by Editors, 1/2/25

Headline:  “What We’re Watching in 2025”

Subhead:  “CJR’s staff on the trends they’ll be following in the year ahead.”

“New year, new me-dia? As 2025 dawns, familiar challenges are heaving into view for the press: how to cover an administration led by Donald Trump; how to meet news consumers where they are; whether we’re even relevant anymore. And yet the contours of such challenges are new, or greater in scope than before—or, at least, hard to predict going forward. Trump could graduate from (mostly) rhetorical media-bashing and use the hard power of the state to curb newsgathering in novel and chilling ways; questions of media relevance, meanwhile, have reached a fever pitch since the election, when new media, in the literal sense, was widely credited with facilitating Trump’s victory. To kick off the new year, CJR staffers and contributors outline the trends they’ll be watching in 2025—in old and new media venues alike, as well as across the worlds of tech, the right-wing ‘griftosphere,’ and, well, the world.

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/2025_what_watching_journalism_media.php

 

Ministry of Truth vs. Internet

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Article in The Guardian by Sam Levin, 1/5/25

Headline: “US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a ‘clean slate’

Subhead:  “A wave of local publications are considering requests to wipe or edit old articles to give their subjects a fresh start”

“Civil rights advocates across the US have long fought to free people from their criminal records, with campaigns to expunge old cases and keep people’s past arrests private when they apply for jobs and housing.

“The efforts are critical, as more than 70 million Americans have prior convictions or arrests – roughly one in three adults. But the policies haven’t addressed one of the most damaging ways past run-ins with police can derail people’s lives: old media coverage.

“Some newsrooms are working to fill that gap.

“A handful of local newspapers across the US have in recent years launched programs to review their archives and consider requests to remove names or delete old stories to protect the privacy of subjects involved in minor crimes.. .”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/04/newspaper-crime-stories

 

Disinformation & Hate, Free-Speech?

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Article in New York Times by Cecilia King and Adam Satariano, 12/30/24

Headline:  “Social Media Companies Face Global Tug-of-War Over Free Speech”

Subhead:  “President-elect Donald J. Trump’s picks for the F.C.C. and F.T.C. have vowed to remove censorship online. That conflicts with European regulators who are pushing for stricter moderation.”

“President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies have vowed to squash an online ‘censorship cartel’ of social media firms that they say targets conservatives.

“Already, the president-elect’s newly chosen regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have outlined plans to stop social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube from removing content the companies deem offensive — and punish advertisers that leave less restrictive platforms like X in protest of the lack of moderation.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/technology/trump-administration-speech-policy.html

Selective Reporting?

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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?”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/4/2295158/-Mainstream-media-downplays-pro-Trump-terrorist-bombing-in-Las-Vegas?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

Advertisers, the New Editors

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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. . . ”

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/04/0613258/advertisers-expand-their-avoidance-to-news-sites-blacklisting-specific-words

Journalist Mass Shooting Anniversary

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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

Progressive Media Focus

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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