Media News

News about the media.

Protest Coverage and Lack-of

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Sacha Biazzo, 4/9/25

Headline:  “Why Protests Against Trump Got More Play Overseas Than Here”

Subhead:  “European editors on how the news out of America drives coverage at home”

“If you were flipping through an American newspaper earlier this week, looking for news about the “Hands Off!” anti-Trump street protests that consumed much of the country over the weekend, you might have had a hard time finding it. Despite more than a thousand rallies at sites across all fifty states—including substantial turnout in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles—a number of major newspapers deemed the actions not quite front-page news, as several keen-eyed observers have noted recently, burying it on page eleven (the Boston Globe) or eighteen (the New York Times) or in a second section entirely (the LA Times). . .”

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/trump-hand-off-protests-coverage-europe.php

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Article in Fair by Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas, 4/8/25

Headline:  “Corporate Media Minimize Massive Hands Off! Protests”

“After the biggest anti-Trump protests since the 2017 Women’s March, many major media outlets seemed intent on downplaying the size and significance of the massive demonstration of opposition. . . ”

“The Hands Off! protests took place on April 5 in 1,400 locations across the country, with solidarity rallies in Europe and Canada.  Burying the news . . .”

“The Washington Post (4/6/25) relegated protesters “across the US” to the Metro section.

“Despite the scale and significance of the protests, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post had stories about them on their front pages the next day.

“The Washington Post (4/6/25) had a thumbnail at the bottom of the front page with the blurb “Metro: Thousands gather in DC as protesters rally across the US against Trump. . .”

“A Times blurb promoting the story in a roundup of stories about “The Trump Administration’s First Hundred Days” minimized the scale and seriousness of the event . . .”

https://fair.org/home/corporate-media-minimize-massive-hands-off-protests/

 

Foreign Journalists in Danger

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Article in AP by Didi Tang, 4/5/25

Headline: “Foreign journalists at US-backed media fear being sent to repressive homelands after Trump’s cuts”

“After hiding in Thailand for seven years, two Cambodian journalists arrived in the United States last year on work visas, aiming to keep providing people in their Southeast Asian homeland with objective, factual news through Radio Free Asia.

But Vuthy Tha and Hour Hum now say their jobs and legal status in the U.S. are at risk after President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order gutting the government-run U.S. Agency for Global Media. The agency funds Radio Free Asia and other outlets tasked with delivering uncensored information to parts of the world under authoritarian rule and often without a free press of their own. . .”

“ ‘It fell out of sky,’ Vuthy, a single father of two small children, said through a translator about the Trump administration’s decision, which he says threatens to upend his life. I am very regretful that our listeners cannot receive the accurate news,’ Hour said, also through a translator.

“Both men said they’re worried about providing for their families and being allowed to stay in the U.S. They say it’s impossible to return to Cambodia, a single-party state hostile to independent media where they fear being persecuted for their journalistic work.”

https://apnews.com/article/radio-free-asia-voice-of-america-trump-084045acb927d5cc2ddc46b61d59a692

Media? So-What?

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Article in Mediaite by Zachary Leeman,, 4/4/25

Headline:  ” ‘He Doesn’t Give a F**k’: White House Official Tells Washington Post Trump Has Reached Peak ‘Not Giving a F**k’ “

“President Donald Trump has reached the “peak of not giving a fuck,” one White House official told The Washington Post for a lengthy report on what went on behind the scenes leading up to the president’s massive tariff announcement this week.

“On Wednesday — or ‘Liberation Day,’ as Trump calls it — the president announced massive tariffs on imports from a number of countries. He’s maintained that the massive shift in economic strategy will result in better trade deals and a boost in manufacturing for the United States.

“The stock market has meanwhile taken major hits since Trump’s announcement as the tariffs have led to uncertainty among companies and investors. . .”

“The Post story — by Natalie Allison, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski, and Michael Birnbaum — cites other White House officials and paints an administration that is very different from the one Trump oversaw in his first term. Despite strategizing on tariff policy up to just three hours before the president’s official announcement in the Rose Garden, there was reportedly very little disagreement with Trump making the final decisions himself. . .”

https://www.mediaite.com/news/he-doesnt-give-a-fk-white-house-official-tells-washington-post-trump-has-reached-peak-not-giving-a-fk/

Bezos Loses Another Post Star

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Wikipedia photo, Grace Skidmore

Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 4/4/25

Headline:  “Pulitzer-winning columnist leaving Washington Post“

“Longtime Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is leaving the newspaper, he announced this week.

Robinson informed his Post colleagues of his decision Thursday, he wrote on the social platform X.  “I’m retiring from my longtime journalistic home but not from journalism, and I’ll keep you posted as I decide what my next chapter will be,” he said.

Robinson has been writing for the Post’s opinion section since 2005 and in recent years has been a regular on MSNBC and other cable news shows.

He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his columns on the 2008 presidential race.

Robinson is the latest in a slew of Post opinion writers to leave the news organization as it goes through major changes to its editorial strategy and business under billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5232097-eugene-robinson-washington-post/

Is Fox News in Pain?

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Article in Media Matters by Staff, 4/3/25

Headline:  “Fox Business host confused why media are covering the economic pain of Trump’s tariffs on Americans”

“Charles Payne: ‘This is mind boggling to me that the media is focused on pain, pain, pain’ ”

“STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): ‘First thing they talked about Charles, the number one issue and that is tariffs. And one of the things that Lawrence was asking about was the pain on the average American and J.D. Vance said it can’t be fixed overnight. Ultimately costs will probably go up, there will be some pain. But the big question is, do people get the idea that this is for greater good? . . .’ ”

” ‘This is what’s really amazing to me, and unfortunately I hear it on our network and a lot of networks, that somehow we all want a good GDP, we all want a good economy, but does it have to come at the expense? Is it patriotic to always stay in debt, is it patriotic to spend my entire paycheck so that the economy is good? Is it patriotic so that my kids can’t afford to go to college, I don’t have a retirement, I don’t have a decent home, is that patriotic? Is our patriotism tied to Wall Street or should it be tied to our own personal ability to achieve the American dream? We need to rethink all of this.’ ”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-business-host-confused-why-media-are-covering-economic-pain-trumps-tariffs

Bots of Media Fun

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Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 4/1/125

Headline:  “Bloomberg and the Bots”

Subhead:  “Bloomberg insists its journalists have “full control” over its error-prone A.I. bot—but staffers tell Status they can’t stop it from publishing errors.”

“A few days ago, The New York Times published a remarkable story: Bloomberg News, one of the most powerful forces in business journalism, had introduced factual errors into at least three dozen article pages using its new “takeaways” carousel. The recently introduced artificial intelligence feature, which has been prominently affixed to the top of most stories, was designed to spotlight key points in its reporting.

“In a statement to The Times, a Bloomberg spokesperson moved to dismiss concerns about the A.I. carousel, telling reporter Katie Robertson that it is “transparent when stories are updated or corrected.” But it was what the spokesperson said next that caught the attention of reporters inside the Bloomberg newsroom.

“Journalists have full control over whether a summary appears—both before and after publication—and can remove any that don’t meet our standards,” the Bloomberg spokesperson asserted to The Times. . .”

https://www.status.news/p/bloomberg-news-ai-summaries

 

Media Overload

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Article in The Guardian by Michael Savage. 4/1/25

Headline:  “‘I can’t cope with it any more’: newsrooms scramble to retain audiences amid the big switch-off”

Subhead:  “In an international survey last year, 39% of respondents said they selectively avoid news to some degree”

“When Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, informed her staff recently that she was shaking up how they worked as part of a drive to combat “the growing trend of news avoidance”, she had in mind the likes of Dave Ayres, a handyman from Leeds.

“ ‘I used to have the news on the TV every morning for an hour or so as I got the children ready for school and completed my household tasks,’ he said. ‘Now it has literally been switched off and unplugged. I can’t cope with it any more. It’s just too much and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

“Though he dips into his favourite news apps occasionally in the evening, he now strictly limits his news consumption. He’s not alone. The Guardian has been contacted by a series of one-time news junkies who are now seeking to restrict their news intake after suffering from disturbed sleep or a downturn in their mood.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/apr/01/i-cant-cope-with-it-any-more-newsrooms-scramble-to-retain-audiences-amid-the-big-switch-off

Spreading Media Greatness South

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Article in The Guardian by Rachel Savage, 3/26/25

Headline:  “Trump names pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa”

Subhead:  “Leo Brent Bozell III, founder of a conservative media group, is president’s nomination amid rising diplomatic tensions”

“Donald Trump has nominated a conservative, pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa, at a time when the relationship between the two countries is at a nadir.

“Leo Brent Bozell III founded the Media Research Center – whose website states it is ‘a blog site designed to broadcast conservative values, culture, and politics [and] to expose liberal media bias’ – in 1987.

“His son Leo Brent Bozell IV was sentenced to 45 months in prison in May 2024 for assaulting police and smashing windows in the 6 January 2021 Capitol riots. He was released in January as part of Trump’s mass pardon.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/26/trump-names-pro-israel-media-activist-as-us-ambassador-to-south-africa

Journalists in Danger

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Article in Bellingcat by Staff. 3/27/25

Headline:  “Shot From Above: The Dangerous Work of Drone Journalists in Gaza”

“According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 165 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023. In fact, according to CPJ, last year was the deadliest year for journalists worldwide since they began documenting deaths in 1992.

Gathering aerial footage of Gaza is a dangerous task, and Bellingcat along with our partners at Forbidden Stories, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Der Standard, Paper Trail Media, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and RFI identified several cases where drone journalists were killed or injured shortly after capturing aerial images.

The Gaza Project is a collaborative investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, involving more than 40 journalists representing 12 media outlets (Forbidden Stories, Paper Trail Media, RFI, Bellingcat, Die Zeit, Le Monde, France 24, ARIJ, The Seventh Eye/Shakuf +972 Magazine, ZDF and Der Standard) who continued the work of Gazan journalists and investigated about the threats and difficulties they are facing.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/03/27/gaza-israel-palestine-shot-killed-injured-destroyed-dangerous-drone-journalists-in-gaza/

Progressive Media Activist Dies

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Article in Free Press by Timothy Karr, 3/27/25

Headline:  “Free Press Mourns the Death of Co-Founder and Scholar Robert W. McChesney”

“McChesney was the author or editor of 27 books, including Rich Media, Poor Democracy; The Problem of the Media; and Digital Disconnect. He co-authored several books with his frequent co-author and close friend John Nichols, including The Death and Life of American Journalism and Dollarocracy. McChesney was the president of Free Press in its early years and served on its board of directors afterward. . .”

“While McChesney spent much of his career charting the problems of the media and the critical junctures that created our current crises, he believed fundamentally in the public’s ability to solve those problems and build a media system that serves people’s needs and sustains democracy. . .”

https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-mourns-death-co-founder-and-scholar-robert-w-mcchesney

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Article in The Nation by John Nichols, 3/27/25

Headline:  “Robert McChesney, the Great Champion of Journalism and Democracy, Has Died”

“The academic and activist inspired generations of people to challenge corporate power and support a media reform movement that lives on.

“Bob McChesney, who died on Tuesday at the age of 72, first introduced himself to me almost 30 years ago, on the set of a public television news program in Madison, Wisconsin. Bob was a distinguished University of Wisconsin professor who was gaining an international reputation for his groundbreaking analysis of the threat to democracy posed by corporate control of media. Raising his arguments in books, speeches, and frequent C-Span appearances, he was well on his way to becoming one of the great public intellectuals of his time. . .”

“The program was framed as a debate about the future of journalism. Bob was positioned as the doomsayer, warning about how media consolidation was killing journalism. . .”

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/robert-mcchesney-obituary/