Media News

News about the media.

No More Canadian Newsprint?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Sacha Biazzo, 3/11/25

Headline: “Trump’s Tariffs Are Causing Chaos for Newspapers”

Subhead: “The on-again, off-again announcements are causing prices of Canadian newsprint to rise.”

“. . . Canada has long been a major supplier of American newsprint—it now provides an estimated 80 percent of the paper used by US newspapers. A tariff would add a significant burden to publishers already struggling with high costs of production and thin margins, and analysts say the mere looming threat of one has complicated life for printers. “There is no scenario under which this is cost-positive for the media industry,” said Brett House, a professor of professional practice at the Columbia Business School. ‘Almost anything that is done here is going to be increasing prices for newsprint.’ ”

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/tariffs-canada-newsprint.php

Red Meat for the Media!

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Article in The Guardian by Editors, 3/7/25

Headline:  “The Guardian view on Trump and media: attention is power. Can Democrats grab it? – Editorial”

Subhead:  “The presidency is no longer just a ‘bully pulpit’. It’s become part of the disinformation machine”

“Donald Trump won the White House not with money, though he spent plenty of it, but by dominating the conversation. He hasn’t stopped campaigning. He uses attention to bolster his political power, and uses his office to make sure that everyone keeps watching.

“He was barred from leading social media platforms after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but four years later, their owners attended his inauguration. Many of his key hires appear picked for their media presence as well as their ideological bent and sycophancy. Tuesday’s interminable address to Congress was garnished with the kind of wild claims or outright lies that he knows take off on social media. . .”

“. . .Like a social media algorithm made flesh, the president himself serves up an endless but unpredictable (and increasingly extreme) stream of material. It keeps admirers coming back for more and overwhelms critics, who don’t know where to focus. . . ”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/07/the-guardian-view-on-trump-and-media-attention-is-power-can-democrats-grab-it

“X” Social Media Tanking?

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Article in The New York Times by Kate Conger and Christing Hauser, 3/10/25

Headline:  “Bad Day for X and Tesla Prompts Concern About Musk’s Distractions”

Subhead:  “The billionaire’s social media site X suffered outages, and Tesla’s stock tanked on Monday.”

“Elon Musk is facing questions about how much attention he is paying to his businesses as he advises President Trump on the direction of the federal government.

“The questions have mounted as Mr. Musk’s business empire — which includes the electric car maker Tesla, the social media site X and the rocket maker SpaceX — has run into challenges.

“On Monday, users of X reported widespread outages. The same day, Tesla’s stock fell more than 15 percent amid concerns that include declining electric vehicle sales and politically driven protests against the manufacturer. . . ”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/technology/twitter-x-down-outage.html

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Article in AP by Michelle Chapman and Barbara Ortutay, 3/10/25

Headline:  “Elon Musk Claims X being targeted in ‘massive cyberattack’ as service goes down”

. . . “ ‘We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,’ Musk claimed in a post. ‘Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing . . .’

“Later on Monday, Musk said on Fox Business Network’s Kudlow that the attackers had “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area” without going into detail on what this might mean.

“Cybersecurity experts quickly pointed out, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that an attack originated in Ukraine. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont said on Bluesky that Musk’s claim is ‘missing a key fact — it was actually IPs from worldwide, not just Ukraine.’ ”

https://apnews.com/article/x-musk-twitter-outage-california-0268a8b035aaa277c0287e7c82b6081e

 

WAPO Goes Down Slippery-Slope

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Article in The Guardian by Marina Dunbar, 3/10/25

Headline:  “Top Washington Post columnist quits after piece critical of Bezos is scrapped”

Subhead:  “Ruth Marcus dissented from paper’s new opinion policy of supporting only ‘personal liberties and free markets’”

“Washington Post associate editor and top political columnist Ruth Marcus is reportedly resigning following the decision by the CEO, Will Lewis, to kill her opinion column critical of the billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’s latest changes to the paper.

“ ‘It is with great sadness that I submit my resignation as columnist and associate editor of the Washington Post,’ Marcus wrote in a letter addressed to Lewis and Bezos and posted on X by a New York Times media reporter.

“Last month, Bezos announced changes to the opinion section that appeared to more closely align the Post with the political right, saying that only columns that supported ‘personal liberties and free markets’ would henceforth be published.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/mar/10/washington-post-ruth-marcus-resigns

Fact Check Media Statements?

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Article in The Contrarian by Josh Levs, 3/6/25

Headline:  “Why all those Trump fact checks are too little too late”

Subhead:  “Many Americans distrust the media, largely because false claims have gone unchallenged for so long.”

“In the wake of Tuesday’s onslaught, mainstream news agencies—those whose leaders claim to be about journalism rather than partisanship—offered up fact checks. Unfortunately, these generally fail to make a dent in our political scene. I know because I spent years doing them both on air and online at CNN.

“To understand why these fact checks have so little discernible impact, we need to think about the different audiences. There are those who already dislike serial liars and would never vote for them; for this audience, these fact checks preach to the choir. There are those who adore or support the liar; for them, these fact checks fall on deaf ears.

“There also are millions of Americans who are not firmly in either camp and care deeply about the truth. Unfortunately, a great many of them have lost faith in large news organizations. . .”

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/why-fact-checking-trumps-speech-almost

WH Rabbit-Response Media Team

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Article in The Washington Post by Drew Harwell and Sarah Ellison, 3/6/25

Headline:  “Inside the White House’s new media strategy to promote Trump as ‘KING’ “

Subhead:   “The Trump administration has transformed its traditional press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation, and “they’re all offense, all the time.”

“. . .The effort was part of a new administration strategy to transform the traditional White House press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation, disseminating messages directly to Americans through the memes, TikToks and podcasts where millions now get their news.

After years of working to undermine mainstream outlets and neutralize critical reporting, Trump’s allies are now pushing a parallel information universe of social media feeds and right-wing firebrands to sell the country on his expansionist approach to presidential power.

For the Trump team, that has involved aggressively confronting critics like Gomez, not just to ‘reframe the narrative’ but to drown them out, said Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president who runs the digital team.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/06/trump-white-house-media-social-influencers/

Some Journalists Gain Access!

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Yona TR Golding, 3/3/25

Headline:  “Wires Crossed”

“This move does not give the power back to the people—it gives power to the White House.”

“f you had asked me to come up with the most pandering question possible to put to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, I don’t think I could have produced something better than the softball lobbed by Breitbart reporter Matt Boyle at the Trump administration’s first press briefing, in January. “You laid out several of the actions that President Trump has taken,” Boyle said to Leavitt. “Obviously, it’s a stark contrast to the previous administration and a breakneck speed from President Trump. Can we expect that pace to continue?” (“There is no doubt President Trump has always been the hardest-working man in politics,” Leavitt replied. “This president did more in the first hundred hours than the previous president did in the first hundred days.”)

More of this fawning treatment, it seems, is coming soon. . .”

“It’s beyond time that the White House press operation reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025, not 1925,” she added, noting that the goal is including outlets that have been excluded in the past and “restoring power back to the American people, who President Trump was elected to serve.” In the first configuration, the wire service spots usually reserved for journalists from Reuters and the Associated Press were designated for conservative outlets Newsmax and Blaze Media.

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/wires-crossed-ap-reuters-new-media-press-pool-white-house-leavitt-softball.php

Right-Wing Media Hate Medicaid

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Article in Media Matters by John Knefel, 3/4/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media lay foundations for Republican cuts to Medicaid”

Subhead:  “Steve Bannon and other right-wing figures are proposing drastic rollbacks to Americans’ health insurance coverage to pay for Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich”

“Right-wing media figures have spent the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term urging congressional Republicans to drastically cut spending on Medicaid to offset the huge cost of President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts for the rich.

“The conservative pundits pushing this line have floated several policy options for the Medicaid cuts, including implementing work requirements for recipients or changing funding for the insurance program for poor people into a block grant issued to states. Many conservative figures also baselessly blame undocumented immigrants for driving up Medicaid costs, even though they are generally prohibited from accessing the program.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/health-care/right-wing-media-lay-foundations-republican-cuts-medicaid

 

Extra! Extra! Get Yer News by Algorithm!

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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