Source: Reporters Without Borders
Media News
News about the media.
News Deserts Need Watering
From The Guardian by Margaret Sullivan 1/18/24
Headline: “Local newspapers are withering under destructive owners. We should worry”
“You can see this trend almost everywhere. Newspapers have faded and the growth of digital news outlets – while encouraging – hasn’t kept up with the losses. There are far fewer reporters now than 15 years ago, and they are much more concentrated in places like Washington DC and New York City. Local newspapers go out of business every week.”
“That turns huge swaths of the US into “news deserts” – places where there is virtually no credible local journalism. Democracy suffers as citizens become less engaged and more polarized, and as government corruption flourishes because the watchdog has gone silent.”
Decline in Local News Coverage Affects All Americans
From Associated Press 11/15/23
“The decline of local news in the United States is speeding up despite attention paid to the issue, to the point where the nation has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.” Giant media corporations continue to dominate American information outlets – even digital media decline.
https://apnews.com/article/local-newspapers-closing-jobs-3ad83659a6ee070ae3f39144dd840c1b
Reporter “Shouted Down” in U.S. – What’s Next?
Woman on right shouts “Shut up, shut up!” (Getty Image)
From the Daily Beast article by Riley Rogerson 10/26/23
Headline: “Dems Turn Mike Johnson’s First Viral Moment Into Anti-GOP Ad”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dems-turn-mike-johnsons-first-viral-moment-into-anti-gop-ad
Will any questioning or criticism be illegal soon?
How Can You Influence the Media?
From Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post 9/20/21
“You can write short, polite, specific and constructive letters to the editor and to individual writers. You can support good journalism by subscribing to solid local news outlets. You can use your own presence on social media to raise up examples of truth-seeking journalism. And you can tune out and turn off cable and TV news that practices bothsiderism and allows MAGA guests to lie with impunity.”
What Happens in Kansas – Doesn’t Stay in Kansas – Threat to Journalism
Article on 8/26/23 from the Washington Post about the police raid on the newspaper in Marion, Kansas.
Headline: “Police raid – what really happened”
“In New York and Washington, word of a police raid on a small Midwestern newspaper caught the immediate attention of a cluster of organizations devoted to asserting First Amendment rights and promoting the safety of journalists around the globe.
“Over the years, these groups have stood up for reporters detained by police while covering stories or pressured by prosecutors to reveal their sources, they’ve gone to court to challenge government officials over access to public records, and they’ve raised concerns about an overt strain of antipathy toward the media increasingly displayed by some politicians and public officials since the dawn of the Trump era.
“Yet an actual raid by police represented a kind of government intrusion on media operations that none could remember seeing in this country.”
“Seized But Not Silenced”.
Marion County newspaper that was raided by police – someone had a motive
Article from Associated Press by Jim Salter 8/20/23
Headline: “Court documents suggest reason for police raid of Kansas newspaper”
“The police chief who led the raid of a Kansas newspaper alleged in previously unreleased in court documents that a reporter either impersonated someone else or lied about her intentions when she obtained the driving records of a local business owner.
“But reporter Phyllis Zorn, Marion County Record Editor and Publisher Eric Meyer and the newspaper’s attorney said Sunday that no laws were broken when Zorn accessed a public state website for information on restaurant operator Kari Newell.”
https://www.aol.com/court-documents-suggests-reason-police-183901188.html
Do the Media Promote the Idea That Incendiary Talk is “Free Speech”?
Article in the Daily Kos by Laura Clawson 6/3/23
Headline: “The media has embraced the claim that free speech means freedom to commit crimes”
“It’s bad enough that one of the main Republican talking points regarding Donald Trump’s latest federal criminal charges is an attempt to erase the distinction between free speech and criminal conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. What’s worse is that the traditional media is, in its “neutral” mode of reporting, taking these claims seriously.“