Media News

News about the media.

FCC Carr Crash

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Article in Status News by Oliver Darcy, 2/12/25

Headline: “A Runaway Carr”

Subhead: “Pressed by Status over text message, FCC boss Brendan Carr defended his actions—including his decision not to go after Rupert Murdoch’s Fox.”

” On Tuesday evening, as I was putting the finishing touches on the previous edition of this newsletter, news broke that Brendan Carr, Donald Trump’s handpicked Federal Communications Commission chairman, had launched yet another investigation into a media company. Carr had already revived petitions filed by pro-MAGA forces against ABC, NBC, and CBS. He had also announced a string of investigations targeting NPR, PBS, and the Soros-backed Audacy. Now, he had written to Comcast boss Brian Roberts, informing him that the FCC would be investigating whether the company—which owns NBC—had violated the law because of its D.E.I. initiatives.

Carr has been aggressive in pursuing media companies with news divisions that have scrutinized Trump, but, as we have pointed out, he has conspicuously given Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation a pass. . .”

https://www.status.news/p/brendan-carr-fcc-fox-interview

A Widening Gulf in the Media

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Article in Common Dreams by Brett Wilkins, 2/14/25

Headline: “As Trump Targets AP, Media Urged to Resist Moves Like ‘Gulf of America’ Renaming”

Subhead:  “It’s at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership,” asserted one campaigner.”

“First Amendment defenders are calling on media organizations and journalists to stand up to bullying and intimidation by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration on Friday confirmed the indefinite exclusion of one of the world’s largest news agencies from White House press briefings and Air Force One flights over its refusal to adopt the Republican leader’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico.

“White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said that because The Associated Press “continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change” of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it will be indefinitely banned from White House news conferences and the president’s official airplane.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-gulf-of-america

Reporting Exposes Tesla State Dept. Proposal?

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Artocle in MSNBC by Erik De La Garza, 2/12/25

Headline:  ” ‘Paperweights’: Rachel Maddow unleashes mockery on $400M award for ‘armored Teslas’ “

“Reports that the State Department appears poised to award a $400 million contract to none other than President Donald Trump’s top campaign donor Elon Musk was met with unabashed mockery by an exasperated Rachel Maddow.

“The MSNBC host during her show’s opening monologue Wednesday delivered a scornful rebuke of Musk’s Tesla Motors as she launched into a deep criticism of the development involving spending taxpayer funds to buy armored Teslas – but not without having a little fun at the tech billionaire’s expense.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/paperweights-rachel-maddow-unleashes-mockery-on-400m-award-for-armored-teslas/ar-AA1yWtVc

Tech-Lords Inform Us Now

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Podcast in The Nation by Paris Marx, 2/13/25

Headline: “The Tech Oligarchy’s Campaign Against the Media”

Subhead: “On this episode of Podcast ‘Tech Won’t Save Us’, Eoin Higgins on tech billionaires’ effect on the media ecosystem.”

“On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, we’re joined by Eoin Higgins to discuss how tech billionaires changed the media ecosystem and made it profitable for influential voices to shift to the political right.

“Eoin Higgins is a journalist and the author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.”

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/archive/the-tech-oligarchys-campaign-against-the-media/

When You Let A.I. Edit Your News . . .

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Article in Slashdot by BeauHD, 2/12/25

Headline:  “AI Summaries Turn Real News Into Nonsense, BBC Finds”

“A BBC study published yesterday  found that AI news summarization tools frequently generate inaccurate or misleading summaries, with 51% of responses containing significant issues.

“The Register reports: The research focused on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity assistants, assessing their ability to provide ‘accurate responses to questions about the news; and if their answers faithfully represented BBC news stories used as sources.’ The assistants were granted access to the BBC website for the duration of the research and asked 100 questions about the news, being prompted to draw from BBC News articles as sources where possible. . .  Overall:

– 51 percent of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form.
– 19 percent of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors — incorrect factual statements, numbers, and dates.
– 13 percent of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered from the original source or not present in the article cited.”

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/12/2139233/ai-summaries-turn-real-news-into-nonsense-bbc-finds

Dropping Shoe or Booting Media?

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Article in yahoo!news by Sean Burch, 2/12/25

Headline:  “Meet the ‘New Media’ Press at Trump’s White House”

“Natalie Winters is young, opinionated and unabashedly pro-Trump — and she is now one of the fresh “new media” faces who will occupy space in the White House Press Briefing Room as the new administration makes way for Trump-friendly outlets while diminishing the access of traditional news sources.

“The latest shoe to drop on this front came Tuesday, as the White House press team blocked the Associated Press from entering the Oval Office because the outlet had not begun referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as Trump ordered Jan. 20. AP executive editor Julie Pace called it “alarming” that the Trump White House would punish the AP for upholding the Gulf of Mexico’s title, saying it ‘not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.’ ”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/meet-media-press-trump-white-140000333.html

 

Facts & Media at Odds?

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Article in Poynter by Angela Fu, 2/12/25

Headline: “Journalists have a ‘messaging problem’ when it comes to defending fact-based media”

Subhead:  “At a time when trust in the media is low, journalists must be more transparent about their work, experts say”

“Trust in the media and fact-based journalism is at a record low. Politicians are attacking the press, while audiences turn to alternative platforms, like entertainment podcasts and social media, for their news.

“One way journalists can combat this issue is by treating it as a messaging problem, NPR TV critic Eric Deggans said Tuesday at a panel discussion during the annual meeting of Poynter’s National Advisory Board. (The entire discussion can be viewed on poynter.org).”

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/journalists-have-a-messaging-problem-when-it-comes-to-defending-fact-based-media/

 

Media Gulf

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Article in The Guardian by Anna Betts, 1/12/25

Headline:  “AP excoriates White House barring of reporters as ‘alarming precedent’ “

Subhead:  “Editor Julie Pace writes to Trump’s chief of staff about ban on its journalists after AP declines to use ‘Gulf of America’ “

“The executive editor of the Associated Press sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday criticizing its decision to block two of its journalists from attending press events on Tuesday after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as ‘the Gulf of America’ ”.

“I write on behalf of The Associated Press, an independent global news organization that reaches billions of people every day, to object in the strongest possible terms to the actions taken by the Trump administration against AP yesterday,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in the letter addressed to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.

“The issue here is free speech – a fundamental pillar of American democracy and a value of the utmost importance to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion, occupation or industry.”

Pace said that on Tuesday, the White House barred AP journalists from attending two press events with Donald Trump, “following an apparent complaint over AP’s editorial decisions regarding the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump renamed the Gulf of America”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/12/ap-white-house

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Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 2/12/25

Headline:  “Leavitt defends banning AP from Oval Office over ‘Gulf of America’ stance’ “

“White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended a decision by the White House on Tuesday to keep The Associated Press out of the pool of reporters allowed inside the Oval Office to cover an executive order signing with President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.

“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Leavitt said during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday when asked about the move, calling it a “privilege to cover the White House.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5141155-karoline-leavitt-ap-oval-office-gulf-of-america/

 

Rt. Wing Media Vultures

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Article in Media Matters by Gideon Taaffe, 2/11/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media want you to think stopping infectious diseases and feeding the poor is woke”

“Right-wing media are focused on culture war battles as the Trump administration suspends lifesaving work from the U.S. Agency for International Development, cherry-picking USAID programs to dismiss the agency as ‘woke,’ ‘radical,’ and ‘overwhelmingly hard left.’ In reality, USAID is responsible for providing health care and nutritional aid to thousands of the world’s vulnerable people, many living in war-torn regions.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-want-you-think-stopping-infectious-diseases-and-feeding-poor-woke

 

Criticism Not Allowed Now?

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Article in The Intercept by Sam Biddle, 2/11/25

Headline:  “ICE Wants to Know If You’re Posting Negative Things About It Online”

Subhead:  “ICE wants to hire contractors to monitor social media for threats. Those who criticize the agency could be pulled into the dragnet.”

“Amid anger and protest over the Trump administration’s plan to deport millions of immigrants, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to monitor and locate ‘negative’ social media discussion about the agency and its top officials, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept.

Citing an increase in threats to ICE agents and leadership, the agency is soliciting pitches from private companies to monitor threats across the internet — with a special focus on social media. People who simply criticize ICE online could pulled into the dragnet.”

https://theintercept.com/2025/02/11/ice-immigration-social-media-surveillance/