Press Freedom

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 2/10/25

Headline:  “Covering the ‘Mad King’ “

Subhead:  “Is the press underplaying or overplaying Trump’s early moves?”

“It’s become a truism (including in this newsletter) that Trump has metaphorically flooded the zone since returning to office last month, overwhelming the news media and his political opponents with an apparently strategic torrent of radical actions and statements. . . ”

“As I wrote recently, it’s legitimately difficult for the news media to keep up with all the zone flooding, both metaphorical and real. Various critics, however, have argued in recent days that major mainstream outlets aren’t doing a sharp enough job with the journalistic and attentional resources that they do have at their disposal—that they’ve soft-pedaled Trump’s stated plan to turn Gaza into a beach resort by failing to describe it as ‘ethnic cleansing,’ for instance, or failed to communicate the gravity of Elon Musk’s meddling with the machinery of government by failing to call it a ‘coup.’ ”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/mad_king_trump_flood_zone_media_criticism.php

Article in Mediaite by Alex Griffing, 2/7/25

Headline:  “As Trump Floods the Zone, the Media Must Focus on What He’s Doing to Our National Security”

“During Wednesday’s White House press briefing, the assembled reporters did not ask Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt a single question about the CIA, despite the alarming reports about agency personnel being gutted and the potential mishandling of classified information.

“Instead, the majority of the questions focused on President Donald Trump’s scatterbrained remarks the night before about the U.S. “owning” Gaza. Reporters also drilled down on Elon Musk’s crusade against federal spending and his potential conflicts of interest as he guts federal agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development.”

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/as-trump-floods-the-zone-the-media-must-focus-on-what-hes-doing-to-our-national-security/

Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 2/5/25

Headline:  “Opinion | The challenge of covering Elon Musk”

Subhead:  “Much of the media is still trying to get a handle on how to cover Musk and what he’s doing to the federal government”

“Here’s what you need to know about media coverage of Elon Musk.

“The New York Times published a big story on Musk on Monday with the headline: ‘Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government.’ ”

“As you surely know, Musk has had plenty of jobs on his way to becoming the richest person in the world. His main job these days, it would appear, is to be President Donald Trump’s right-hand man. So much so that there are whispers about who actually is running the country: Musk or Trump?”

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/elon-musk-news-coverage/

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Sacha Biazzo, 2/5/25

Headline: “Q&A: Marisa Kabas on Scooping the World on the Federal Funding Freeze”

Subhead:  “If your job isn’t to inform people in a way that will help them, then I don’t really understand what your job is.”

“Marisa Kabas, an independent journalist based in New York, has recently emerged as a leading voice in holding power to account: since Trump took office, she has broken two major stories that sent ripples across the media landscape. Two days into the new administration, she exposed a directive from the Trump administration suspending all travel for staff at the National Institutes of Health. Then, last week, she was the first to report on the Office of Management and Budget memo freezing all government grants and loans.”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/qa_marisa_kabas_handbasket_omb_scoop.php

Article in The New Republic by Alex Shephard, 2/5/25

Headline:  “This Is So Much Worse Than Last Time”

Subhead:  “Why Democrats and the media are struggling to capture the insanity—and danger—of the new Trump administration.”

“There is practically no way to describe what is currently happening in the United States without sounding hysterical, or like some sort of crank—or, maybe, insane. . .”

“Media coverage has somehow been even less inspiring than the Democratic response. During Trump’s first term, the press struggled to find a way to deal with Trump’s admittedly difficult to describe mix of extremism and incoherence. The speed of all of this and the enormity of it is, to be fair, difficult to capture. But there are bigger problems emerging in the ongoing coverage. One is simply that Trump and his cronies are taking direct action against the press, threatening to shut down via lawsuits (or, in the case of National Public Radio, defunding) any outlet that they deem as being critical, and appear to be serious about it. ABC has already settled one lawsuit, while CBS seems ready to settle another—settling both would essentially amount to paying Trump protection money.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/191153/trump-musk-treasure-government-breach