Press Freedom

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/

Article in Mediaite by Kipp Jones, 2/10/25

Headline:  “PBS Caves To Trump, Ousts Staffers: ‘We Have Closed Our DEI Office’”

“The Public Broadcasting Service announced Monday evening it had closed its diversity, equity, and inclusion office in order to comply with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.

“PBS also said the staffers in that office had left the company, but that it would continue to serve Americans of all backgrounds.

“A spokesperson with the non-profit distributor of educational programming – which receives some government funding – told The Hollywood Reporter the office had been shuttered. . .”

https://www.mediaite.com/news/pbs-caves-to-trump-ousts-staffers-we-have-closed-our-dei-office/

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/