When a Reporter Becomes a Mouthpiece for a Tyrant

Article in The Guardian by John Banville, 8/7/25

Headline:  Interviewing Hitler by Richard Evans review – the most unethical journalist in history”

Subhead:  “George Ward Price, the Mail’s star reporter, landed a series of scoops in the 1930s. But who was he really working for?”

“. . .His greatest triumphs came in the 1930s, when he courted the Nazis zealously, in particular Hitler, who in Linz, on the evening after the German annexation of Austria, ‘greeted him with a smile. ‘Well, Ward Price,’ he said. ‘Always there!’

“Ward Price’s reporting came in for serious criticism, including from Winston Churchill, who declared on meeting him: ‘I see that you’ve been over in Germany again, shaking the bloodstained hands of your Nazi friends.’ . . .”

Interviewing Hitler: How George Ward Price Became the World’s Most Famous Journalist by Richard Evans is published by The History Press

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/07/interviewing-hitler-by-richard-evans-review-the-most-unethical-journalist-in-history

Media Friends are Enemies?


Article in Daily Dot by Anna Good, 8/6/25

Headline:   “Right-wing radio host and longtime Trump ally says MAGA is turning on him—and lists 7 reasons why”

Subhead:  “Savage isn’t alone.”

“Conservative radio host Michael Savage delivered a critique of President Donald Trump on X this week. In it, he outlined seven key reasons why he believes Trump has “alienated” some of his most loyal voters. In a post shared on X Tuesday afternoon, Savage accused Trump of abandoning core principles that helped build his MAGA base in 2016.

“Although Trump continues to lead in most Republican polls, Savage warned that a growing number of disillusioned supporters may sit out the 2026 midterms, or even the next presidential race. Additionally, he emphasized that these voters aren’t likely to switch to Democrats, but they may disengage entirely. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.dailydot.com/viral-politics/michael-savage-calls-out-donald-trump/

Media Consolidation Threat


News Release from Free Press by Staff, 8/5/25

Headline:  “Press Freedom Groups Tell FCC: Media Consolidation Poses Grave Threat to Independent News and Information in the United States”

Subhead:  ” ‘Allowing for even more media consolidation poses too great a risk to our democracy, and to the free press on which it depends.’ “

“WASHINGTON — On Monday, 16 leading press freedom groups, civil liberties organizations and labor unions urged the Federal Communications Commission not to move forward with plans to loosen media ownership limits before it fully assesses the negative impacts media consolidation has had and will have on local news and information in the United States.

Earlier this summer, the FCC asked for public comments on changing or eliminating a longstanding rule that limits the size and national reach of giant broadcasters — like Sinclair, Nexstar and Fox Corporation — which already own hundreds of local stations across the country.

“Our chief concern regards the impact further consolidation of media ownership will have on the independence of the nation’s press and the vitality of its local journalism,” wrote the groups, including the NewsGuild CWA, Free Press, Open Markets Institute, Reporters Without Borders-USA, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Coalition Against Censorship, Project Censored, Writers Guild of America East and Writers Guild of America West, among others. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/press-freedom-groups-tell-fcc-media-consolidation-poses-grave-threat-independent-news-and

– – – – –

Article in Common Dreams by Jessica Corbett, 8/5/25

Headline:  “Press Freedom Coalition to FCC: Don’t Ditch Checks on Corporate Media Consolidation”

Subhead:  “The 16 groups urge the agency “to uphold its obligation to promote competition, localism, and diversity in the U.S. media.”

“A coalition of 16 civil liberties, press freedom, and labor groups this week urged U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon any plans to loosen media ownership restrictions and warned against opening the floodgates to further corporate consolidation.

“Public comments on the National Television Multiple Ownership Rule were due to the Federal Communications Commission by Monday—which is when the coalition wrote to the FCC about the 39% national audience reach cap for U.S. broadcast media conglomerates, and how more mergers could negatively impact “the independence of the nation’s press and the vitality of its local journalism. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-fcc

Constitution Not for All – Rt. Wing Media


Article in Media Matters by Toni Lonergan, 8/5/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media’s campaign against due process for immigrants”

Subhead:  “Figures on the right falsely claimed that migrants don’t — or shouldn’t — get constitutionally protected rights”

“The Constitution guarantees due process rights for everyone in the United States, regardless of citizenship status, but as part of their ongoing effort to defend President Donald Trump’s mass deportations, right-wing media have repeatedly and wrongly insisted that immigrants are excluded from this constitutional protection.

“Some right-wing media figures have alleged only ‘nut jobs’ believe undocumented immigrants deserve due process, and some have claimed that even legal immigrants ‘have no rights at all.’ Others on the right acknowledged that migrants have rights but cheered at the prospect of taking them away, lamenting that constitutionally enshrined rights like due process and habeas corpus were slowing down mass deportations. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/right-wing-medias-campaign-against-due-process-immigrants

MAGA Media Falling?

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by John Hersh, 8/1/25

Headline: “Will the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Break MAGA Media?” 

Subhead:  “Mother Jones’s Anna Merlan on how the Epstein files are tearing MAGA media apart.”

“For the past few weeks, MAGA media and conservative podcasters have been torn apart over President Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein saga.

“Anna Merlan, a senior editor at Mother Jones, joins The Kicker to talk about right-wing media’s efforts to change the subject—and whether their audiences will go along with it. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/kicker/will-the-jeffrey-epstein-scandal-break-maga-media.php

Slight of Mouth


Article in Media Matters by Noah Dowe & Reed McMaster, 7/28/25

Headline:  “Right-leaning podcasters call out the Trump administration’s 2016 election claims as a ‘distraction’ from Jeffrey Epstein”

Subhead:  “Hosts of right-leaning online shows have called DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s report a “distraction” meant to make Trump supporters “stop paying attention to Epstein”

“Following weeks of outrage from right-wing media over the Trump administration’s handling of files relating to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently declassified multiple documents relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election, arguing they prove a ‘treasonous conspiracy’ to interfere with the results by Obama administration officials. However, hosts of right-leaning online shows — including many who helped promote President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign — have argued that Gabbard’s report and Trump’s subsequent rhetoric are a “distraction” meant “to appease the Trump base” and change the narrative away from the Epstein case. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/trumprussia/right-leaning-podcasters-call-out-trump-administrations-2016-election-claims

Propaganda is – Propaganda?

Article in The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi, 7/29/25

Headline:  “Ghislaine Maxwell is not a victim. And if she is pardoned, it won’t be for the sake of justice”

Subhead:  “The Epstein files may never be released, but it’s increasingly likely that Epstein’s right-hand woman could be. The groundwork is already being done”

“. . .The cable news channel, which is to the right of Fox News, is essentially a pro-Trump propaganda outlet with strong financial ties to the president. Earlier this month the outlet announced that it had struck a deal for the Trump Media and Technology Group Corp to stream Newsmax on its platform. Which obviously raises a lot of conflict-of-interest questions. “This is now the Trump network,” one Newsmax insider complained to the Independent last week. ‘Even the most conservative people at Newsmax think it’s a terrible look and they feel like state-run media.’ Also raising questions is the fact that Alex Acosta, the prosecutor who gave Epstein that plea deal in 2008, happens to be on the board of Newsmax.. .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/29/ghislaine-maxwell-pardon-epstein-files

The Ends Meet


Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 7/21/25

Headline: “The Epstein Effect”

Subhead:  “Has the mainstream press gone QAnon?”

“In Thursday’s edition of this newsletter, Emily Bell wrote about the increasingly curious right-wing-media dynamics surrounding the biggest political story of the moment: the Trump administration’s frantic, yet seemingly doomed, attempts to move its base on from conspiracy theories related to Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile who killed himself in jail in 2019, and the base’s refusal to be moved. ‘Trump is now confronting the outcome of a media ecosystem he invented, one based on panicky, consensus-squashing conspiracy theories,’ Bell observed. . .”

“. . .I’d argue that the MSM, on the whole, has never sounded as much like MAGA media as it has this past fortnight; as one unnamed reporter put it to New York’s Charlotte Klein last week, ‘Perhaps for the first time, the mainstream media and far-right media are sort of rowing in the same direction,’ at least when it comes to calling for Trump to release more records. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/epstein-effect-mainstream-media-press-qanon-conspiracy.php

Outfoxed by Epstein?

Article in The Washington Post by Jeremy Barr, 7/21/25

Headline: “As Trump comes for Murdoch media, Fox News faces a bind”

Subhead: “The network has sparingly covered the defamation lawsuit the president filed against its corporate sibling News Corp. and the Wall Street Journal.”

“On Fox News, the network’s pro-Trump opinion hosts often trumpet the president’s latest attack on the mainstream media. That got a bit more complicated on Friday, when the president sued the Wall Street Journal, another part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

“President Donald Trump filed suit in federal court in Florida, arguing that he was defamed by a July 17 story in the Wall Street Journal reporting that he sent a “bawdy” letter to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 to mark his 50th birthday. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/07/21/fox-wall-street-journal-lawsuit-trump/

Alligators Can Bite in Undrained Swamp


Article in AlterNet by Carl Gibson, 7/17/25

Headline: ” ‘Worse by the day’: Analyst reveals how Trump is rapidly losing backing of far-right media”

“President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case has resulted in a vast multitude of far-right media figures turning on the person they helped elect, according to a new analysis.

“In a Thursday article in anti-Trump conservative outlet The Bulwark, author Will Sommer detailed how some of the biggest names in the MAGA media sphere have deemed Trump a heretic over the administration’s insistence that the Epstein matter is closed and that the rumored ‘client list’ purportedly including contact information for Epstein’s criminal associates never existed. He listed multiple examples suggesting that Trump’s biggest online advocates may not forgive him over the Epstein issue. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.alternet.org/trump-right-wing-media/