Who Gets to Censor News?

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Article in The Contrarian by Nina Jankowicz, 1/23/25

Headline:  “Making Censorship Real Again”

Subhead:  “The Trump administration is capitalizing on a false conspiracy of censorship to usher in the real kind”

“On Inauguration Day, amidst a flurry of executive orders adorned with loopy Sharpie signatures, Donald Trump restored free speech in America. Or so he claimed.

“If you hadn’t noticed free speech had been abolished, don’t beat yourself up. Like several other executive actions, the order that aspires to ‘end federal censorship’ is based on a conspiracy theory. Despite its flimsy pretext, it could usher in an era of real censorship the likes of which the United States has never seen.

Fox News mainstreamed the narrative that conservatives were being unfairly censored by social media companies in the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss. The lies gained steam across right-wing media and on the same social media sites apparently doing all this censoring—and by 2022, with Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the conspiracy-minded inmates were running the asylum.

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/making-censorship-real-again

Townhall on The Media Saturday

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Join us Saturday, 1/25


The event is at Simpson House, 4509 Walnut, KC MO and on-line over Zoom

Stop the Non-Profit Killer Bill & Protect Non-Commercial Community Media!

January 25, 2025, 4-6 PM Pacific / 6-8 Central / 7-9 Eastern

Co-sponsored by Friends of Community Media, Pacifica Fightback, PeaceWorks KC

Register now in person, or on Zoom at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/VE-Hxs0kRw6qZrmBMs3TuA

After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with information on joining the meeting.

ACCESSIBILITY: A-I captioning in English or A-I translation of your choice is available.

Tik Tok Media Clock Not Ticking Now

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Article in Mother Jones by Anna Merlan, 1/20/25

Headline:  “As TikTok Negotiates with Trump, Every Major Social Media Company Has Caved to the New President”

Subhead:  “Online life has “been taken over by the right wing,” warns Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”


“. . . Over the weekend, Tik Tok very briefly died in the United States before being reborn some 12 hours later, bearing a jaunty new banner. ‘As a result of President Trump’s efforts,’ it read, in part, ‘ Tik Tok is back in the U.S.’ The biggest tech and social media companies have consolidated behind Trump. . .”

“Trump was not yet president on Sunday, when TikTok began restoring U.S. access despite a Supreme Court ruling Friday upholding a law meant to ban it. But the deeper message was unmistakable: the Chinese-owned company ByteDance and its CEO Shou Zi Chew would do anything to placate Trump and keep its most profitable app online for American users. . .”

“. . . A day after the app’s American resurrection, Chew came to Washington for Trump’s inauguration, along with two other social media giants, Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Also present was Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple’s Tim Cook. . .”

“All of this, of course, points to one simple fact: the total consolidation of the biggest tech and social media companies behind the new president. ‘What this effectively means is that every social media platform, mass social media platform in the United States, has been taken over by the right wing,’ Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said in a Sunday video posted—ironically, but unavoidably—to Meta-owned Instagram.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/social-media-donald-trump/

Conservative Media Under Water?

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Article in Mediaite by Isaac Schorr, 1/21/26

Headline:  “Can Conservative Media Survive Trump’s Presidency?”

“. . .“Journalists exist to seek the truth, to tell people’s stories, to lift up voices that may not be heard otherwise, to shine a light on injustice and to hold the powerful accountable,” declared Acosta during a monologue. “We are not the enemy of the people. We are the defenders of the people. Walter Cronkite once said, ‘freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.’”

“. . . Right-wing publications and TV — supplemented now by podcasts, and Substacks, and social media addicts — rose out of the recognition that mainstream media was left-wing media. The groupthink was bad when National Review announced itself in 1955, worse when Fox News came on the block in 1996, and is downright intolerable now; a 2023 Syracuse University study found that just 3.4% of American journalists are Republicans. In such an environment, conservative truth-seeking is an imperative, not a luxury, not just for the GOP’s political prospects, but for the health of the country.

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/can-conservative-media-survive-trumps-presidency/

Fair-Weather Media

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Article in The Nation by Wen Stepenson, 1/21/25

Headline:  “In Our New Climate Reality, There Is No Getting Back to Normal”

Subhead:  “The media is failing to warn us about the scale of the disasters that lie ahead. In Los Angeles, as everywhere, we need more than liberal technocratic tweaks”

” ‘We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt.… We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.’ ”

So begins the latest “State of the Climate Report” by an international group of 14 leading climate scientists from the United States, Europe, Australia, China, and Brazil, declaring in no uncertain terms that we have entered what’s coming to be known as the Age of Consequences. . .”

You might think the harrowing scenes of Los Angeles burning would elicit a similar reckoning in our national conversation, but almost nothing resembling those stark, factual, and, yes, alarming sentences will be found in the pages of our august organs of elite opinion. Rather than such clear language about our global emergency—the all-important context in which LA’s situation must be understood—the mainstream response has largely sought to contain the wildfire narrative within an Overton window of acceptable, i.e., unalarming, discourse. Much of the media is treating LA’s tragedy as extraordinary, yes, and somehow related to climate change, but ultimately manageable and preventable—if only smarter state and local policies and protocols are implemented.

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/climate-reality-fires-los-angeles/
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Right Wing Media Like Pardons

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Article in Media Matters by Lis Power & Gideon Taffe, 1/21/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media gloss over Trump’s pardons for violent January 6 rioters”

“Right-wing media have been quick to obscure the facts about President Donald Trump’s pardon of January 6 rioters, suggesting that he pardoned only nonviolent offenders and ignoring the pardons that went to violent offenders who assaulted police and carried weapons.

“The list of people pardoned by Trump includes at least one person who was charged with seditious conspiracy and hundreds more who were “convicted of assaulting police, carrying firearms, destroying property or otherwise contributing to the violent rampage.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/right-wing-media-gloss-over-trumps-pardons-violent-january-6-rioters

Media Bowing Down

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Article in Daily Kos by Oilber Willis, 1/21/25

Headline:  ” ‘Great president’: Mainstream media slobbers all over Trump”

“Early in Donald Trump’s new presidency, mainstream media outlets confirmed fears of how they would cover him—by avoiding the truth, equivocating on his abuse of power, and even praising him.

“The actions by widely read and watched outlets was the continuation of a recent trend that has seen outlets like ABC News, MSNBC, and The Washington Post cave to Trump, even before he was sworn in.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/21/2298201/-Mainstream-media-fails-the-Trump-test-on-his-first-day-back?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_4&pm_medium=web

Dark Clouds Over FCC

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Headline in Slashdot by Mishmash, 1/21/25

Headline:  “Brenden Carr is Officially in Charge of the FCC?”

“Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency’s agenda and usher through a host of regulations with major implications for the tech and media industries as soon as he has a Republican majority.  . .”

“Carr’s priorities might also be gleaned from a document you might have already heard about: Project 2025. That’s because he authored the FCC chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s wishlist for a Donald Trump presidency. In that chapter, Carr proposes actions including: limiting immunity for tech companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, requiring disclosures about how platforms prioritize content, requiring tech companies to pay into a program that funds broadband access in rural areas, and more, quickly approving applications to launch satellites from companies like Elon Musk’s Starlink.”

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/21/1424225/brendan-carr-is-officially-in-charge-of-the-fcc

EU Media Hate-Speech Ban

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Article in Reuters by Foo Yun Chee, 1/20/25

Headline:  “Facebook, X, YouTube to do more against online hate speech, EU says”

“Meta’s (META.O), Elon Musk’s X, Google’s (GOOGL.O), YouTube and other tech companies have agreed to do more to tackle online hate speech under an updated code of conduct that will now be integrated into EU tech rules, the European Commission said on Monday.

“Other signatories to the voluntary code set up in May 2016 are Dailymotion, Instagram, Jeuxvideo.com, LinkedIn, Microsoft (MSFT.O), hosted consumer services, Snapchat, Rakuten Viber, TikTok and Twitch.

” ‘In Europe there is no place for illegal hate, either offline or online. I welcome the stakeholders’ commitment to a strengthened Code of conduct under the Digital Services Act (DSA),’ EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said in a statement.”

https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-x-youtube-do-more-against-online-hate-speech-eu-says-2025-01-20/

In the Eyes of the Media

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 1/21/25

Headline:  “Pomp, Policy, and Pardons”

Subhead:  “How the media saw Trump’s return to power.”

“. . .According to Punchbowl News, only twenty reporters were allowed inside to cover the proceedings, due to space restrictions. Whether they were the only journalists present, however, depends on how you define the term. Tucker Carlson was there, as was Joe Rogan. So were media moguls, plural: Rupert Murdoch, who needs no introduction; Bernard Arnault, who needs no introduction as the CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH but perhaps does as a French media tycoon; Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post. Bezos bought another journalist in with him: his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, a former local TV anchor in California. . .”

“. . .Kid Rock was on Fox News talking to Sean Hannity. He still had a cigar in hand, but was now dressed in black tie. After extolling the January 6 pardons as ‘great’—and dismissing Biden’s as a ‘clown show’—he turned his attention to the press and what he perceives as its unfair treatment of Trump. ‘I think people are really starting to see through what the mainstream media has tried to do to this man,’ he said. ‘It’s a travesty.’

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/pomp-policy-and-pardons.php