How Will Media Handle Attacks From T?

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Article in The Washington Post by Eric Wemple 11/11/24

Headline:  “Will there be a retribution of media? I answered your questions.”

“I am guessing that the new Trump admin will at least attempt to freeze out the traditional media (ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT, WPO, etc) for criticizing him during the election. How will the media handle that?

“Hey there: “Guessing” is about all we can do at this moment, simply because the Trump folks haven’t written up, printed out and published their COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR HANDLING THE TRADITIONAL MEDIA. Recall that there are two opposing forces at work here: One is that Trump loves having the media at his fingertips, assembled at the White House and available to coming running in with cameras and recorders at a moment’s notice.”

“. . . Should the media have a strategy to safeguard press freedom under the next presidency?

“Yes, and it does: Fight all attacks on the First Amendment. That, you can count on, and it applies to anyone who occupies the White House.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/11/erik-wemple-media-live-chat/

Reporter Behind Bars

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Article from Committee to Protect Journalists, 11/11/24

Headline:  “Turkish journalist Furkan Karabay arrested over reporting on opposition arrest”

“The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Turkish authorities to immediately free reporter Furkan Karabay, who was seized from his home at dawn on Friday after he published a report about the arrest of an opposition mayor.

” ‘Journalist Furkan Karabay is the latest in a long line of journalists who have ended up behind bars in Turkey simply for publishing critical reporting and commentary,’ said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Karabay must not waste months of his life in prison, waiting to be indicted and tried. Turkey’s constant oppression of the free press is an obstacle to citizens’ rights to access information”.

https://cpj.org/2024/11/turkish-journalist-furkan-karabay-arrested-over-reporting-on-opposition-arre

Technofascism and the Media

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Article in The Guardian by Joan Donovan, 11/11/24

Headline: “First came the bots, then came the bosses – we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation”

Subhead: “Tech leaders’ politics are encoded into their platforms – and with Trump’s ascent, they have direct access to the Oval Office”

“. . . When tech CEOs encode their political beliefs into the design of platforms, it’s a form of technofascism, where technology is used for political suppression of speech and to repress the organization of resistance to the state or capitalism.

“Content moderation at these platforms now reflects the principles of the CEO and what that person believes is in the public’s interest. The political opinions of tech’s overlords, like Musk and Zuckerberg, are now directly embedded in their algorithms.”

“. . .Whether it’s Musk’s strategy of overloading users with posts from himself and Trump, or Zuckerberg’s silencing of political discussion, it’s citizens who suffer from such chilling of speech.”

“If we are to disarm disinformers, we need a whole of society approach that values real Talk (Timely, Accurate Local Knowledge) and community safety. . . .  But most of all, it’s going to require that you and I do something quickly to protect those already in the crosshairs of Trump’s new world order, by donating to or joining community organizations tackling issues such as women’s rights and immigration. Even subscribing to a local news outlet is a profound political act these days. Let that sink in.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-disinformation

Conspiracies and the media

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Article in The Guardian by Steve Rose, 11/8./24

Headline:  “A reporter down the rabbit hole: Gabriel Gatehouse on edgelords, conspiracy theories and Trump’s America”

Subhead:  “The former BBC journalist has spent four years considering the misfits, misinformation and manipulation that are now central to US politics. In his new book, The Coming Storm, he weaves a terrifying narrative”

“. . . The parallels between media reporting and conspiracy theory manufacturing are uncomfortably close, especially now that “the media” is itself fragmented into different camps, each pushing its own conflicting version of reality. ‘If some people take this series as a sort of critique of establishment media, then we’ll be happy about that,’ he says. Bias is unavoidable: ‘You’re not just putting facts in there in a random order; you are crafting a narrative, so obviously you are choosing what to include and what to leave out.’ As a conspiracist, you can be more cavalier, but as a journalist, “You’ve got to do that in as honest a way as possible, but you can’t help but go into a story with some kind of preconceived idea of what the story is.”

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/08/gabriel-gatehouse-coming-storm-conspiracy-theories-trump-america

Targeting Journalists

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Article in New York Times by By Kavitha Chekuru, 11/10/24

Headline: “Israel Keeps Attacking Journalists. When Will the U.S. Intervene?”

“At least 129 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza started last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists; the Gaza media office puts that number much higher, at 188. This has been the deadliest year for journalists since the C.P.J. began recording the numbers in 1992. The group has said that in the first 10 weeks of the war, more journalists were killed than had been killed in any country over an entire year.

“The C.P.J. has also determined that five journalists who were killed, including one in Lebanon, were ‘directly targeted” by Israeli forces, and the organization is investigating more than 20 others.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/opinion/israel-war-journalists-killed-gaza.html

Alternative Media Changed Things

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Article in The Washington Post by Manuel Roig-Franzia, Elahe Izadi, 11/8/24

Headline:  “As Trump joined the podcast revolution, legacy media got left out”

Subhead:  “The 2024 election result makes clear how much alternative forms of news have changed the game.”

” . . .There is no question that this election was probably a breaking point in terms of the role legacy media plays in political campaigns,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a co-host of the popular liberal podcast, “Pod Save America.” Trump “paid no price” for mostly ignoring legacy media — appearances on Fox News aside — in the final month-and-a-half of the campaign, something that would have been unheard of in elections past, said Pfeiffer, who was communications director in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“. . . At the same time, traditional legacy media audiences, particularly for news, have eroded over the decades. Daily newspaper circulation, digital traffic to newspaper websites and local television news ratings are all down, per Pew. About 15 years ago, as many as 90 percent of households paid to get TV channels; now, it’s barely half. Television is still the single most common way Americans get their political news, according to Pew, but it’s way more popular among older Americans than those younger than 29, whose most common source is social media.”

“. . . “They don’t need the legacy media,” she said. “They know they can sit in a room full of podcasters and whatever else you want to call the influencers that lead his base and they will write down his every word, even if it’s spelled backwards.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/11/08/podcasts-joe-rogan-trump/

Falling Down?

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Article  in The Hollywood Reporter by Ales Wepring, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Media’s Crisis Point: It’s Losing Relevance and Scorned In Trump Era. A Reboot May Be Next”

Subhead: “Former President Trump’s decisive victory Tuesday will cause media outlets — particularly those that fashioned themselves as nonpartisan — to rethink their strategies.”

“Former President Trump’s decisive victory Tuesday led to a shockwave that was felt in newsrooms across Washington D.C. and New York. Everyone knew the polls were close and that a Trump win was a strong possibility, sure, but the scale of Trump’s win left one senior producer at a broadcast network stunned: “We are questioning our relevance right now,” they said Wednesday morning.”

“. . . Indeed, there are blaring red warnings signs for traditional media everywhere you look. Ratings for the broadcast and cable news channels saw steep declines in ratings from Nielsen (finals showed an average of 42.3 million people, down from nearly 57 million four years ago), with the lowest ratings in decades. The steepest drop was felt at CNN, which saw its numbers fall below MSNBC for the first election night since that channel launched nearly three decades ago.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/media-crisis-trump-era-1236055073/

Future of Media After Election?

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 11/9/24

Headline:  “Opinion | Donald Trump and the media: a look back and a look ahead to the next four years

Subhead:  “Four media experts and analysts discuss how the press covered Trump in this election cycle and what to expect going forward”

“. . . [Trump had had] a relentless barrage of attacks on his enemies, which includes the press.

It’s that style, as well as a constantly evolving media landscape, that has left the journalism world continually reviewing how it has covered Trump and how it should cover him in the future. And it asks these questions while wondering if Trump will follow through on many of the threats he has made against the press.

“. . . I’m no longer sure what “the press” is, and what speakers mean when they refer to it. Is it The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, USA Today? Yes. Is it The Atlantic, NPR, PBS, BBC and The Associated Press? Yes again. Is it a thousand local newspapers? OK. Talk radio? Well … Podcasts? Umm … TikTok, X and social media?

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/what-to-expect-next-trump-presidency-media/

Legacy Media Dead?

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Article in The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel, 11/8/24

Headline:  “Bad News”

Subhead:   “Legacy media must compete against a choose-your-own-adventure reality.”

By Charlie Warzel

” ‘You are the media now.’ That’s the message that began to cohere among right-wing influencers shortly after Donald Trump won the election this week. Elon Musk first posted the phrase, and others followed. ‘The legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media,’ the right-wing activist James O’Keefe posted shortly after. ‘You are the media.’

“It’s a particularly effective message for Musk, who spent $44 billion to purchase a communications platform that he has harnessed to undermine existing media institutions and directly support Trump’s campaign.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/you-are-the-media-now/680602/

Fear in the Media Moves Voters

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Article in FAIR by Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Media Blame Left for Trump Victory—Rather Than Their Own Fear-Based Business Model”

“Corporate media may not have all the same goals as MAGA Republicans, but they share the same strategy: Fear works.

“Appeals to fear have an advantage over other kinds of messages in that they stimulate the deeper parts of our brains, those associated with fight-or-flight responses. Fear-based messages tend to circumvent our higher reasoning faculties and demand our attention, because evolution has taught our species to react strongly and quickly to things that are dangerous.

“. . . With refugees treated as a scourge in centrist and right-wing media alike, is it any wonder that Trump can harvest votes by promising to do something about this menace?  . . . ”

“. . .Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.”

https://fair.org/home/media-blame-left-for-trump-victory-rather-than-their-own-fear-based-business-model/

and in Common Dreams:

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/mainstream-media-trump-win