Probing Questions? Hang Up!

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Article in AlterNet by Carl Gibson, 7/22/25

Headline:  “ ‘Got to be kidding’: Trump abruptly hangs up on CNN when asked about new Epstein photos”

“Previously unseen photos of President Donald Trump and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein were released by CNN on Tuesday night, and he has yet to answer the network’s questions about them. . . ”

“According to CNN reporters Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, the president put a quick end to a phone call the moment he was asked about the photos of him and Epstein at Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples in 1993 at New York’s Plaza Hotel. The network also published footage of Trump and Epstein smiling and laughing with each other during a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion show. The new photos and video took place several years before Epstein’s first conviction.

“In a brief call with CNN on Tuesday, President Trump, asked about the wedding photos, responded, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ before repeatedly calling CNN ‘fake news’ and hanging up,” Kaczynski and Steck wrote. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.alternet.org/trump-epstein-photos-2673663251/

Can Journalism Survive Alone?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Hamilton Nolan, 7/22/25

Headline:  “Journalism Needs Government Funding to Survive”

Subhead:  “The recent cuts to public media are part of a broader attack on public welfare.”

“Last week’s decision by Republicans in Congress to eliminate government funding for public media blows a billion-dollar hole in the budgets of local news stations across America. While NPR and PBS will survive, the existence of small broadcasters in rural, red-state news deserts is now endangered. In at least one sense, however, this attack on the public’s right to news will have a unifying function. Journalists, citizens, and civil society as a whole—red, blue, or striped—can be assured that we are all riding a pendulum swinging at terrifying speed in the wrong direction.

“If we want to see a robust level of news reporting exist in this nation—comparable to what we had in the twentieth century—we will need public funding for journalism. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/journalism-needs-government-funding-to-survive.php

Radio Lifeline Disappearing

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Article in The Washington Post by Staff, 7/22/25

Headline:  “Congress cut public media funding. Now what?

Subhead:  “What one rural community in Alaska could be losing now that Congress has defunded public media. And why this became a priority for President Donald Trump.”

“KYUK is the oldest Native American-owned radio station in the country. It broadcasts morning newscasts in both English and Yup’ik, the local Indigenous language, to 56 remote communities in Southwest Alaska. When there’s a weather emergency or even just a local basketball game, these communities turn to KYUK for information. But soon, that could all change.

“Late last week, Congress passed a rescissions bill that claws back the money set aside for public broadcasting for the next two years. For KYUK, this money represents close to 70 percent of its entire budget. Without it, the station could go dark. . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/congress-cut-public-media-funding-now-what/

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Article in The Guardian by Edward Helmore, 7/22/25

Headline:  “NPR’s editor-in-chief to step down days after Congress cuts $1.1bn in funding”

Subhead:  “Edith Chapin’s announcement comes after Congress approves Trump bill to cancel all federal funding for public broadcasters”

“The editor-in-chief of the US public radio network NPR has told colleagues that she is stepping down later this year.

“Edith Chapin’s announcement comes just days after federal lawmakers voted in support of Donald Trump’s plan to claw back $1.1bn from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the umbrella organization that funds both NPR and the non-commercial TV network PBS. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/22/npr-editor-in-chief-to-step-down

Media Political Victim?

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Article in Rolling Stone by Alan Spinwall, 7/22/25

Headline:  “Politics, Not Performance, Killed ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”

Subhead:  “The end of ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ signals a much bigger shift for late night. But it’s not just about money”

“At the start of Thursday night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the veteran talk show host announced that on Wednesday, his bosses at CBS informed him that Late Show would be coming to an end next May. As the studio audience booed at great length and volume, Colbert acknowledged, ‘Yeah, I share your feelings.’ Then he inspired additional sympathetic boos by adding, “It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away. . .”

“. . . A specific merger with Skydance Media was proposed last year, and it is still awaiting approval by the Federal Communications Commission — an agency whose chief reports to the man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and who earlier this month received a $16 million settlement in a lawsuit he filed against CBS regarding the editing of a 60 Minutes episode. Colbert has been one of the most vocal critics of the current administration of anyone on television. . .

Read the full article at:

https://au.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/late-show-with-stephen-colbert-ending-analysis-80208/

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Article in The Guardian by Adrian Horton, 7/22/25

Headline: “Losing Stephen Colbert and The Late Show is a crushing blow, whatever the reason”

Subhead: “After watching the comedian’s smart and incisive assessment of America’s daily chaos for years, there’s something major to be mourned as he leaves the air”

“. . .or the better part of six years, I have watched every late-night monologue as part of my job at the Guardian (hello, late-night roundup), and though I often grumble about it, The Late Show has become a staple of my media diet and my principle source of news; as a millennial, I haven’t known a television landscape without it. There are many bleaker, deadlier things happening daily in this country, and the field of late-night comedy has been dying slowly for years, but the cancellation of The Late Show, three days after Colbert called out its parent company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, felt especially and pointedly depressing – more a sign of cultural powerlessness and corporate fecklessness in the face of a bully president than the inevitable result of long-shifting tastes. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/stephen-colbert-cancelled-trump-late-night

Shiving the Media

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Article in New York Times by Jess Bidgood, 7/21/25

Headline: “Trump Sharpens Attacks on a Favorite Foe: The News Media”

Subhead: “How the president is using the levers of government power against the news industry.”

“In declaring war on The Wall Street Journal over its coverage of his years long friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump tapped his supporters’ distrust of his favorite foe — the news media — in an effort to put down a mutiny within his base, as my colleague Erica Green explained.

“It was a familiar move that might have been lifted straight from his playbook in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“But this is a very different moment. If Trump’s complaints about the media feel like a throwback to his first term, his actions toward the industry have gone much further than that. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/us/politics/trump-news-media.html

Jack-booting the Press

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Article in The Atlantic by Paul Farhi, 7/21/25

Headline: “Trump’s Campaign to Crush the Media”

Subhead: “The president has launched a frontal assault on the journalism business. So far, he’s winning.”

“President Donald Trump’s latest assault on the news media came in the form of another lawsuit last week. After The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had allegedly written a birthday note, complete with ‘bawdy’ doodling, to the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, Trump boiled over with indignation. He denied writing the note and filed a libel suit the next day, demanding $10 billion in damages from the Journal, its parent company, and its principal owner, Rupert Murdoch, a sometime Trump ally.

“Although Trump faces considerable legal obstacles to win in court, betting against him would be unwise. In his first six months in office, he has been on a winning streak in his campaign to punish and diminish the press. His dispute with the Journal, after all, hijacked the news cycle from another Trump “victory”: eliminating federal support for public broadcasting. Early Friday morning, Congress voted to cancel $1.1 billion in subsidies for NPR, PBS, and their affiliated stations, marking the first time Congress has cut off public broadcasters since its funding began nearly 60 years ago. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/donald-trump-campaign-media/683600/

The Ends Meet

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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?

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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/

How to Control: Ban Access

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Article in the New York Times by Katie Robertson, 7/21/25

Headline: “White House Bans Wall Street Journal From Press Pool on Trump’s Scotland Trip”

Subhead: “The president sued the publication last week, accusing it of defamation for an article about his ties to the disgraced former financier Jeffrey Epstein.”

“The White House said on Monday that it had barred Wall Street Journal reporters from the traveling press pool for President Trump’s coming trip to Scotland, attacking the publication again for its reporting on ties between the president and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“On Thursday, The Journal published an article saying that Mr. Trump had sent Mr. Epstein a lewd birthday note in 2003. It included a drawing of a nude woman, The Journal reported, and ended with Mr. Trump writing, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/business/media/trump-scotland-wsj-press-pool.html

A Dirge for Public Media?

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Public media is not state-controlled media

Article in Poynter by Angela Fu, 7/18/25

Headline: “Congress signs off on Trump’s request to rescind $1 billion in funding for public broadcasting”

Subhead: “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will lose its funding starting in October — a first in its history”

“For the first time in its 58-year history, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — the organization responsible for distributing federal dollars to NPR, PBS and other public broadcasters — will lose its funding.

“The loss is a result of Congress’ striking deference to President Donald Trump. Under the Constitution, Congress holds the power to control government spending. But early Friday morning, at Trump’s request, the House joined the Senate in agreeing to take back $9 billion in funds it had already appropriated. That money included $1.07 billion for CPB and nearly $8 billion in foreign aid. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/trump-defunds-npr-pbs-cpb-public-broadcasting/