Local Radio is Important!

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Friends of Community Media presented an award to the Mississippi community radio station which was the only radio station in the area that stayed on the air during Hurricane Katrina and provided vital information.

Article in Poynter by Paul Farhi, 6/2/25

Headline: “This radio station was a lifeline during a hurricane. Now it’s fighting to survive.”

Subhead:  “In rural towns and emergency zones, public radio is often the only source of critical information. Without federal funding, they could vanish.”

“As Hurricane Helene ravaged the mountain communities of western North Carolina last fall, Blue Ridge Public Radio remained a beacon in the storm.

“With power knocked out throughout the region, the organization turned to portable generators to keep its two stations on the air. For days during and after the deluge, BPR was the only source of lifesaving news: weather updates, road closures, potable water locations.

“BPR now confronts a different kind of calamity. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/president-trump-public-broadcasting-funding-cuts-effects/

Reluctant Reporting Truth

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Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 6/2/25

Headline:  “Even Fox & Friends can’t completely deny that the GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is set to blow up the deficit”

“Reality crept into Fox News’ coverage of the Republican tax bill on Monday when a Fox & Friends co-host acknowledged that the legislation will increase the budget deficit because the GOP Congress is prioritizing President Donald Trump’s tax cut agenda. . .”

“But Fox & Friends’ Ainsley Earhardt acknowledged the following morning that the bill will cause the deficit to increase due to its tax cuts — though she minimized by how much.”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/even-fox-friends-cant-completely-deny-gops-big-beautiful-bill-set-blow-deficit

Barriers to Reporting

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Article in Huffpost by Julia Frankel, 6/2/25

Headline: “Israel Bars Media From West Bank Villages On Tour Organized By Oscar Winners”

Subhead:  “The directors of “No Other Land,” a film about Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the territory, had invited journalists to interview the area’s residents.”

“Israeli soldiers on Monday barred journalists from entering villages in the West Bank on a planned tour organized by the directors of the Oscar-winning movie “No Other Land.”

“The directors of the film, which focuses on Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory, said they had invited the journalists on the tour Monday to interview residents about increasing settler violence in the area.

“In video posted on X by the film’s co-director, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli soldier tells a group of international journalists there is “no passage” in the area because of a military order. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-bars-media-west-bank-palestinian-oscar-winners_n_683db860e4b095a13841143c

AI Journalism / Ghost Books

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Article in Slashdot by Anonymous, 6/2/25

Headline:  “Business Insider Recommended Nonexistent Books To Staff As It Leans Into AI”

“Business Insider announced this week that it wants staff to better incorporate AI into its journalism. But less than a year ago, the company had to quietly apologize to some staff for accidentally recommending that they read books that did not appear to exist but instead may have been generated by AI. . .”

“. . .But a few were unfamiliar to staff. Simply Target: A CEO’s Lessons in a Turbulent Time and Transforming an Iconic Brand by former Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jensen Huang: the Founder of Nvidia, which was supposedly published by the company Charles River Editors in 2019. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/02/1537210/business-insider-recommended-nonexistent-books-to-staff-as-it-leans-into-ai

CBS – How Times Have Changed

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Edward R. Murrow, 1962

Article in New York Times by James Poniewozik, 5/30/25

Headline: ” ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ Remembers When TV Had a Conscience, and a Spine”

Subhead:  “A TV critic looks at George Clooney’s play about CBS News standing up to political pressure, even as its current ownership might succumb to it.”

“In the Broadway play ‘Good Night, and Good Luck,’ the CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow (George Clooney) allows himself a moment of doubt, as his program ‘See It Now’ embarks on a series of reports on the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

“ ‘It occurs to me,’ he says, ‘that we might not get away with this one.’

“It is a small but important line. We know Murrow’s story — exposing the red-baiting demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy — as history. And history, once set down on the page and stage, can seem inevitable.

“But Murrow’s success was not preordained. It required hard, exacting work. It required guts. It required journalists to risk personal ruin and some of them to experience it. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/arts/television/good-night-and-good-luck-cbs-paramount.html

Learn About AI Generated Journalism

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Article in Poynter by Jennifer Orsi, 5/29/25

Headline:  “Journalists are using AI. They should be talking to their audience about it.”

Subhead:  “A new toolkit from Poynter’s MediaWise, in collaboration with AP, aims to make that easier, reduce consumer anxiety through AI literacy”

“Even as newsrooms are increasingly using the power of artificial intelligence in their reporting, research is telling them that AI makes their audience anxious and worried. It’s a potentially bad combination for audience trust — which isn’t so hot to begin with.

“To help, MediaWise, the Poynter Institute’s media literacy initiative that focuses on online information, has created new tools for newsrooms to talk with their audiences about AI, both for ethical transparency and to demystify how AI is used. The effort was funded by Microsoft and was produced in collaboration with The Associated Press. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/from-the-institute/2025/journalists-are-using-ai-they-should-be-talking-to-their-audience-about-it-microsoft-associated-press/

Public Media Are Sueing

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Article in The Hill by Dominick Mastrangelo, 5/30/25

Headline: “PBS sues Trump administration in wake of calls to strip funding”

“PBS is suing President Trump’s administration on First Amendment grounds, arguing the president is trying to pull funding the from the broadcaster because of editorial coverage he disagrees with.

“The suit filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., accused the president of trying to “upend public television” and argues the law “forbids” him from pulling funding to it and other public broadcast outlets.

“PBS’s suit follows a similar lawsuit filed earlier this week by NPR. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5326430-pbs-sues-trump/

Media Joining the Parade?

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Article in The Guardian by Judith Levine, 5/30/25

Headline:  “We’re minimizing the horror of Trump’s military birthday parade”

Subhead:  “The media has focused on the price tag and potholes. But history may mark 14 June as the ceremonial birth of US fascism”

“In 2017, watching a two-hour Bastille Day procession, Donald Trump told the French president that we’d have one too, only better. . .”

“This time, as Washington prepares for a huge military shindig on 14 June, Trump’s 79th – and, oh yes, the US army’s 250th – birthday, the generals are silent. The Republicans have sworn allegiance to the king. And the media are focused on the price tag, the potholes and the impending pomp; on tensions between the blue city of Washington and the red capital; and on the decimation of veterans’ healthcare, housing, and pensions while the administration throws $25m to $45m at a circus of war. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/30/trump-military-parade-fascism

PBS Station Caves?

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Article in The Intercept by Nikita Mazurov, 5/29/25

Headline:  “PBS Station Wipes Drag and Trans Content After DOGE Outcry”

Subhead:  “PBS producer WNET quietly erased episodes containing a drag queen and a trans character from its platforms.”

“The New York-area PBS station WNET has scrubbed its archives of at least three educational TV episodes that discuss transgender identity and drag expression, The Intercept has learned, as Congress and the Trump administration target public broadcasters with attempts to strip their funding.

“The station’s educational program ‘Let’s Learn’ became an object of ire for the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency this spring over the 2021 episode. . .The subcommittee’s chair, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., opened the ‘Anti-American Airwaves’ hearing in March by claiming that ‘PBS News is not just left-leaning, but it actively uses taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical, left positions like featuring a drag queen on the show . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://theintercept.com/2025/05/29/drag-trans-pbs-wnet-censorship-doge/