Using Disaster for Media

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Article in Media Matters by Allison Fisher, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media push Trump’s false claim that California water policies are hurting efforts to suppress LA fires”

Subhead:  “Casting blame on environmental policies in an attempt to distract from increasingly deadly climate impacts is core to right-wing media’s extreme weather playboo”

“Right-wing media are falsely blaming the reports of low water pressure or dry hydrants in Los Angeles on state and local mismanagement – including suggesting that local authorities refused to fill the reservoirs – and conflating the hydrant issue with the false claim that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water policies are to blame.

“On January 8, the Los Angeles Times reported that “as wildfires raged across Los Angeles on Tuesday, crews battling the Palisades blaze faced an additional burden: Scores of fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water flowing out.” Later that day, President-elect Donald Trump in a post on Truth Social falsely claimed that Newsom had deprived Southern California of water in order to protect the smelt fish.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-push-trumps-false-claim-california-water-policies-are-hurting-

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Article in Huff Post by Lee Moran, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Donald Trump’s Disaster-Hijacking Playbook Exposed By Expert On Right-Wing Media”

Subhead:  “Nicole Hemmer also explored the potent cocktail — involving the president-elect — that means ‘everything just feels worse all the time.’ “

“Nicole Hemmer — an expert on conservative and right-wing media, and the effect they have had on American politics — this week explained Donald Trump’s penchant for whipping up anger and causing division amid tragedies and disasters.

“ ‘It definitely is the case that this is something Trump does, right?’ Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, asked The New Republic’s Greg Sargent in the latest episode of his podcast, ‘The Daily Blast,’ which was released Thursday.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nicole-hemmer-donald-trump-talent_n_6780e6cde4b01ffef2482ddd

Get the Paddles!

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Article in NPR On the Media by Staff, 10/10/25

Headline:   “Public Broadcasting Is In Danger (Again)”

“NPR and PBS stations are bracing for war with the incoming Trump administration. On this week’s On the Media, the long history of efforts to save—and snuff out—public broadcasting. Plus, the role of public radio across the country, from keeping local governments in check to providing life-saving information during times of crisis. [01:00] Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger explore the history of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and break down the funding with Karen Everhart, managing editor of Current. [06:59] Host Micah Loewinger speaks with Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a member of the Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband, which oversees the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, on his decades-long fight with Republican lawmakers to keep NPR and PBS alive.”

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538775/on-the-media

Cartoon Kowtowing

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 10/10/25

Headline:  “Moderating Content”

Subhead:  “What the genuflection of billionaires means for the press.”

“Before Christmas, Ann Telnaes, an editorial cartoonist at the Washington Post, submitted a drawing that depicted four billionaire media and tech executives and one mouse genuflecting before Donald Trump, shown standing on a garlanded dais. The cartoon, Telnaes wrote last weekend, was inspired by recent reports of “men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-Lago” to visit Trump in the wake of his election win in November.

“. . .Meta is not the news media, but its latest policy change will clearly have ramifications for our industry. (For starters, many newsroom fact-checking initiatives have received financial support from Meta, the withdrawal of which is unlikely to be good for their free speech. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/bezos_zuckerberg_altman_soon-shiong_billionaires_media_telnaes.php

Fact Checking? Blame Liberal Media

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Article in Mediaite by Phillip Nieto, 10/1//25

Headline:  ” ‘I Was Ill-Prepared’: Zuckerberg Blames Anti-Trump Media For Facebook Fact-Checking Measures in Marathon Joe Rogan Interview”

“Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed he was “ill-prepared” to face anti-Trump media pressuring him to fact-check misinformation on social media.

“During a nearly three-hour-long podcast interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg said he received pressure over the last decade to start censoring material on Facebook based on political ideology. He cited Trump’s 2016 victory and BREXIT for the increase in political censorship.”

https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/i-was-ill-prepared-zuckerberg-blames-anti-trump-media-for-facebook-fact-checking-measures-in-marathon-joe-rogan-interview/

World Press Freedom Decreasing

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Singapore Law and Home Minister

Article in Committee to Protect Journalists by Staff, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Singapore ministers threaten legal action against media outlets, government demands ‘corrections’ “

“Singapore Minister for Manpower Tan See Leng and Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam should withdraw threats of legal action against media outlets over their public interest reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.”

” ‘The threats of legal action by Singapore ministers against media outlets, as well as the government’s recent order to “correct” reporting, severely undermine press freedom in the country,’ said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. ”

https://cpj.org/2025/01/singapore-ministers-threaten-legal-action-against-media-outlets-government-demands-corrections/

 

Diversity – It’s Just Not for Meta Anymore

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Article in UPI by Don Jacobson, 1/10/25

Headline:  “Company memo reveals social media giant Meta rolling back DEI program”

“Jan. 10 (UPI) — Citing a changing “legal and policy landscape,” social media giant Meta is ending its corporate diversity, equity and inclusion program, according to a leaked internal company memo published on Friday.

“In the memo, first obtained by Axios, Meta vice president of human resources Janelle Gale tells employees the platform is ending its DEI program in the face of shifting political realities.

“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” Gale writes. “The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics.”

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/01/10/memo-social-media-giant-Meta-rolling-back-DEI-program/9981736542754/

META – No Friend to Journalism

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Article in Reporters Without Borders by Staff, 1/9/25

Headline:  “Mark Zuckerberg takes Meta’s hostility toward journalism to new level”

“In a five-minute video, Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed his social media empire’s subjugation to the future Trump administration in a radical shift to “Musk-style” policies on its platforms. In his new Meta purged of fact-checkers, journalism is portrayed as the enemy of free speech. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled by this dramatic surge in hostility toward the right to information.

“No more room for journalism. In a video posted on Facebook on January 7, Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his company’s new policy on political information and debate. The billionaire says Meta will “get rid of fact-checkers” – who have been accused of helping destroy online trust rather than repairing it. Instead, they will be replaced with a system derived from X’s “Community Notes,” leaving it to users to verify the reliability of information themselves.”

https://rsf.org/en/mark-zuckerberg-takes-meta-s-hostility-toward-journalism-new-level

Clawing Back Net Neutrality

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Mathew Ingram, 1/9/25

Headline:  “Net Neutrality Is Dead (Again). Journalism Could Suffer.”

Subhead:  “What a new court ruling might mean for independent local news.”

“Net neutrality—or the idea that all digital information should flow through the internet unencumbered by restrictions and without internet companies showing favoritism toward some types and sources of content over others—sometimes feels like an immutable law of the modern world, like gravity or magnetic attraction. But in reality, it’s a political football that has been tossed back and forth for decades between open-internet advocates and free-market conservatives, who feel that neutrality rules are unnecessary and a brake on innovation and growth. Last week, the opponents of net neutrality won a significant victory when judges on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission didn’t have the right to impose such rules when it did so last year. Now critics say that the death of the rules could allow the internet to become distorted by partisan political and corporate interests. It could also make existing online even more difficult for news publishers and journalism in general.”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/net_neutrality_repeal_journalism.php

Tracking the Right-Wing Press

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Howard Polskin, 1/9/25

Headline:  “Will Progressive and Mainstream Audiences Keep Switching off the News?”

Subhead:  “Post-election, my newsletter saw a big dip. It is not alone.”

“For the past seven years, I’ve been publishing TheRighting, a free newsletter for mainstreamers and progressives that informs them about thinking from the right. A daily collection of headlines from right-wing sources forms the beating heart of my enterprise. My modest subscription list has grown over the years from a handful of friends and family in year one to thousands of faithful readers scattered around the country. The growth trajectory has almost always pointed north.

“Readers subscribe because they want to know what the right is saying by scanning the seventeen headlines I aggregate every morning. For them, it’s like a polar-bear swim in the chilly waters of right-wing media. A quick dip—two minutes to scan the headlines and absorb a sentence or two, and then it’s back to the warm welcome of MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or wherever they get the news that affirms their political beliefs.”

https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/progressive-mainstream-righting-news-deserters-avoidance-trump-bump.php

 

So Media – No Reporting Illegal Activities?

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Article in Reuters by Staff, 1/8/25

Headline:  “Israeli military tightens media rules over war crimes prosecution concern”

“The Israeli military placed new restrictions on media coverage of soldiers on active combat duty amid growing concern at the risk of legal action against reservists travelling abroad over allegations of involvement in war crimes in Gaza.

The move came after an Israeli reservist vacationing in Brazil left the country abruptly when a Brazilian judge ordered federal police to open an investigation following allegations from a pro-Palestinian group that he had committed war crimes while serving in Gaza.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-tightens-media-rules-over-war-crimes-prosecution-concern-2025-01-08/