CNN Taking on Water

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Article in the Columbia Journalism Review by Betsy Morais, 1/24/25

Headline:  “The Flurry at CNN”

Subhead:  “A major network charts a digital course—and makes layoffs.”

“Washington weather report: “In a flurry of activity that is happening almost too swiftly to follow,” per CNN, “Trump is giving his critics every reason to think their worst fears for his new presidency will be realized and worse.” Back at CNN headquarters, there was other news in the air: a major restructuring that will cut about two hundred jobs focused on the company’s television programming and put about as many to work on digital products and services. “Recruiting the right people will take some time,” Mark Thompson, the CEO, wrote in a memo to the staff, “but we hope to open up and fill at least 100 new posts in the coming months to help execute the new plans.” He told the New York Times, “This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question. If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

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

Media Overload

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 1/27/25

Headline:  “Too Much News, Redux”

Subhead:  “Trump floods the zone in his first week back in power.”

“Exhausted yet?” Last Thursday, The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser posed that question at the beginning of a column about the frantic pace of news generated in President Trump’s first half-week or so back in power, before reeling off a long list of major things he had done already, from pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord through the sweeping pardons for January 6 insurrectionists to his ‘pissing match’ with an Episcopalian bishop. Trump ‘loves to drown us in outrage,’ Glasser wrote. ‘The overwhelming volume is the point—too many simultaneous scandals and the system is so overloaded that it breaks down. It can’t focus.     It can’t fight back . . .’ ”

“. . . In the summer of 2020, toward the end of Trump’s last term in office, I wrote a column arguing that there was “too much news”—a joking refrain among exhausted journalists that was also literally true, in ways that limited the news media’s ability to cover major stories as extensively as they individually merited; such stories, I wrote, weren’t just coinciding randomly, but existed in ‘a messy ecosystem of cause, effect, suggestion, escalation, and acceleration,’ with one big story triggering another and so on. I wrote at the time that the pace of developments made the news cycle of 2018—which had felt ‘impossibly frenetic’ at the time—feel ‘quaint’ in hindsight . . .”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/too-much-news-redux.php

No-joke Media

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Article in Fast Company by Zachary Petit

Headline:  ” ‘ I won the Pulitzer Prize and I’m busking on a corner’: 3 top artists on the uncertain future of political cartooning”

“Editorial cartoons and illustration are fairly niche topics—or so I once thought. On Jan. 3, cartoonist Ann Telnaes published Why I’m quitting the Washington Post on her Substack. It detailed how the paper—owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who attended Donald Trump’s second inauguration—rejected her cartoon of Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse worshipping at the president-elect’s feet with bags of money. The next day, the story was international news.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91262247/i-won-the-pulitzer-prize-and-im-busking-on-a-corner-3-top-artists-on-the-uncertain-future-of-political-cartooning?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

Peaceful Tourists Visit Media

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Article in Media Matters by Payton Armstrong & Jack Winstanley, 1/24/25

Headline:  “January 6 participants are touring right-wing media and calling for retribution following Trump’s pardon”

Subhead:  “Some say those who prosecuted the crimes should be “put behind bars” and face “extreme accountability”

Trump issued “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to January 6 participants, including “violent offenders,” and commuted the sentences of members of extremist groups who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. According to The New York Times, “The pardons will also wipe the slate clean for violent offenders who went after the police on Jan. 6 with baseball bats, two-by-fours and bear spray and are serving prison terms, in some cases of more than a decade. ”

“. . . Right-wing media praised the move while glossing over pardons and commutations granted to those previously convicted of violent crimes or seditious conspiracy. On War Room, Steve Bannon celebrated “blanket” pardons. On Fox News, OutKick founder Clay Travis declared, ‘I love the pardon of the Jan 6 political prisoners.’ [Media Matters, 1/21/25; Real America’s Voice, War Room, 1/21/25; Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 1/21/25]

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/january-6-participants-are-touring-right-wing-media-and-calling-retribution

Media Hiding Out Now?

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Article in The Nation by Jeet Heer, 1/24/25Headline:  “CNN Surrenders to Trump”

Headline:  “The corporate media’s commitment to fighting autocracy proves fickle.”

“US President Donald Trump points to journalist Jim Acosta from CNN during a postelection press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on November 7, 2018. ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome journalist?’ (Jim Watson / AFP)

“CNN anchor Jim Acosta is fated to be a barometer of his network’s relationship with Donald Trump. During Trump’s first term, Acosta’s tough questioning at press conferences gave CNN credibility as a news outlet uncowed by the president’s bullying and willing to uphold the principle of accountability. In 2018, Trump denounced Acosta as a ‘rude, terrible person’ and the White House revoked Acosta’s press pass. CNN sued Trump and his top aides on behalf of Acosta, successfully forcing the White House to give the reporter back his press pass.

“If Acosta’s jousting with Trump was once celebrated by CNN, it has now become a source of shame. With Trump winning not just a second term but also having, for the first time, a popular vote victory (however narrow), CNN and other corporate media outlets have been thoroughly cowed.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/cnn-surrender-trump-corporate-media/

Saluting the Media?

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Article in Common Dreams by Pete Tucker, 1/24/25

Headline:  “Why Won’t the US Corporate Media Call a Nazi Salute a Nazi Salute?”

Subhead:  “The mainstream press failed to accurately describe the hand gesture that Elon Musk made twice at Trump’s Inauguration Day rally, setting a troubling precedent for the second Trump era.”

“There’s something about the start of a Trump presidency that makes grown men do strange things, like heiling Hitler.

“Eight years ago, after President Donald Trump’s first election, white nationalist Richard Spencer couldn’t resist flashing a Nazi salute as he addressed a rally just blocks from the White House (PBS, 11/22)”

“This time around, a more prominent Trump supporter gave a Nazi salute in a bigger forum. “I never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the presidential seal,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter/X (1/20/25).”

“. . .The Times story was headlined, “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture.”

“But speculation wasn’t needed. ‘Whoever on a political stage, making a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler salute,’ wrote journalist Lenz Jacobsen. His story for the German newspaper Die Zeit (1/21/25) is headlined ‘A Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute.‘ ”

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-musk-nazi-salute

 

Paranoid About Media?

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Article in VOX by Rebecca Jenninga, 1/24/25

Headline:  “It’s not conspiratorial to be worried about social media’s rightward swing”

Subhead:  “Meta denies any funny business on Instagram in the aftermath of Trump’s inauguration. Should we believe them?”

“Many Instagram users this week had their scrolling interrupted by the bearded visage of our newly elected Vice President JD Vance. Suddenly it seemed that on the week of their inauguration, everybody on the app was following or being suggested to follow the official accounts of President Donald Trump and Vance (@POTUS and @VP, respectively).

“Chaos ensued. In group chats, on Instagram Stories, on X, and Bluesky, people frantically wondered what was up. Some, like pop stars Gracie Abrams and Demi Lovato, said that when they tried to unfollow the VP and POTUS accounts, the app wouldn’t let them until they attempted multiple times.

Meta, meanwhile, has been busy assuring users that nothing new or weird is going on here. The accounts for the POTUS and VP, including their followers, were automatically handed over to the new administration as is customary during a presidential transition, while the accounts for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris previously under those usernames would be duplicated in an archive account. They’ve said it ‘may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through’ but did not provide details when asked by the New York Times why that might be. Hashtags like #democrat were hidden, Meta said, due to ‘an error’ that affected many hashtags, not just left-leaning ones (those hashtags are now visible).”

https://www.vox.com/culture/396686/facebook-instagram-tiktok-conservative-trump

Right-Wing Media All Wet

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Article in Media Matters by Alison Fisher, 1/24/25

Headline:  “Trump’s executive order on California water policy canonized right-wing media misinformation about the LA fires”

Subhead:  “CNN’s Daniel Dale fact-checks Trump’s claims that CA water policy exacerbated LA fires “

“On January 20, as part of his day one executive orders, President Donald Trump directed several U.S. agencies to restart a policy from his first term that reroutes water from Northern California to Southern California. The order ties Trump’s policy to the devastating fires in California that are so far responsible for 28 deaths and more than $250 billion in damages, effectively canonizing the false right-wing media claim that current California water policy impeded efforts to contain the LA fires.

“Right-wing media wildfire misinformation underpins Trump’s executive order on California water policy

“At the outset of the LA fires, the most costly in California history, Trump blamed “federal and state protections for California’s endangered delta smelt fish. He falsely claimed that those regulations led to inadequate water availability for firefighting efforts.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/wildfire/trumps-executive-order-california-water-policy-canonized-right-wing-media-misinformation

Press Secretary & Media

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 1/22/25

Headline:  “On Free Speech and Speaking Freely”

“Yesterday, Karoline Leavitt, the new White House press secretary, appeared on Fox & Friends. She was asked whether, at her first press briefing, she would have to painstakingly consult a binder before answering reporters’ questions—a snarky reference to her Biden-era predecessor Karine Jean-Pierre. Leavitt replied that she might bring in some notes, but that ‘my binder is in my brain, because I know President Trump’s policies, and we have truth on our side’—but she then revealed that there wouldn’t actually be a briefing later on; instead, the press would be hearing directly from Trump, who would be making a ‘big infrastructure announcement.’ Online, liberal pundits quipped that it must be ‘infrastructure week’ again.”

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

Saturday Media Event

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For Immediate Release                                                                                                                                                                                   Contact:  Spencer Graves  (408) 655-4567

PROTECTING OUR FREE-SPEECH RIGHTS

 Kansas City, 1/24/25 –  A townhall event to support defend free speech will be held at Simpson House, 4509 Walnut, KC MO, 6-8 pm (Central time), on Sat., Jan. 25.

The event is a response to the recent pronouncements of the Trump Administration concerning the media, censorship, and free speech.  It is both in-person and nationally available on a Zoom link from PeaceWorks at http://pwkc.org/dfs1.

The Saturday program features speakers which include: Professor Gerald Home, pre-eminent historian and host of Freedom Now! on KPFK FM; Elisa Mejia of Insurgencia Femenina; and the chair of the African People’s Socialist Party/Uhuru, Omali Yeshitela.

Cosponsors of this national and local gathering include Friends of Community Media, PeaceWorks KC, Pacifica Fightback, and the African People’s Socialist Party/Uhuru. A lead organizer of the gathering, Spencer Graves, is president of Friends of Community Media & secretary of PeaceWorks KC.

Friends of Community Media is a Kansas City group which promotes non-commercial, community-based media of all types; to educate citizens on the nature of the media; and to encourage all media to be responsive to the public in coverage.

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