Farewell Unrestricted Media?

by

 

Article on CNN by Hadas Gold, 11/8/24

Headline:  ”  ‘Death by a thousand cuts’: How experts warn Trump could use an authoritarian playbook to go after the media”

“President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to go after much of the media in his second term, threatening to jail journalists, revoke broadcast licenses and target outlets with a flurry of lawsuits. It’s a playbook he’s threatened to use before.

“During his first term in the White House, Trump regularly tangled with journalists, assailed the press as the “enemy of the people,” and banned reporters from official briefings. In recent months on the campaign trail, Trump employed dark and violent rhetoric to attack the media — telling a crowd this week that he wouldn’t mind if journalists got shot — and sparking fears he will attempt to weaponize the government against the free press.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/media/trump-authoritarian-press-media-attacks/index.html

Media Literacy is Important

by

Graphic from FAIR

Article in FAIR

Headline:  “Media Literacy Guide: How to Detect Bias in News Media”

“Media have tremendous power in shaping political and cultural narratives—telling us what and who matters, why things are as they are and what it would mean to change them. An informed and critical audience challenges news media to be fair, independent and accurate.

” . . .  some questions to ask yourself about news you consume, whether it’s in print, online, on TV or radio or in your social media feed.”

https://fair.org/take-action-now/media-activism-kit/how-to-detect-bias-in-news-media/

Australia’s Social Media Action

by


Article in the New York Times by By Eve Sampson, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Australia Moves to Ban Young Teens From Social Media”

Subhead:  “The proposed legislation would put the country at the forefront of regulating social media access for children.”

“Far-reaching legislation announced on Thursday would make the platforms that are the lifeblood of many teenagers — among them TikTok — off limits to anyone under 16.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared at a news conference. “I’ve spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online.”

The proposed legislation, which puts Australia at the forefront of regulating social media access for children, would hold platforms accountable for enforcing the new rules, Mr. Albanese said. There will be no exemptions for children with parental permission, he said, but neither underage users nor their parents will face punishment for violations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/world/australia/australia-teens-social-media.html

From AP:

” The Australian government announced on Thursday what it described as world-leading legislation that would institute an age limit of 16 years for children to start using social media, and hold platforms responsible for ensuring compliance.”

https://apnews.com/article/australia-social-media-age-limit-e8259408c0b1456f41967decd474782a

From UPI:

“Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday his government will introduce legislation to ban children under 16 years of age from social media.”

Universal Right Media

by


Article in Daily Kos by Martone, 11/7/24

Headline: “It’s the right wing disinformatio media stupid”

Subhead:  “It seems like everyone is missing the bigger picture here”

“No progressive candidate was going to win this year nor is likely to win in the U.S. anytime soon. Over the past 30 years, the right-wing has achieved near-total control of the media landscape in the U.S.

“In conservative areas, Fox News is omnipresent—not only in homes but also in bars, laundromats, and even doctors’ waiting rooms. This saturation gives Fox News the appearance of being a legitimate news source. And Fox isn’t alone; other “news” channels with even more extreme right-wing slants compete for attention.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/7/2284024/-It-s-the-right-wing-disinformation-media-stupid?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Media Didn’t Understand Latinos

by


Article in Poynter by Fernanda Camarena, 11/7/24

Headline:  “The mainstream media misunderstood Latino voters once again”

“The election results underscore how disconnected and oversimplified media coverage of this community turned out to be”

“While Trump lost the overall percentage of Latino votes to Vice President Kamala Harris, he jumped 13 percentage points from 2020 to a record high for a Republican presidential nominee, according to national exit poll data. As the media dutifully documented Trump’s insults, threats and rhetoric along the campaign trail, it framed his immigration and mass-deportation plans as game-changers (or “game over”) for Latino voters. But Latino voters ultimately demonstrated across the country, including within many key swing-state districts, that they believed a Trump presidency is a better bet for them than a Harris term.

“It’s clear that news organizations inaccurately reflected Latino priorities while leaning on assumptions about how they expected Latinos should react or feel about Trump’s aggressive immigration plans. The ‘garbage’ joke was essentially framed as the last straw.”

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2024/latino-voters-trump-racism-tony-hinchcliffe-media/

Wrong Media Message?

by

Article from The Hill by Steve Krakauer, 11/7/24

Headline:  “Trump won because Americans rejected false media narratives”

“It’s fair to assess that most Americans fully rejected the framing employed by large portions of the mainstream media about the stakes in the election. They didn’t buy that Trump is “the tyrant George Washington feared,” as The Atlantic screamed. They don’t believe that Trump represents “American fascism,” as the New Republic tried to argue.

The core thesis from the Trump-addicted Acela media was that Trump was a threat to “democracy,” and that Harris was positioned as the “unity” candidate. These were the narrative throughlines presented.

And yet there is good reason to see them as antithetical to how the average American views these issues. This fundamental disconnect is why the press failed to convince the country to rebuff Trump on Tuesday.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4978909-trump-won-because-americans-rejected-false-media-narratives/

Digital Media Win Again!

by


Article in The Washington Post by Eric Wemple , 11/7/24

Headline: “Opinion – Trump wins! Another chapter in mainstream media’s decline.”

Subhead:  “A media critic’s tools seem ill-suited to analyze election night 2024, but a new era is at hand. “

“. . . Mainstream media organizations are suffering from cratering public trust and obsessing about how best to revive it. Does such an industry want to continue promoting polling results and polling averages and so on? Bailing on the setup would require a newsroom upheaval of sorts, meaning a reduction in the sugar-high horse-race stories that deliver daily click-a-thons for newspapers and broadcasters alike.”

“. . . There are other sources out there, to be sure, including cable news, podcasts and social media, on which a broad range of views and even misinformation are represented. But Trump in the final weeks of his campaign backed out of interviews with mainstream outlets — NBC News, CNBC, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” — and reveled in the embrace from nonmainstream voices with enormous audiences, like Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson. It’s possible that Trump will feel so coddled by those folks that he’ll forget all about legacy media outlets, along with his compulsion to bash them.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/07/trump-media-future-fragmentation/

Media Blackout in Gaza

by

Headline:  “”We are witnessing the final stage of genocide in Gaza”

Article in The Guardian by Arwa Madawi, 11/6/24

“I obviously have no idea how many people have been killed in Gaza. Partly that’s because – and I don’t understand why every single journalist in the west is not appalled by this – the foreign press is not freely allowed in. Meanwhile – and, again, I don’t understand why every single journalist in the west is not enraged by this – Palestinian journalists are being wiped out. There is essentially a media blackout. So it’s hard to assess the death toll. But what I do know is this: citing that official 43,000 figure without providing a long list of caveats feels like journalistic malpractice at this point.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/06/we-are-witnessing-the-final-stage-of-genocide-in-gaza

 

Defending Legacy Media Over Internet Media?

by

Article in The Washington Post by Catherine Rampell, 11/5/24

Headline:  “Opinion:  This election year, legacy media consumers came out on top”

Subhead:  “We’ve made our share of mistakes, but readers of traditional media understand the stakes of this election.”

“. . . If you had consumed all your election news this year exclusively from The Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or other journalistic dinosaurs, you’d probably be well-informed. You’d have a sense of what the stakes are this election. You might even know what the candidates stand for! The same cannot be said if you instead primarily relied on TikTok influencers, random bros with podcasts or Discord streams, and Elon Musk’s X platform.”

“. . . We traditional journalists don’t get things right all the time. We have biases we’re often blind to. We make errors of omission, commission and emphasis. But we are (usually) embarrassed when we get stuff wrong, and we have procedures for transparently correcting our mistakes.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/05/media-2024-presidential-election/