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AP on Burning Bridge

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Article in Committee to Project Journalists by Staff, 2/14/25

Headline:  “CPJ denounces Trump administration’s actions against AP, other retaliation against media”

“The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the White House decision to block The Associated Press (AP) from covering official events after AP’s decision to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally known name, calling the action the latest in an alarming pattern of retaliation against a free press in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s administration.

“The White House barred an AP reporter from covering two official events at the White House following AP’s issuing of widely used style guidelines saying that Trump’s order changing the name to Gulf of America only carried authority in the U.S. and that as a global news agency it would continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its 400-year-old name “while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.”

https://cpj.org/2025/02/cpj-denounces-trump-administrations-actions-against-ap-other-retaliation-against-media/

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 2/13/25

Headline:  “Opinion | From absurd to disturbing as Trump White House bans AP from important media events”

Subhead:  “Reporters are barred from Oval Office news events after The Associated Press refuses to change its style to Gulf of America.”

“It was a story that started off completely laughable and so absurd that no one actually took it seriously. But it has quickly gone from ridiculous to alarming. Very alarming.

“President Donald Trump had this goofy idea of changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Why? Because it’s Trump and he does goofy stuff like that. He signed an executive order announcing the change.

“Recognizing just how ludicrous this all was, and wanting to continue calling things by their official, worldwide-recognized name, The Associated Press announced it would continue to call the body of water the Gulf of Mexico. . . ”

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/from-absurd-to-disturbing-as-trump-white-house-bans-ap-from-important-media-events/

All News is Fake! Delete it!

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review in The Media Today by Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen, 2/13/25

Headline:  “Fighting the Great Federal Website Purge”

Subhead:  “Journalists, judges, and archivists are keeping government data online.”

“Two weeks ago, when the new administration instructed agencies to scrub content related to ‘gender ideology’ from government websites, federal workers scrambled to comply, temporarily, and in some cases permanently, taking pages offline so that they might be monitored for language related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. As reported by Popular Information this week, the National Security Agency is reportedly now executing a purge of pages that contain terms including ‘privilege’ and ‘bias’ — a dragnet that is also affecting ‘mission-related’ work, according to a source and documents. The discussion around so-called ‘banned words,’ as well as the deletion of datasets inconsistent with the administration’s ideology, has left data archivists concerned.

The news media has been busy keeping track of many of the webpages that have gone dark. At the beginning of this month, the New York Times put the number of removed pages at eight thousand; Wired is periodically scanning more than a thousand government domains for their accessibility. Such projects may prove especially useful down the line, not just to the public, but to the media industry itself . . . ”

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

A Media Template for the U.S.

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Andras Petho – Viktor Orban Documentary

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Josh Hersh, 2/14/25

Headline: “A Warning from a Hungarian Journalist: ‘Brace Yourself for the Worst’”

Subhead: “András Pethő has watched American media head down a familiar path.”

“András Pethő is a Hungarian journalist and a cofounder of Direkt36, an independent investigative news outlet.

“Over the past decade, he’s watched as the government of Viktor Orbán—the world leader whom Steve Bannon once praised as Trump before Trump’—has systematically eroded the freedom of the press in his country, in ways that may feel familiar to Americans watching corporate news leaders succumb to pressure from the administration.

“András’s 2022 essay on the lessons he learned from experiencing Hungary’s crackdown on a free press ‘Direkt36’s latest investigation: a documentary about the secret wealth of Orbán and his allies . . . ‘ ”

https://www.cjr.org/kicker/hungary-viktor-orban-direkt36-andras-petho.php

FCC Carr Crash

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Article in Status News by Oliver Darcy, 2/12/25

Headline: “A Runaway Carr”

Subhead: “Pressed by Status over text message, FCC boss Brendan Carr defended his actions—including his decision not to go after Rupert Murdoch’s Fox.”

” On Tuesday evening, as I was putting the finishing touches on the previous edition of this newsletter, news broke that Brendan Carr, Donald Trump’s handpicked Federal Communications Commission chairman, had launched yet another investigation into a media company. Carr had already revived petitions filed by pro-MAGA forces against ABC, NBC, and CBS. He had also announced a string of investigations targeting NPR, PBS, and the Soros-backed Audacy. Now, he had written to Comcast boss Brian Roberts, informing him that the FCC would be investigating whether the company—which owns NBC—had violated the law because of its D.E.I. initiatives.

Carr has been aggressive in pursuing media companies with news divisions that have scrutinized Trump, but, as we have pointed out, he has conspicuously given Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation a pass. . .”

https://www.status.news/p/brendan-carr-fcc-fox-interview

A Widening Gulf in the Media

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Article in Common Dreams by Brett Wilkins, 2/14/25

Headline: “As Trump Targets AP, Media Urged to Resist Moves Like ‘Gulf of America’ Renaming”

Subhead:  “It’s at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership,” asserted one campaigner.”

“First Amendment defenders are calling on media organizations and journalists to stand up to bullying and intimidation by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration on Friday confirmed the indefinite exclusion of one of the world’s largest news agencies from White House press briefings and Air Force One flights over its refusal to adopt the Republican leader’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico.

“White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said that because The Associated Press “continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change” of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it will be indefinitely banned from White House news conferences and the president’s official airplane.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-gulf-of-america

Reporting Exposes Tesla State Dept. Proposal?

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Artocle in MSNBC by Erik De La Garza, 2/12/25

Headline:  ” ‘Paperweights’: Rachel Maddow unleashes mockery on $400M award for ‘armored Teslas’ “

“Reports that the State Department appears poised to award a $400 million contract to none other than President Donald Trump’s top campaign donor Elon Musk was met with unabashed mockery by an exasperated Rachel Maddow.

“The MSNBC host during her show’s opening monologue Wednesday delivered a scornful rebuke of Musk’s Tesla Motors as she launched into a deep criticism of the development involving spending taxpayer funds to buy armored Teslas – but not without having a little fun at the tech billionaire’s expense.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/paperweights-rachel-maddow-unleashes-mockery-on-400m-award-for-armored-teslas/ar-AA1yWtVc

Information Source in Danger?

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Article in The Verge by Chris Welch, 2/13/25

Headline: “Wikipedia looks to shield its editors from “an increase in threats.”

“Wikimedia Foundation will likely soon have to contend with ‘the rising noise of criticism from Elon Musk and others,’ as founder Jimmy Wales recently put it. It’s already taking measures to safeguard the identity of those who edit pages on Wikipedia. One of those is a temporary accounts program that, as 404 Media describes it, will ‘give editors who are not logged in a temporary username rather than showing an IP address. . .

” ‘Some of these tools have previously been implemented to protect users in authoritarian countries. Now they’ll be used more widely as Wikipedia faces an unfavorable political climate in the US.. . .’ ”

https://www.theverge.com/web/612713/wikipedia-looks-to-protect-its-editors-from

Tech-Lords Inform Us Now

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Podcast in The Nation by Paris Marx, 2/13/25

Headline: “The Tech Oligarchy’s Campaign Against the Media”

Subhead: “On this episode of Podcast ‘Tech Won’t Save Us’, Eoin Higgins on tech billionaires’ effect on the media ecosystem.”

“On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, we’re joined by Eoin Higgins to discuss how tech billionaires changed the media ecosystem and made it profitable for influential voices to shift to the political right.

“Eoin Higgins is a journalist and the author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.”

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/archive/the-tech-oligarchys-campaign-against-the-media/

When You Let A.I. Edit Your News . . .

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Article in Slashdot by BeauHD, 2/12/25

Headline:  “AI Summaries Turn Real News Into Nonsense, BBC Finds”

“A BBC study published yesterday  found that AI news summarization tools frequently generate inaccurate or misleading summaries, with 51% of responses containing significant issues.

“The Register reports: The research focused on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity assistants, assessing their ability to provide ‘accurate responses to questions about the news; and if their answers faithfully represented BBC news stories used as sources.’ The assistants were granted access to the BBC website for the duration of the research and asked 100 questions about the news, being prompted to draw from BBC News articles as sources where possible. . .  Overall:

– 51 percent of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form.
– 19 percent of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors — incorrect factual statements, numbers, and dates.
– 13 percent of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered from the original source or not present in the article cited.”

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/12/2139233/ai-summaries-turn-real-news-into-nonsense-bbc-finds

Dropping Shoe or Booting Media?

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Article in yahoo!news by Sean Burch, 2/12/25

Headline:  “Meet the ‘New Media’ Press at Trump’s White House”

“Natalie Winters is young, opinionated and unabashedly pro-Trump — and she is now one of the fresh “new media” faces who will occupy space in the White House Press Briefing Room as the new administration makes way for Trump-friendly outlets while diminishing the access of traditional news sources.

“The latest shoe to drop on this front came Tuesday, as the White House press team blocked the Associated Press from entering the Oval Office because the outlet had not begun referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as Trump ordered Jan. 20. AP executive editor Julie Pace called it “alarming” that the Trump White House would punish the AP for upholding the Gulf of Mexico’s title, saying it ‘not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.’ ”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/meet-media-press-trump-white-140000333.html