Links

Some of the “New Media”

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Article in The Guardian by Richard Luscombe, 5/5/25

Headline:  “Maga media mob: meet the new rightwing faces in the White House briefing room”

Subhead:  “A banjo player and a Black Maga influencer, among others, now attend Trump administration press briefings”

“A disgraced ultra-conservative banjo player ousted from his Grammy-winning band; a far-right conspiracy theorist with alleged ties to Russia; a TikTok creator known as ‘Maga Malfoy’ for his resemblance to the Harry Potter character; and an extremist social media ‘influencer’ once banned from Twitter for posting a video depicting sexual abuse of a child.”

“These are just some of the ‘new media’ personalities courted by the White House to take part in a series of alternative briefings championed by Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. . .”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/05/white-house-briefing-rightwing-media

Media Not Accurate?

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Article in Alternet by Robert Reich Reich, 5/5/25

Headline:  “The Media Needs to stop pretending about Trump’s ‘conflicts’ “

“Words matter. When the media points out Trump’s ‘potential conflicts of interest,’ as it has in recent days when describing Trump’s growing crypto enterprise, it doesn’t come close to telling the public what’s really going on — unprecedented paybacks and self-dealing by the president of the United States, using his office to make billions.

“The correct word is corruption. . .”

“He posts news-making announcements on Truth Social, the company in which he and his family own a significant stake. Truth Social thereby becomes the world’s semi-official means of knowing Trump’s thinking and policies. . .”

“To describe these as ‘potential conflicts of interest’ misses the point. A ‘potential conflict of interest’ sounds like an unfortunate situation in which it’s possible that Trump might choose his own personal interest over the nation’s. Stated this way, the problem is the conflict. . .”

“Trump is the most corrupt president in American history. His self-dealing makes Warren G. Harding’s look like a child shoplifting candy.

“Why isn’t the media calling this what it is? Americans deserve to know. . .”

https://www.alternet.org/trump-maga-2671892224/

Happy World Press Freedom Day!

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Article in The Guardian by Michael Savage, 5/3/25

Headline:  ” ‘A cocktail for a misinformed world’: why China and Russia are cheering Trump’s attacks on media”

Subhead:  “Today on World Press Freedom Day, there are warnings that US attempts to withdraw from promoting independent journalism will have far-reaching effects”

“As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) – the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda – he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration.

“Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be ‘eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law’. The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. . .”

“It used to be that the US would put pressure on other countries for undermining free expression. . .”

“In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the state broadcaster RT described it as an “awesome decision”. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese state media publication, crowed that the broadcasters had been discarded by the White House “like a dirty rag”, ending their “propaganda poison’ ”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2025/may/03/a-cocktail-for-a-misinformed-world-why-china-and-russia-are-cheering-trumps-attacks-on-us-media

Social Media Posts – In What Language?

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Article in The Guardian by Adam Gabbatt, 5/3/25

Headline:  “Trump’s Truth Social posts make no sense – what do they say about his mentality?”

Subhead:  “The president’s little used social media platform offers him a forum for his nonstop haranguing and score-settling”

“No political leader has used social media quite like Donald Trump. But his recent posts on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded in 2021, have become increasingly bizarre: the president using the lack of scrutiny afforded by the platform’s small user base to truly let loose.

“In the hundreds of ‘Truths’ since he took office, Trump has variously used Truth Social to reimagine himself as a king and to urge Americans to ‘BE COOL!’ as the stock market tanked in the wake of his trade war, the president’s seemingly random use of capital letters, punctuation and inaccurate spelling consistent across the messages. . .”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/03/trump-truth-social-media-posts

Another Newspaper Attack

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 5/2/25

Headline:  “Opinion | Trump threatens The New York Times as his press attacks continue”

Subhead:  “He lashed out after a Times report said Paramount may settle his baseless lawsuit — a move tied to its pending sale”

“President Donald Trump unleashed more unhinged attacks on the press Wednesday, going after both CBS’s “60 Minutes” and The New York Times — even going so far as to threaten legal action against the Times.

“His “60 Minutes” attacks are nothing new. He already is suing CBS’s owner, Paramount, claiming the network deceptively edited an interview last October with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to, in effect, help her win the election. . .”

https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2025/trump-nyt-liable-tortious-interference/

 

 

Broiling the Media?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Kelly Stout, 5/2/25

Headline:  “Chat, Are We Cooked?”

Subhead:  “Trump and the people who work for him don’t care about journalistic norms. Is it time for journalists to rethink them, too?”

“he first hundred days of Trump 2.0 brought forth more material than infinity reporters typing on infinity laptops for infinity years could possibly report. The ‘flood the zone’ strategy—brought to us from the mind of Steve Bannon, the MAGA media strategist—has been around since at least 2018, but now, as the New York Times put it, ‘the flood is bigger, wider and more brutally efficient’; the same article also included the phrases ‘overwhelming sensory overload,’ ‘drinking from a fire hose,’ and ‘gasping in outrage.’ Each of these metaphors hit the news media directly, and hard. And then, on March 11, they gushed into the Signal chat of one journalist in particular. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/feature-2/signal-chat-atlantic-goldberg-trump-norms-ethics.php

Don’t Like What the Media Say?

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Article in Washington Post by Scott Hover, et al, 5/2/25

Headline:  “Public media ready to fight ‘unlawful’ Trump order defunding PBS, NPR”

Subhead:  “Legal scholars say the executive order may exceed presidential authority and violate First Amendment, while local stations fear impact on communities.”

“President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end federal funding for NPR and PBS — because of news coverage he called “biased and partisan” — triggered a fierce backlash from public broadcasters that appears poised to expand the White House’s larger legal battleground with the media industry.

“Issued Thursday night, the order instructs the congressionally chartered Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cut off direct funding to the venerable public media giants — producers of long-running news shows such as “All Things Considered” and “PBS NewsHour” — as well as any grants to local stations that might underwrite the national broadcasters’ programming. . .”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/05/02/trump-npr-pbs-executive-order-funding-cut/

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Article in The Nation by John Nichols, 5/2/25

Headline: “Trump’s Assault on PBS and NPR Chooses Oligarchy Over Press Freedom and Democracy”

“As the supporters of speaking truth to power celebrate World Press Freedom Day, Trump seeks to defund public media in the United States. . .”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-npr-pbs-threat/

Foxhole Safe Space for Incoming-Media

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Article in Media Matters by Harrison Ray & Isanella Sherk, 5/1/25

Headline:  “Key Trump officials appeared more than 500 times on Fox networks in the first 100 days of his presidency”

Subhead:  “Fox networks remain a safe space for administration figures”

“Key Trump administration officials appeared on Fox networks over 500 times in his first 100 days in office. President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Thomas Homan led all officials with at least 59 appearances while Fox News’ Hannity led all shows with 71 interviews.

“Trump officials appeared on Fox networks on 96 of the administration’s first 100 days. The number of daily appearances by key officials was highest on both February 3, following Trump’s announcement of his first set of tariffs, and March 4, seemingly to prime the Fox audience for his congressional address that evening, with at least 13 appearances on each day. . .”

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/key-trump-officials-appeared-more-500-times-fox-networks-first-100-days-his-presidency

Erasing References Ensures Survival?

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Article in Poynter by Kelly McBride, 4/30/25

Headline:  “People who fear the Trump administration are asking editors to remove their names from old news stories.”

Subhead:  “Here are some questions to ask while managing these requests”

“Government workers, teachers and green card holders across the country are asking editors to remove their names — and the record of their support for causes now targeted by the Trump administration — from old stories.

“Journalists from around the country routinely ask me for ethics help. In the last month, I’ve heard from the editor of a gay newspaper, several alternative publications, a newsroom that covers immigrant issues, student newspapers and several mainstream commercial newsrooms.

“Kevin Naff, the editor of the Washington Blade, the nation’s oldest gay newspaper, reached out to me for advice in March. Government employees were asking that their names be scrubbed from his archives. They feared that an open record of their sexual orientation, or their views on issues that run contrary to President Donald Trump’s, could make them targets for job cuts. . .”

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2025/how-handle-source-removal-requests-journalism/

NPR – Warm, Fuzzy Treatment?

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Article in Fair by Julie Hollar, 5/2/25

Headline: “Hey NPR, Free Speech Isn’t Just a Vibe”

Green Card–holding students are being abducted from the streets by agents of the state for attending protests and writing op-eds. News outlets are being investigated by the FCC for reporting that displeases the president. Federal web pages are being scrubbed of a lengthy list of words, including ‘race,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘women’ and ‘climate.’

“NPR responded to this shocking government attack on free speech with a Morning Edition series on ‘The State of the First Amendment,’ whose introductory episode’s headline (4/7/25) declared freedom of speech to be ‘shifting under the Trump administration’; it promised that the show would be ‘exploring how.’

“The wishy-washy language wasn’t a promising start, and the segment only went downhill from there, taking an ‘on the one hand/on the other hand’ framing to an assault on core democratic rights. . .”

https://fair.org/home/hey-npr-free-speech-isnt-just-a-vibe/