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Category: Journalism/Media

The Supreme Court ruling that saved the press – and why Trump wants it gone

The Supreme Court ruling that saved the press – and why Trump wants it gone

Donald Trump wants to restrict journalists’ ability to publish or broadcast critical stories. Mesh cube, iStock/Getty Images Plus By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Boise State University President Donald Trump is again attacking the American press – this time not with fiery rally speeches or by calling the media “the enemy of the people,” but through the courts. Since the heat of the November 2024 election, and continuing into July, Trump has filed defamation lawsuits against “60 Minutes” broadcaster CBS News…

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Under siege from Trump and Musk, Media Matters falls into crisis

Under siege from Trump and Musk, Media Matters falls into crisis

The New York Times reports: Media Matters, a nonprofit group that has played a key role in liberal politics, is struggling to withstand months of legal assaults by President Trump’s allies, offering a glimpse of what might be in store for even well-funded targets of his retribution campaigns. The organization, which is funded by some of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, has racked up about $15 million in legal fees over the past 20 months to defend itself against lawsuits…

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Stephen Colbert’s cancellation by CBS is a dark warning for the culture at large

Stephen Colbert’s cancellation by CBS is a dark warning for the culture at large

Inae Oh writes: On Thursday, Stephen Colbert, the beloved, sharp-tongued comedian and host of the Late Show, announced that CBS was canceling the legendary franchise. “This is all just going away,” Colbert told the audience, as they responded with a wave of gasps and jeers. Online, the news was met with a similar blend of shock and anger. The move to cancel one of television’s last remaining crown jewels of broadcast programming came just days after Colbert publicly criticized CBS’s…

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Foreign journalists in the U.S. are self-censoring to protect themselves from the Trump regime

Foreign journalists in the U.S. are self-censoring to protect themselves from the Trump regime

Poynter reports: In 2021, Venezuelan journalist Luz Mely Reyes moved to the United States because she didn’t want to be silenced. As an outspoken advocate for the freedom of expression, Reyes no longer felt safe in Venezuela, where reporters have been threatened, arrested and beaten. Now in the U.S., however, she finds that she must often silence herself. “In my country (Venezuela), I never self-censored. Here, I have to avoid some topics because I feel that it’s dangerous for my…

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New York Times faces scrutiny over Mamdani hit piece

New York Times faces scrutiny over Mamdani hit piece

Dan Froomkin writes: The sad fact is that there is nothing terribly out of character about the New York Times’s decision to publish a deceptive hit piece about New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, based on hacked data supplied by a noted eugenicist to whom they granted anonymity. The newsroom will go to extreme lengths to achieve its primary missions — and one of them, most assuredly, is to take cheap shots at the left. You can see it almost…

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Saudi Arabia executes a journalist for committing the ‘crime’ of journalism

Saudi Arabia executes a journalist for committing the ‘crime’ of journalism

The Associated Press reports: A prominent Saudi journalist who was arrested in 2018 and convicted on terrorism and treason charges has been executed, the kingdom said. Activist groups maintain that the charges against him were trumped up. Turki Al-Jasser, who was in his late 40s, was put to death on Saturday, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, after the death penalty was upheld by the nation’s top court. Authorities had raided Al-Jasser’s home in 2018, arresting him and seizing…

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Trump’s evidence of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa: victims of fighting in Congo

Trump’s evidence of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa: victims of fighting in Congo

AFP reports: US President Donald Trump brandished a stack of printed articles at the White House Wednesday that he claimed documented a genocide taking place against white people in South Africa. Mixed into the deck of papers he unveiled before South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa, however, was a months-old blog post featuring a photo from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death,” Trump said as he flipped through the headlines, which he said…

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Trump is prosecuting Rep. LaMonica McIver for doing her job, but the media’s response is muted

Trump is prosecuting Rep. LaMonica McIver for doing her job, but the media’s response is muted

Natasha Lennard writes: You may have come across a common thought experiment that asks how the establishment U.S. media might cover a given domestic news event were it to occur in a maligned foreign country. The latest disturbing news from Donald Trump’s Justice Department, for example, might be framed as something like: “Trumpist regime targets opposition politician with fabricated charges for carrying out oversight.” Instead, the typical mainstream reports were muted on the Justice Department’s obscene decision Monday night to…

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White House seeks revenge against owner of Business Insider for report on Don Jr.’s business interests

White House seeks revenge against owner of Business Insider for report on Don Jr.’s business interests

The Bulwark reports: The Trump administration is sending aggressive signals about launching a potential federal investigation into the company that owns Politico and Business Insider as retaliation for an article scrutinizing Donald Trump Jr.’s business interests. In a Tuesday-night story little noticed outside of right-wing media, Breitbart reporter and Trump administration favorite Matthew Boyle wrote that the White House was furious at German media conglomerate Axel Springer. At issue was a Business Insider story titled “Don Jr. is the new…

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Pope Leo calls on journalists to use communication as a tool for peace

Pope Leo calls on journalists to use communication as a tool for peace

  NPR reports: “The way we communicate is of fundamental importance: We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images; we must reject the paradigm of war,” Pope Leo XIV said in an address to journalists Monday morning. He implored them to use communication as a tool for peace. Referencing Pope Francis’ message from the World Day of Social Communications in January, Leo said, “Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let…

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Family of Shireen Abu Akleh responds after Zeteo documentary names Israeli soldier who killed her

Family of Shireen Abu Akleh responds after Zeteo documentary names Israeli soldier who killed her

  As the Israeli military kills two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a new documentary by Zeteo has uncovered critical details about Israel’s killing three years ago of the acclaimed Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The film identifies for the first time the Israeli soldier who allegedly shot Abu Akleh. We get response when we speak with two members of Abu Akleh’s family — her brother Anton and her niece Lina — as well as the documentary’s executive…

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Trump’s assault on the media is being welcomed by authoritarians around the world

Trump’s assault on the media is being welcomed by authoritarians around the world

The Guardian reports: 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…

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Public media executives push back against ‘blatantly unlawful’ targeting of NPR and PBS by Trump

Public media executives push back against ‘blatantly unlawful’ targeting of NPR and PBS by Trump

Politico reports: Public media executives are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s late Thursday executive order seeking to strike federal funding for NPR and PBS, arguing it is unlawful. Trump’s Thursday order directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit that Congress awards more than $500 million annually to fund public media, to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” to NPR and PBS. But in a statement Friday, Patricia Harris, the president and CEO…

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Brendan Carr is turning the Federal Communications Commission into Trump’s censoring machine

Brendan Carr is turning the Federal Communications Commission into Trump’s censoring machine

Wired reports: Carr’s background indicates that he might have been a straightforward leader of the agency. After several years as a legal adviser, he became a commissioner in 2017 and Joe Biden reappointed him in 2023. (Three of the five FCC commissioners, including the chair, are to be from the president’s party.) As a lifelong Republican—his father was once one of Nixon’s lawyers—he would be expected to champion conservative stances, like fighting net neutrality and sucking up to big telecom…

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Trump’s first 100 days show him dictating the terms of press coverage − following Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán’s playbook for media control

Trump’s first 100 days show him dictating the terms of press coverage − following Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán’s playbook for media control

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during a meeting in the Oval Office on May 13, 2019 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Images By Adam G. Klein, Pace University Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stood before a captivated audience of conservative activists from the U.S. and laid out his vision for American politics. The Western media, he declared at a May 2022 special meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee in Budapest, are “the root…

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Jake Tapper tears into CBS owner, Shari Redstone, for cynically bending the knee to Trump

Jake Tapper tears into CBS owner, Shari Redstone, for cynically bending the knee to Trump

  HuffPost: CNN host Jake Tapper slammed the chair of Paramount Global ― which owns CBS’s parent company ― saying she is “likely to bend the knee” to President Donald Trump on Tuesday after the exit of “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens. Tapper laid out the circumstances around Owens’ departure, noting that Paramount’s Shari Redstone “stands to make a fortune” as she looks to merge her company with Skydance Media, a multibillion-dollar deal that requires the approval of a…

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