Browsed by
Category: Journalism/Media

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney, Ed Martin, is a Russian-state-TV darling

Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney, Ed Martin, is a Russian-state-TV darling

Tom Nichols writes: The United States of America is still a free country, and every private citizen has the right to speak to anyone, anywhere in the world, about anything. If the propaganda arm of an avowed enemy of the West calls and invites you to bash your own nation in public, you are free to do so. It might not be the most patriotic or sensible choice, but it’s your privilege. If you also would like to join the…

Read More Read More

Trump’s D.C. U.S. attorney pick, Ed Martin, appeared on Russian state media over 150 times

Trump’s D.C. U.S. attorney pick, Ed Martin, appeared on Russian state media over 150 times

The Washington Post reports: Hours before President Donald Trump announced U.S. missile strikes on Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed 90 civilians in April 2017, Ed Martin said on the Russian state television network RT America that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might not be to blame. Instead, Martin told viewers, the situation was “engineered” in Washington “by the people that want war in Syria.” In early 2022, Martin told an interviewer on the same arm of RT’s…

Read More Read More

For Trump, Waltz’s worst offense was that Jeffrey Goldberg was one of his contacts

For Trump, Waltz’s worst offense was that Jeffrey Goldberg was one of his contacts

The New York Times reports: For much of this week, President Trump was consumed by a single question. What should he do about his national security adviser, Michael Waltz? “Should I fire him?” he asked aides and allies as the fallout continued over the stunning leak of a Signal group chat set up by Mr. Waltz, who had inadvertently added a journalist to the thread about an upcoming military strike in Yemen. In public, Mr. Trump’s default position has been…

Read More Read More

Trump has made ‘a huge gift to America’s enemies’ by silencing pro-democracy media

Trump has made ‘a huge gift to America’s enemies’ by silencing pro-democracy media

Politico reports: U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to stop financing U.S.-funded media including Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is stirring anger and indignation. On Saturday, journalists from VOA, RFE/RL and other U.S.-funded media outlets were put on leave or otherwise told to stop work after Trump moved to effectively freeze funding to media that have correspondents all over the world and provide coverage of regions including Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “These media outlets have…

Read More Read More

Trump silences Voice of America and other U.S.-funded networks

Trump silences Voice of America and other U.S.-funded networks

NPR reports: Journalists showed up at the Voice of America today to broadcast their programs only to be told they had been locked out: Federal officials had embarked on indefinite mass suspensions. All full-time staffers at the Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martí, were affected — more than 1,000 employees. The move followed a late Friday night edict from President Trump that its parent agency, called the U.S. Agency for Global…

Read More Read More

Ukrainian journalist, Victoria Roshchyna, died exposing Russia’s hidden crimes

Ukrainian journalist, Victoria Roshchyna, died exposing Russia’s hidden crimes

Slidstvo.Info reports: Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who was captured by Russian forces in the summer of 2023, endured brutal torture in captivity, according to an investigation by Slidstvo.Info. Investigators found she suffered knife wounds, electric shocks, and became so emaciated her weight dropped to just 30 kilograms. Russian prison staff reportedly hid her from inspections to conceal her deteriorating condition. Roshchyna was taken prisoner in August 2023 while reporting from Russian-occupied territories. For months, her whereabouts were unknown. It wasn’t…

Read More Read More

Voice of America Ukrainian correspondent fired in DOGE crackdown

Voice of America Ukrainian correspondent fired in DOGE crackdown

The Kyiv Independent reports: Ostap Yarysh, a Ukrainian correspondent at Voice of America (VoA), was dismissed on March 7, reportedly following an inspection by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE is an unofficial cost-cutting group that U.S. President Donald Trump has granted broad authority to reduce government spending and dismiss employees. DOGE’s head, U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, has previously called for the shutdown of U.S.-funded media outlets Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. Yarysh joined the VOA’s Ukrainian…

Read More Read More

Trump is the greatest threat to free markets and personal liberties

Trump is the greatest threat to free markets and personal liberties

Dana Milbank writes: Over the past 48 hours, I’ve been receiving from readers and friends the sort of notes one gets upon losing a loved one or perhaps receiving a terminal diagnosis. “So very sorry.” “Hang in there.” “Sending you love and strength.” “With appreciation and sorrow.” The cause of death? The belief that Post owner Jeff Bezos has just ended the tradition of open debate that has guided this paper’s editorial page for generations. “We are going to be…

Read More Read More

Trump’s Washington is starting to feel like Putin’s Moscow

Trump’s Washington is starting to feel like Putin’s Moscow

Peter Baker writes: She asked too many questions that the president didn’t like. She reported too much about criticism of his administration. And so, before long, Yelena Tregubova was pushed out of the Kremlin press pool that covered President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. In the scheme of things, it was a small moment, all but forgotten nearly 25 years later. But it was also a telling one. Mr. Putin did not care for challenges. The rest of the press pool got…

Read More Read More

When the Murdoch empire collapses, will Elon Musk buy Fox News?

When the Murdoch empire collapses, will Elon Musk buy Fox News?

The Observer reports: When some of the mind games and manoeuvres that turned a Murdoch family “retreat” into an ordeal appeared in Succession, the TV drama about squabbling family members of a right-wing media company, members of the real-life family started to suspect each other of leaking details to the writers. The truth was more straightforward. Succession’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, said that his team hadn’t needed inside sources – they had simply read press reports. Future screenwriters have been gifted…

Read More Read More

The Associated Press provides a model of effective press resistance

The Associated Press provides a model of effective press resistance

Noah Berlatsky writes: The White House is punishing the Associated Press for defying President Donald Trump’s petty and Orwellian censorship. Trump insists that journalistic outlets refer to the Gulf of Mexico solely as the “Gulf of America.” The AP has continued to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico. In retaliation, Trump barred the AP’s reporters from attending presidential press availabilities. But the AP refused to knuckle under. The organization’s stand provides a model for resistance…

Read More Read More

The media isn’t ready for Trump’s mass deportation moment

The media isn’t ready for Trump’s mass deportation moment

Adrian Carrasquillo writes: Imagine this scenario: Department of Homeland Security agents storm a meatpacking plant in the South, a show of force in the largest workplace raid in a decade. Rounding up workers, they target those who appear to be Latinos, without regard for citizenship. They don’t ask for documentation until hours later. A worker, overcome by fear, makes a run for it and is tackled by immigration agents, with one putting a boot on the worker’s neck for over…

Read More Read More