Trump and his FCC chair Brendan Carr are threatening U.S. news sources with loss of broadcast licenses or worse because their Iran War coverage makes Trump’s Folly out to be what it is, a mismanaged mess. It’s my understanding that broadcast licenses only apply to, um, broadcasts, and not to cable or Internet media. But as Trump doesn’t trust anything he can’t control, he seems to be aiming at taking over the Fourth Estate.
Trump spent much of Friday and Saturday attacking news organizations as well. He shared an infographic on Truth Social titled “President Trump Is Reshaping the Media,” cataloguing the departures of prominent journalists and TV anchors under a section labeled “Gone,” which also includes “massive layoffs” at The Post.
And don’t forget the media consolidation issue. Something I wrote last year:
On to the bigger crisis, which is media consolidation. Behind the Kimmel firing is a bigger story about how nearly all of our media are being gobbled up by a few right-wing rich people. Corporate ownership of media has been an issue for a while, but there has been a standing FCC regulation that prevented any single entity is from owning television stations that, in total, reached more than 39% of all U.S. TV households. Look for that to be eliminated soon, to allow right-wing media to control much more of the nation’s televised news. And then there’s David Ellison, a very rich right-wing guy who already controls Skydance and Paramount and is gunning for a lot more stuff, including streaming companies. We’re going to be hearing a lot about media consolidation going forward.
See also Media consolidation is shaping who folds under political pressure — and who could be next from Poynter.
The media consolidation thing is a serious worry.
There’s nothing new about contentious relationships between news media and public figures, including presidents. Even President George Washington got bad press sometimes, although he kept his thoughts about media criticism of his administration private. John Adams famously signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The Acts forbade “False, scandalous, and malicious” writing against the government, Congress or president, or any attempt “to excite against them…the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition.” But the Acts were enormously unpopular and were a big reason Adams was a one-term president. .The Acts were written with sunset clauses and were allowed to expire.
Most 19th century newspapers were openly partisan, and back then journalism was not known to have ethical standards. The 20th century saw the rise of investigative journalism in the form of “muckraking.” Reporters began to see themselves as professionals with scruples and a duty to report the truth. Eventually they were represented by such figures as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
But now it all seems to be falling apart, for a lot of different reasons. IMO part of the reason the nation is in such a mess right now is that we are short of broadly respected figures who did what Murrow did in 1954, when he used his CBS platform to show his viewers what a fraud Sen. Joe McCarthy really was. Murrow wasn’t the only journalist to go after McCarthy, and it took the televised Army-McCarthy hearings to finally bring McCarthy down. But it was a glorious thing when it happened.
So what changed? How come journalism isn’t bringing down Donald Trump? A lot has changed, actually.
It so happens that 1954 was the first year more than half of U.S. households had television, and with not a lot of programming options we can assume a large part of those households watched Murrow. One television broadcast could make a huge difference. The nightly lineup on MSNOW routinely lays bare Trump’s many failures in all their perfidy, but the people who really need to see it aren’t watching. There are so many other choices.
In some ways I think some parts of the news business are devolving back into what it was in the 19th century — partisan and unreliable — but with updated tech. But see more about partisan bias below.
One other thing occurs to me. Maybe, at least, some news directors and editors are having second thoughts about treating Trump so carefully and gently, cleaning up his garbled prose in quotes and making him sound more intelligent than he is. They let him get away with howlers that would have sunk other politicians. But why?
One of my earliest memories of watching news was watching what journalism did to President Lyndon Johnson. It was brutal, especially regarding Vietnam. I’ve never seen the entire press so relentlessly hound a public figure since then. I don’t remember that LBJ had much of a defense. Eventually he dropped any plans for seeking a full second term.
But Dick Nixon was ready for them. Remember Spiro Agnew and the “nattering nabobs of negativism”? Dick played himself as the victim of a biased press.
And, of course, since the 1970s the American Right has put together a sophisticated media-think tank network that generates and spreads right-wing talking points throughout media. The Left never constructed anything close to that. But the Right has a huge news ecosystem that reaches far and wide, and it keeps growing. For some recent developments see Inside the Hidden Conservative Network Bankrolling an “Ecosystem” of Right-Wing News at Mother Jones.
In 1971 a study cam out that showed, according to right-wing folklore, that most journalists are Democrats. And ever since they’ve brought that up as proof of liberal media bias. Well, sorta kinda. Of the journalists surveyed, 35.5 percent said they were Democrats, 25.7 percent, said they were Republicans, and 32.5 percent called themselves independents. This does not strike me as a result worthy of hysteria. It’s true that since then the ratio of Democrats to Republicans among journalists has shifted in the Democrats favor, but that may be because the Republican party has become more rigidly and extremely ideological in recent decades.
But the overall impact of relentless accusations of bias from the Right has given us a media that is driven to, above all, avoid the appearance of bias. This means that in a political contest, if one candidate is a hopelessly corrupt criminal and the other walks on water and has a halo, news coverage will mute the criminal’s ugly record but focus on every flaw they can find about the saint. Maybe he once wore brown shoes with a black suit. That sort of thing. And they’ve been doing that since the 1970s, at least, Makes me crazy.
The other issue is called the “view from nowhere,” in which a politician is accurately quoted saying something that is obvious nonsense, but the news story lets it stand without correction. Trump isn’t the first politician to get away with that. But how often has he claimed that “other countries” pay his tariffs? As far as I can see, only on MSNOW, some newspaper editorial pages, and some substack columns is it consistently pointed out that Trump clearly doesn’t understand how tariffs work. But if they corrected him every time he said something stupid it would look like bias.
It’s this last part that I hope they will re-think. If they’re going to be threatened over straight reporting after years of bending over backward to make Trump look normal, maybe they’ll rethink their long-time strategy of making both sides look equally good or bad even when they aren’t. Because something’s got to change or we’ll never have a halfway sane country again.
See also The Decay of American Journalism in a Disinformation Age at The New Republic.
Excellent summary of a horrific situation. I really don't see a way out of this for this country, especially with Russia sanctions being cancelled so they can fund not only their war but also provide material support to Iran while we are invading them.
One thing I'm wondering is the point at which those Navy admirals and Air Force generals overseeing this debacle finally decide they've had enough and just refuse further orders. It would be the right thing to do but sadly it is unlikely to happen.
And just to set the historical record straight Agnew's actual quote was "nattering nabobs of negativism". It drove me nuts when he kept saying it at the time but he was run out of office for financial crimes which are microscopic compared to the trump family. So the times they definitely are a'changing.
I've always wondered, WTF is a "nabob"? I haven't heard that term used since Agnew. Maybe its an Agnewism he made up.
nabob: "a Muslim official or governor under the Mogul empire." Go figure.
I don't have give Agnew much credit for grace in alliteration
Thanks. Corrected. I blame spell check.
Great post!
One big issue with today's news media is they are incapable of sustained criticism of one of the worst human rights abusers in the world, the state of Israel. During Bibi's genocide in Gaza most outlets gave very little coverage in proportion to the size of the crime. Hundreds of innocent civilians were being killed by everyday by one of the most advanced militaries in the world and yet we still heard scant details. When Hama's would kill a hostage or release one we heard about it for days. The release of Israeli hostages received magnitudes more coverage than the death of innocent Palestinian children. Then we had protests in this country against the genocide characterized by many in the media as anti-Semitism. Universities were forced into draconian policy changes, students were locked up, wasn’t really a story? Now we have a war in Iran that anyone can see (and in fact the secretary of state admitted) is a war for Israel and our news media is once again reluctant to call it out. In fact if the mention is made we here the familiar refrain of anti-Semitism. Just yesterday when a Trump official resigned and called the war a war for Israel I heard the same anti-Semitic refrain, on mainstream and even liberal outlets. My post may sound like a wing nut claiming the "Jews control the media" that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is the media is caught in the same trap as the Democratic Party; they need to find a way to separate people who are jews and or people who practice the Jewish faith and the state of Israel and the Israeli lobby in this county. The fundamentalists in this country and in Israel understand that they have the media and our government in a trap and they are going to exploit it to the limit.
I completely agree. I think a lot of the failure of media to report honestly on Gaza is that they don't want to offend viewers/subscribers, whether Jewish or just pro-Israel. I can remember 20 and more years ago it was practically heresy to take the side of the Palestinians over Israelis, and I wonder if the people who head the big news organizations have noticed things have shifted a tad.
Yes, example: MSNOW had a real hit piece on Joe Kent this morning, describing him as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist (which I’m sure he's a loon since tulsi and diaper don hired him) but then they played a clip they described as promoting anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracies. Kent basically said the US could/should have contacted Iran through back channels saying that Israel attacked on their own and that the US wanted to continue negotiation. That doesn't really sound like an anti-Semitic conspiracy to me, it sounds like something that would have prevent us from pissing away 2 billion dollars a day and losing American lives? MSNOW sounding a lot like FAUX news on this topic!
I wonder many times if we are in an information age or a misinformation age or a combination of both. I do know that many small publications lack personnel with basic writing skills so much so that they cannot write a basic news story. If they do happen to communicate something of interest, the much needed follow up never seems to happen. You are left for all time in the state of: how did that ever turn out?
As to getting information about political candidates no one seems to write or publish anything objective and trustworthy at all. I guess the market for such information is just not there. Pam Bondi spent a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money creating and airing media spots that seemed to lack any objective and trustworthy information about her at all. For that there was a market of sorts.
The only message I learned is that she apparently cannot be trusted with public money. I am fairly sure that was not her intended message at all.
CBS News is Dying. What's replacing it? Honest, insightful people on social media, like the guy who produced ^this video. Hawk is a (former?) attorney from the Bay Area.
One of my recent finds: Lucas Bean, and his brilliant deconstructions, to wit Why you can't get through to a Trump supporter. It's about how they throw phrases like "Trump Derangement Syndrom" or "Fake News" at you. These are "thought stopping" phrases, a brainwashing technique used by the Chinese communists decades ago, and discussed in a 1961 book by Robert Lifton. I now know what to say to people who throw this garbage at me, thanks to Lucas Bean.
One of the important tasks of our time is deconstructing the garbage we're swimming in, and explaining it to those still confused by it.
Thank you, moon… I, too, have been encountering shortish "reels" from Lucas Bean.
I've only put in a very small amount of time looking at his youtube channel, and I found it difficult to find the posts that have shown up in the past month or so, and which are very timely. I don't do Instagram and I think that is the primary place his videos go first. Anyway, I want to share these videos with political operatives in my state, because I think his research based analysis is excellent and could be included in the training of canvassing volunteers with the benefit of making sure we don't waste time on lost cause voters, while there may also be some subtle techniques that avoid triggering maaggy voters who are disappointed enough to skip voting this fall but if they get triggered will show up to vote against the nasssty dems.
Here's a telling window into the state of journalism. Kaitlin Collins, who is routinely publicly battered with personal insults by Trump and "Sweet" Caroline Leavitt in response to her questions without answering them, recently said this of Trump:
"Trump is such an accessible president… Anytime the camera's around and reporters are around, it can turn into a press conference…President Obama almost never responded to shouted questions."
Regarding Collins stroking of Trump, "accessibility" is moot if all you get are lies, with insults thrown in, IF the goal is real journalism. Its the clearest indication yet that mainstream media is less interested in communicating facts and real news, and primarily focused on "entertainment."
Let's face facts, never have even the weather people bent reality like they do now. Not only does the national intelligence service bend reality to fit what is politically correct but so does your local weather person. What they do not say speaks volumes. As what is politically correct depends on the changing whims of a madman, what can be said changes too. He who thinks his fat sharpie can alter the path of a hurricane is convinced his power is unlimited. It is beyond what is historically correct, what is literally correct, what is scientifically correct, and beyond any other standard of correctness. He even claims authority over conspiracy theories. His gut and bones tell him true ones from untrue ones. Wait until he gets his sharpie out on those wayward right-wing talking heads. They will learn to check in with his guts and bones before they go mouthing off. He and only he has the truly anointed guts and bones. He has the magical fat sharpie too.
What is politically correct is the only allowed standard of correct in the USA today. *
*Note the rhyming couplet. No iambic pentameter though, that would be too king like.
OT: Why did the current administration decommission mine sweepers that were stationed in the gulf? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Manchurian Candidate.
I blame incompetence.
I agree completely that Trump is trying to control what voters perceive. It worked well in Germany in the '30s. Not so well in the high-tech world of the 21st century. The FCC can threaten broadcast TV but how many people rely on rabbit ears to receive a grainy picture on TV. I'm not discounting the attempt – it's vile and unconstitutional. But has it been effective? Can it work?
I turn on CNN on my laptop and phone several times daily. Plus Axios. Fill in with blogs, especially here. There's stuff on social media. When the Pope quotes the words of Jesus on how we should treat the stanger among us, it's not hard to find. When ICE murders a protester, the video is up before Bondi can call him/her a terrorist.
It's not 1930 Gemany. ICE got shut down in the twin cities. Oh, they are still there, but they had to end the confrontations with residents. Until Miller can control the media, the brutality has to be toned down. In the '30s, Hitler had a paramilitary who conducted hundreds of murders, if not more. ICE can't because the cell phone with a camera keeps blowing away the propaganda.
I'm not minimizing the threat, but activist citizens are leading with courage and brains. Democrats in Congress ae following. Bondi is under subpoena to answer for the mismanagement of the Epstein files release. It's not going away.
Polls show that over 60% think Trump is getting "erratic" with age. (Reuters/Ipsos) Not only is Trump not controlling the media, but he's not managing the popular perception of his behavior. Trump started a war he can't figure out how to end. It's hurting Americans at the gas pump. Iran can punish us by keeping gas prices up – they can potentially force Arab nations to close US military bases and take control of their own destiny. Europe may also put pressure on the US to butt out as the first step to a settlement.
May I suggest a mental exercise? Assume the war against Iram will end. Assume oil will start flowing again. Assume Iran has to sign on to the deal. Who has to sit at the table where a deal is struck, and what do they want/need? I don't see the US at the table if Iran can convince the sellers of oil. SA, UAE, Kuwait, and the buyers of Middle East oil (Europe, China, and India) to cut a deal that excludes Trump.
This is off topic, yet journalists do not notice important measures that they should. The cost of borrowing money is one of them. The defense department is talking about needing at least 200 billion dollars extra to fund the war excursion or whatever we are calling Trump's Folly. We will need to borrow that as our country's funding is a mess. Other countries need to borrow too, and that creates a demand for money. This has pushed up our interest rates by about a half a percent just since the folly began. This is before we even began to borrow more. We don't have to pay as much interest as the British do though. Their interest rate is now over 5%. We just climbed to 4.3% on our benchmark 10year note. France, Germany, and Japan all pay less. Their credit rating must be better.
The bottom line is that it is a poor time to be borrowing money. I guess someone thought we needed an expensive folly. That is a really bad idea considering our budget situation. We overspent a bit on those tax breaks for the rich people you know.
Yes, and methinks that we are in the midst of a global WW III, in which economic warfare and political/informational warfare are the primary mechanisms, supported by "traditional" military power. One of the reasons that this hierarchy of means is the way it is: all of the wars since Viet Nam have shown that brute military force alone cannot win. ("hearts and minds", you know.) And the 1972 summer Olympics demonstrated how small factions with primitive tools can hold big sway pm the world stage. We have been living with terrorism ever since.
But back to Bernie's point, it makes perfect sense to me that Iran's tactic of holding the global economy hostage should not surprise anyone, and since there is a powerful extremist theocratic element to Iran's institutions, they have plenty of beyond-economic motivation to harm the non-Shia countries of the "post war order", which includes not only Isreal and the US, but also the moderate Sunni gulf states that are ideologically aligned against Shia Iran.
Who holds the "cards" here? (…to use the buffoon's metaphor when he was talking down to Ukraine's head of state…) Methinks the valuation of the aggressors' million dollars apiece ordinance vs the backward bedouins' third rate missiles, DIY backyard rockets, cheap drones, maritime drones and speedboat borne suicide bombers … well the comparative valuation of those cards is not as clear as some of our leaders might wish.
Just announced: Bari Weiss and co. are shutting down CBS News Radio.