Fox News anchor Will Caine, left, with retired Lt. Col. Allen West.
With Donald Trump plunging us into a new war in the Middle East, I was curious about how it was being covered on MAGA-TV, also known as Fox News. I decided to watch the 8 p.m. hour on Sunday.
Overall, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The real problems weren’t what was said so much as what wasn’t. But since I spent the weekend keeping up on developments primarily with The New York Times, I’m not sure whether other television news outlets were doing a better job.
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If I’d tuned in Fox at 8 p.m. on a weekday, I’d have encountered the loathsome Jesse Watters, a racist misogynist who once “joked” about killing Dr. Anthony Fauci. Instead, the hour was hosted by Dallas-based Will Caine, about whom I know nothing, but who came across as a fairly conventional anchor. Apparently that was a last-minute switch; the hour is normally given over to “Life, Liberty & Levin,” helmed by right-wing zealot Mark Levin.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a deceptive and disingenuous statement Friday to make it appear that Scouting America — formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America — had agreed to ban transgender teens.
He didn’t exactly lie. What he said was cuter than I thought he was capable of. But he did manage to produced content for Fox News in order to advance his hateful campaign against the LGBTQ community. Here’s the relevant section of Hegseth’s statement regarding trans youth, as reported by Alex Nitzberg of Fox News:
Scouting America will modify its policy to make clear that membership will be based solely on biological sex at birth and not gender identity,” he said.
“That means that the application, any application, will have only two sex designations, male and female, and the application must match the applicant’s birth certificate. Scouting will also make clear that biological boys and girls will not be allowed to occupy or share intimate spaces together. Toilets, showers, tents, anywhere like that.
Sounds like a ban, doesn’t it? Not so fast. Because, according to Ben Finley and Jamie Stengle of The Associated Press, Scouting America hasn’t made any changes at all with regard to trans members.
The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student newspaper, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The paper — now mostly digital — began life in 1926 as The Northeastern News, a university-supported outlet formed by the merger of two other campus newspapers.
The News went independent in 2008, changing its name and ending its dependence on funding from the administration. Yet its mission has remained the same: comprehensive coverage of Northeastern, supplemented with reporting from the surrounding community.
The Huntington News is a vital resource on campus. The News today is better than the News I was part of in the 1970s — more professional and serious-minded, with more measured judgment. Plus there’s just much more journalism than we were able to offer in our weekly print paper 50 years ago. Congratulations to all!
U.S. Justice Department. Photo (cc) 2006 by Coolcaesar.
Should a judge be expected to know when a prosecutor’s request is illegal? I would have thought so. But that turns out to be not the case with regard to a Washington Post reporter whose home was raided by the FBI last month as part of a leak investigation targeting a Pentagon contractor.
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New York Times reporter Charlie Savage reported recently that the Justice Department had failed to tell a judge that a 1980 federal law prohibited the government from seeking a journalist’s reporting materials in most instances. Because of that failure, the judge issued a warrant to search the home of Post reporter Hannah Natanson — a shocking move given that journalists are generally summoned to court and given an opportunity argue against being forced to turn over their documents.
Dale Anglin at the recent Knight Media Forum in Miami.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Dale Anglin, the inaugural executive director of Press Forward, a philanthropic effort that is dedicated to funding local news initiatives nationwide.
Before she was named as the leader of Press Forward, Anglin served as a vice president for grantmaking at the Cleveland Foundation. She also led the foundation’s journalism strategy. Then and now, she focuses on local news and information as a way to restore a sense of community.
I’ve got a Quick Take on The Baltimore Banner, one of the most prominent nonprofit digital startups. It looks like readers of The Washington Post who live in the DC area may not be deprived of local news and sports after all despite the recent deep cuts ordered by its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. The Banner is expanding, and it’s part of executive editor Audrey Cooper’s mission to build civic engagement through community journalism.
Ellen’s Quick Take is on a bill in New York state that attempts to put some guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence in newsrooms. Among other things, it would require disclosures and mandate supervision and fact-checking by actual human editors. It received a hearty endorsement from journalism industry unions. But there’s a lot of catching up to do to rein in the robots.
This afternoon I got out for the first time since Sunday and stomped around the Mystic Lakes a bit. I didn’t get too far. Someone had helpfully cleared a path through the snow, but it was pretty rough, and I didn’t want to spend too much time walking along Mystic Valley Parkway. Fortunately the entrance road to the Upper Mystic Lake Dam was cleared and open.
Along the eastern shore of the Lower Mystic Lake.Entrance to the reservation.Looking south toward the Lower Mystic Lake near the Medford Boat Club.Looking north toward the Upper Mystic Lake at Tufts’ Bacow Sailing Pavilion.Looking west toward the Upper Mystic Lake.
The Boston Globe calls its decision not to print a paper today “unprecedented.” But as Aidan Ryan reports (sub. req.), it depends on your definition of unprecedented: “Even during the historic Blizzard of ’78, the Globe printed a few thousand copies of the Feb. 7, 1978, edition, though its delivery trucks couldn’t get through the piles of snow around its old offices on Morrissey Boulevard.”
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Moreover, Ryan notes that today’s edition will be printed and delivered with Wednesday’s paper. It strikes me as an odd move given that the Globe’s website is up and running, including the daily e-paper. But maybe there are a few print customers who really don’t want to read the paper online and who will appreciate having today’s paper — perhaps to commemorate the Blizzard of ’26.
Mavis Staples and Rick Holmstrom. Photo (cc) 2015 by Bruce Baker.
Mavis Staples’ late-career stardom is a thing of wonder and beauty. The former lead singer of the legendary Staple Singers has recorded eight studio albums since 2004, including the recent “Sad and Beautiful World.” At 86, she’s still touring, mixing old and new material, backed by a rock trio anchored by Rick Holmstrom — who, by the way, should be at the top of any list of great but unheralded guitarists.
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Staples and her band, supplemented by two backup singers, performed Saturday night at the Chevalier Theatre in Medford. It was the third time we’d seen them; pre-COVID, we’d been to concerts at UMass Boston and at the Cabot Performing Arts Center in Beverly. Mavis has slowed down, but not by much. She had to take a seat on occasion, but she spent most of the night on her feet. And her message was direct, from promising “inspiration and positive vibrations,” to giving a shoutout to the “No Kings” movement, to invoking the late John Lewis’ plea that we all make “good trouble.”
For me, the highlight came early. “I’m Just Another Soldier,” an old Staple Singers song, hit hard, especially this verse:
Now Martin, John and Bobby once fought here by my side But the captain called then to that command post in the sky This army needs you my friend, this army needs me And I believe if we all get together right now hatred would cease to be
“Human Mind,” from “Sad and Beautiful World,” conjured up her family, with whom she performed for so many years. You have to have been around for a long time to remember that the Staple Singers were the creation of her father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, who sang and played guitar. Mavis grew into the lead singer’s role, backed by a rotating cast of her sisters and brother, with Pops as the anchor. Though she didn’t write “Human Mind,” it was hard not to think of that history as she sang:
I dealed in loss, daddy I am the last, daddy, last of us Ain’t always easy to believe I miss my family, daddy
I wasn’t taking notes, but Terence Cawley was, and he’s written a sharp, comprehensive review for Boston.com. It was an extraordinary evening as well as a chance to commune with one of the great souls of our age.
This past November I wrote about how a Boston Globe subscriber could share a gift link with a non-subscriber via email. It was strictly a one-to-one feature — there was no authorized way of sending a gift link to a social-media platform. (There are unauthorized ways, which I’ll let you figure out.)
Within the past day or so, though, a new item suddenly popped up on the Globe’s sharing options called “Gift an Article.” My hope was that the Globe had joined multiple other papers and was now offering a few free gift shares a month that would work anywhere, not just through email.
With great anticipation, I clicked. And I was greeted with a text-entry box that said “Gift This Article Through Email.” The rest of the sharing features — Facebook, Bluesky, etc. — give you a link that lead to a paywall when a non-subscriber clicks on them.
Oh, well. I’ll be optimistic and hope that this is the first step toward a real sharing feature.
The Massachusetts Statehouse. Photo (cc) 2024 by Dan Kennedy.
Politico’s Massachusetts Playbook, a morning email newsletter about state politics, is coming to an end. Kelly Garrity made the announcement earlier today and said she’ll be writing a political newsletter for The Boston Globe that will debut later this year. She writes:
Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who ever read, emailed, sent a tip, answered a late-night call/email/text or submitted a birthday. This newsletter is what first put POLITICO on my radar and I feel so lucky to have had the chance to be a part of making something I was a fan of for so long.
The Playbook was launched in September 2015 with Lauren Dezenski at the helm. Dezenski, a Dorchester Reporter alum, is now at Bloomberg. The Playbook has served as an important stepping stone for a number of journalists who have held that position, but now it’s coming to an end.
Although Boston has a number of morning newsletters, I think it’s fair to say that Politico’s only direct competitor in terms of tracking the Massachusetts political scene was MASSter List, from State House News Service, produced by veteran journalist Gintautas Dumcius. Also deserving mention is CommonWealth Beacon, a nonprofit that covers politics and public policy, which has a mid-morning newsletter that’s a little bit different — less insidery and more focused on pulling readers onto its website. (Note: I’m on CommonWealth’s editorial advisory board.)
The move is part of broader cutbacks at Politico as a whole. Corbin Bolies recently reported for The Wrap that Politico was eliminating 3% of its staff. Meanwhile, Axios, founded by two of Politico’s three co-founders, is expanding its local news coverage — although, unfortunately, AI is playing a significant role. (Boston is among the cities with a morning Axios newsletter, but it’s not strictly about politics.)
This also strikes me as a smart move by the Globe, since it’s a way to bring in a reporter who’s already respected by folks who follow state politics closely.
