Media – Page 4 – Media Nation

Amid a worldwide surge of authoritarianism, the U.S. falls again in press-freedom rankings

Every semester, I introduce my media ethics students to the World Press Freedom Index, an annual compilation by Reporters Without Borders that tracks 180 countries.

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The United States does not do well, and the just-released 2026 update is no exception. We are now 64th, coming in just behind Botswana and just ahead of Panama. As RSF (the French acronym for Reporters Without Borders) puts it, “After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing a significant and prolonged decline in press freedom, with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency greatly exacerbating the situation.”

Continue reading “Amid a worldwide surge of authoritarianism, the U.S. falls again in press-freedom rankings”

The Saturday-night shooting at the WHCA dinner underscores the declining relevance of print

I hear from so many people that they can’t live without their print newspaper and morning coffee that I’m often tempted to remind them it’s technically possible to drink coffee while reading the news on your iPad.

The declining relevance of print is top of mind this morning as The New York Times failed to get the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting into its dead-tree edition. Lest you think this is a Boston delivery problem, it’s also not in the replica edition. Needless to say, it’s all over the Times homepage, and it probably found its way into the late city editions as well.

The (deservedly) much-maligned Washington Post managed to go big with the shooting in its print edition. You might say that’s a function of being the hometown paper, but it’s really not. It’s a function of press times.

The Boston Globe leads its print edition with the shooting, alongside the firing of Red Sox manager Alex Cora.

No excuses for the Los Angeles Times, which is three hours behind the East Coast, meaning that the incident took place around 5 p.m. Pacific time.

Of course, even those papers whose editors managed to yell “Stop the presses!” and get the story into print have much more up-to-date news about the shooting in their digital editions today.

We get the print edition of the Sunday Times because, whenever we try to cancel in order to save money, we’re offered a special deal. Digital advertising isn’t worth much, but print ads are still fairly lucrative, especially in the Times and especially on Sunday. But when there’s a big, late-breaking story, digital is the place to be.

The Washington Star is back, and so is its long-running rivalry with The Washington Post

*Maybe not quite so final after all. Photo via eBay.*

Forty-five years after The Washington Star closed its doors, its long-running rivalry with The Washington Post is lurching back to life. NOTUS, a fledgling digital publication, is rebranding itself as The Star in June and is expanding in an attempt to take advantage of recent deep cuts at the Post, especially in local news and sports.

Katie Robertson reports in The New York Times that The Star plans to expand its newsroom from about 45 to 95 staff members by the end of the year. That’s still well short of the 400 to 500 that the Post employs, but The Star should presumably be able to carve out a niche by focusing on areas where the Post is weak. (Robertson’s story makes no mention of whether there will be a print edition. My guess is no.)

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A ‘NewsHour’ exchange highlights the endless debate over Biden’s and Trump’s mental acuity

Like Hillary and Bernie in 2016, or Grady Little’s decision to send Pedro Martinez back out for the eighth, the media’s coverage of Joe Biden’s decline in 2024 is going to be litigated forever.

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The latest example came Friday night on the “PBS NewsHour,” when Geoff Bennett asked Jonathan Capehart why coverage of Donald Trump’s mental state hasn’t matched similar coverage of Biden’s decline two years ago. Here’s how it went down:

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On the new ‘Beat the Press,’ we look at war coverage, fetish non-coverage and CNN’s GenZ ploy

*Click on image to watch the show at Contrarian Boston.*

On the latest edition of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we examine criticism from the left and the right of how the war in Iran is being covered by the media.

Plus: Why the mainstream media have shied away from showing fetish photos of Bryon Noem, husband of Kristi Noem; how CNN is trying to reach a younger audience with a show featuring online influencers; and our panel’s Rants and Raves.

With Emily, Contrarian Boston publisher Scott Van Voorhis, Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, and me, with production by Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Production.

The Boston Globe ends its use of the AI tool Nota after Poynter reports that it plagiarizes

Angela Fu of Poynter Online published a story on Thursday that’s been rocketing around media circles. Her lead: “Artificial intelligence company Nota — whose clients include organizations like The Boston Globe and the Institute for Nonprofit News — is scrapping its network of local news sites after learning that they contained dozens of instances of plagiarism.”

You should read Fu’s story in full. The gist of it is that the AI tool was supposed to scrape press releases and official information but has been grabbing news content in addition to that. “Poynter found more than 70 stories dating back to October that included reporting, writing and photography from local journalists without attribution,” she writes. “Some of the copied material came from outlets owned by Nota’s own clients.”

Earlier today, several trusted sources sent along a memo sent to the Globe’s newsroom assuring the staff that the paper was not part of the specific experiment at issue and that everyone should stop using Nota.

Here is text of the email, which is from editor Brian McGrory; Shira Center, vice president for innovation and strategic initiatives; Cynthia Needham, deputy managing editor for innovation and strategy; Matt Karolian, vice president of platforms and AI; and Heather Ciras, deputy managing editor for audience.

Poynter published a report yesterday about Nota, an AI tool used by the Globe and many other newsrooms across the country. The story said that a Nota experiment involving AI-driven hyperlocal news resulted in stories that were clearly plagiarized from other local news organizations.

The Globe was not part of this experiment, which was aimed at small counties in other states. We’ve worked with Nota on SEO, headline recommendations, related metadata, and social platform suggestions for Globe stories. The Globe’s contract with Nota prohibits it from using our journalism to train its AI model.

That said, what happened here does not fit with our values, and we are asking everyone to stop using this product while we wait for Nota to turn off the service and end our contract. We have other strong options for this work that we’re exploring.

My media ethics students express some surprisingly skeptical views about AI and journalism

*1930 photo (cc) via the German Federal Archives.*

My colleagues and I are engaged in the convoluted, ever-shifting process of figuring out how to use artificial intelligence in journalism in ways that are both productive and ethical. Somewhere between “Let students use AI to write their stories” and “We should forbid all uses of AI,” there is a reasonable approach, and we’re all trying to figure out what that is.

Our students learn from us. We learn from our students. Keep in mind, though, that we have not yet seen what you might call “AI natives” in our classrooms. Young people in their late teens and early 20s were part of the before times. In the not-too-distant future, though, we’ll start seeing students who can’t remember a world without ChatGPT, Claude and the rest.

Recently I devoted a class to AI in my graduate ethics seminar. It’s a small group of five students, one of whom is an advanced undergrad. I was surprised to learn that they are as skeptical of AI as I am.

Read the rest at Poynter Online.

The Times may not be perfect, but it remains staunchly independent in an era of bent knees

*New York Times assistant managing editor Michael Slackman, left, with Northeastern School of Journalism director Jonathan Kaufman. Photo (cc) 2026 by Dan Kennedy.*

Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House has been fraught with peril for independent journalism. I couldn’t possibly list the threats emanating from the regime without omitting many others, but you know what’s been happening:

This post was originally published as part of last week’s Supporters Newsletter. To receive this newsletter every Thursday, join my Patreon for just $6 a month.

Outrageous legal settlements agreed to by the parent companies of ABC News and CBS News. The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. The arrests of reporters Don Lemon and Georgia Fort while they were covering a protest. Threats against broadcast licenses by FCC chair Brendan Carr. The pending Trump-greased acquisition of CNN by billionaires David Ellison and his father, Larry, for whom wrecking CBS wasn’t enough. The Trump-friendly direction taken by The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times opinion sections at the behest of their billionaire owners. An illegal raid on a Washington Post reporter’s home.

Continue reading “The Times may not be perfect, but it remains staunchly independent in an era of bent knees”

On the latest ‘Beat the Press,’ we look at war coverage, the buzz about a public radio merger and more

*Click here or on image to watch “Beat the Press.”*

On the brand-new “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we take a look at the Trump regime’s thuggish attempts to control coverage of the war in Iran.

Our other topics: the possibility of a merger between Boston’s two public radio stations, GBH, which is gung-ho, and WBUR, which isn’t; and why The Washington Post is refusing the Pentagon’s demands that it take down its confidential tip line. Plus our Rants & Raves.

Our panel is helmed by Emily and hosted by Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston, joined by Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.