Donald Trump – Media Nation

I’m newly optimistic about the future of CNN. I just hope that David Ellison means what he says.

Skydance chief executive David Ellison, right, and his father, Larry Ellison. Photo in the public domain.

A few weeks ago I lamented Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which brings CBS News and CNN under the same corporate roof, writing, “The immediate upshot is that two of the three major cable news outlets — CNN and Fox News — are now in the hands of executives who are friendly to Trump, with MS NOW the only holdout.”

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This week I’m choosing to be optimistic, although I’m well aware that my relatively sunny take on this week’s events might prove to be unrewarded. Mainly I’m encouraged that David Ellison, the head of Skydance (as the renamed company is known), has decided to keep Mark Thompson as chief executive of CNN.

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A perceptive analysis of why The New York Times struggles with the rise of MAGA authoritarianism

What is wrong with The New York Times? It’s a question that conservatives ask frequently, of course. But, over the years, it’s also become an obsession with liberals and the progressive left, whose more strident voices — frequently heard on Bluesky — claim that the Times is in thrall to Donald Trump in order to sell newspapers, advance a corporate agenda or whatever. You often hear the term “sanewashing” in these circles, referring to a practice of quoting Trump in a way that plays down his hateful rhetoric and deteriorating mental acuity.

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I’ve often been among those critics. In 2018, I wrote a commentary for GBH News referring to “the Timid Times” and comparing it unfavorably to the then-ascendant Washington Post, which was firing on all cylinders under executive editor Marty Baron. As I wrote: “The picture that emerges is of a news organization often out of sync with its mostly liberal audience and that is way too concerned about what conservatives might say.”

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Bringing CBS News and CNN under one Trump-friendly roof is a disaster for freedom of the press

David Ellison, right, and his billionaire father, Larry Ellison, are now calling the shots at two major news organizations — CBS News and CNN. Photo in the public domain.

My students and I were talking this morning about press freedoms in the U.S. and in other Western democracies. How, I asked, could countries like Britain, Canada, Germany and France ensure such freedoms in the absence of something like the First Amendment?

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The answer is that they can’t, at least not as comprehensively as we do. Libel protections and the right to publish information about criminal trials, government secrets and the like are in fact more robust here than they are in other countries. Yet according to the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, the U.S. ranks just 64th, behind Botswana but ahead of Panama. Norway is No. 1.

How can this be? A large part of the explanation came Monday, when the last remaining legal opposition to Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery melted away, transforming two behemoths into one super-behemoth. Nearly all of this corrupt (as in the sense of rotting flesh, not whether it’s legal) transaction involves entertainment properties, which is where the money is. But what many of us really care about is that CNN is moving under the same corporate umbrella as CBS News.

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Just say no: Trump’s illegal ban on three news outlets demands massive solidarity

Donald Trump’s edict banning three news organizations from the White House is illegal, and I have little doubt that the courts will overturn it in due course. The question is: How should the rest of the media respond?

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Trump said on Friday that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would no longer be allowed access, writing on Truth Social: “There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” adding: “Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine, but I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house.” And sure enough, CNN and MS NOW were turned away at the gate earlier today.

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‘60 Minutes’ is back — and so is ‘Beat the Press.’ We were watching, and here’s what we thought.

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

“60 Minutes” made its fall debut on Sunday, and so did “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney.” We watched to see what clues we could discern over how executive producer Nick Bilton and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss would remake the venerable newsmagazine program, which first slipped into view 58 years ago.

I don’t want to speak for my fellow panelists, but I thought it was solid if unspectacular. The first segment, on the secretive rescue of an American pilot from Iran, couldn’t have happened without the active cooperation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But since when have the networks not engaged in access journalism? The story, hosted by Norah O’Donnell, was harrowing, even if my friend Danny Schechter would have derided it as “militainment” if he were still with us.

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The New York Times takes on Trump’s crusade against freedom of speech and of the press

The New York Times has published a comprehensive examination of Donald Trump’s attempts to stifle freedom of speech and of the press. Written by Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman, it’s cast as a “news analysis” so they can offer some judgments. I’m guessing that it will be on the front page of the Sunday print edition.

There’s nothing in the story that hasn’t been previously reported, but it’s all here — from Trump’s bogus lawsuits against ABC and CBS to his Justice Department’s failed attempt to subpoena Times reporters; from an FBI raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter to FCC chair Brendan Carr’s threats against broadcast networks. Rutenberg and Haberman write:

Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.

Although First Amendment protections remain reasonably strong, there are soft spots, and Trump is exploiting them. For instance, the right of journalists to protect confidential sources is extremely limited, especially in the federal courts, and hauling reporters into court sends a message. It’s nearly impossible to win a frivolous libel suit, but Trump has used such suits to extract settlements from media corporations that need favors. Broadcast may be in its death throes, but it remains the one part of the media that is subject to government regulation, thus opening it up to Carr’s depredations.

The Times roundup is a must-read for anyone who cares about the role of a free and independent press in a democratic society. And know this: If Democrats take back one or both branches of Congress this November, Trump’s behavior is only going to become more unhinged and authoritarian.

What we have lost: An emotion-filled visit to the Obama Presidential Center

At the Obama Presidential Center there are several small dioramas marking events from Barack Obama’s presidency. One is of a Girl Scout campout that Michelle Obama hosted on the South Lawn in 2015. We see white tents, neatly arrayed, with the girls in a circle around a tiny campfire. It’s heartbreaking. How can we look at such a scene and not think about how Donald Trump has trashed the White House, and the presidency? It’s impossible to think about it without getting choked up — which is how we spent most of our visit to the Obama Center during our trip to Chicago last week.

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Three for Friday: Trump and the Times, Mass. public records and journalism cuts at UMass Dartmouth

I’m heading out for a family wedding in a little while, but the media news keeps coming. Here are three stories you should be aware of.

📰 Trump backs down. “The federal government says it will drop its subpoenas compelling New York Times reporters to testify about anonymous sources in a case that involved President Donald Trump’s claims about a Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet” (CNN). My earlier coverage.

📰 Mass. Senate to boost public records. “Top Senate Democrats signaled Thursday they will seek a vote next week on legislation that would, like a bill passed last month in the House, subject both the governor’s office and the Legislature to some kind of public records framework, taking aim at the same topic already targeted by a question on the November ballot” (CommonWealth Beacon).

📰 Journalism cuts at UMass Dartmouth. “Student journalists at UMass Dartmouth are speaking out about what they say may be unfair treatment, or even retribution, after the university’s only journalism professor was let go — two months after a university dean wrote that the professor’s contract extension was already ‘approved’” (New Bedford Light).

On the new ‘Beat the Press,’ we take on Trump’s subpoenas of New York Times journalists

*Click here or on image to watch on Contrarian Boston.*

On the latest edition of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we take a look at the Trump regime’s decision to subpoena New York Times journalists in an attempt to find out who told the paper about security problems on the new Air Force One, a corrupt gift from the Qatari government.

As we note, the Constitution does not protect journalists from having to identify their confidential sources if they are ordered to do so by a court. But the White House is running roughshod over long-established standards regarding how such demands ought to be handled.

We also examine how news organizations decided whether or not to carry Trump’s lie-infested speech about election security, and his threat to challenge the broadcast licenses of outlets that took a pass; and how the World Cup turned out to be a huge success in Greater Boston despite predictions by many in the media that we were headed for a disastrous confluence of chaos and gridlock. Plus, our panel’s Rants & Raves.

Emily is in the moderator’s seat, joined by our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.

In 2024, Trump killed a federal shield law. Now he’s exploiting that to harass The New York Times.

*One of several planes that have been used as Air Force One. Photo (cc) 2015 by Gage Skidmore.*

In the waning days of the last Congress in December 2024, a Republican senator killed efforts to pass a federal shield law that would have protected journalists from being forced to identify their anonymous sources or turn over confidential documents.

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The so-called PRESS Act, which had passed the House unanimously, died when Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — acting at the behest of Donald Trump, who’d just been re-elected — objected to an attempt to pass it by unanimous consent. Cotton said that passage would turn senators “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.”

Now we see the consequences of Cotton’s recklessness. Michael M. Grynbaum reports in The New York Times that three of the five Times journalists who exposed security problems on the new Air Force One — a corrupt gift to Trump from the Qatari government — received subpoenas ordering them to reveal their sources.

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