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).
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.
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.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Thomas McCloskey. Official photo via the New Jersey Globe.
It’s not a good day for the First Amendment, as four New York Times journalists have been subpoenaed in connection with their report (sub. req.) that Donald Trump’s new Air Force One plane — a gift that he corruptly accepted from the Qatari government — lacks important security features.
The journalists have been called to testify before a federal grand jury on Wednesday. Although the exact nature of the inquiry hasn’t been revealed, it’s probably an attempt by the Trump regime to determine who leaked the information to the Times.
This morning, though, I want to call your attention to a more blatant violation of the First Amendment: a judge’s demand that a New Jersey newspaper remove school security footage from its YouTube channel and refrain even from writing about it. On Thursday, the judge softened his order slightly but then extended it to all news outlets.
GBH headquarters in Brighton, Mass. Photo (cc) 2011 by Commonist.
There are some new details today on how Boston’s two news-focused public media stations, GBH and WBUR, are faring a year after Donald Trump and the Republican Congress zeroed out all public funding.
Recently I wrote that GBH chief executive Susan Goldberg had sent a memo to her staff touting new levels of fundraising success, including more than 50,000 new donors and members as well as 3% raises for everyone. Now The Boston Globe’s Aidan Ryan expands on that (sub. req.), reporting, among other things, that GBH has begun a new statewide radio show in collaboration with New England Public Media of Massachusetts, with which it recently merged, and with its Cape Cod operation, CAI. (NEPM had technically been part of GBH since 2019.)
The weekly program, “In Common,” debuted on July 4 and will be broadcast on Saturdays at 2 p.m. It’s also available as a podcast, which is a good thing given that time slot.
As Mike Deehan first reported in Axios, GBH will also receive $500,000 in state money during the next fiscal year, which is a first for public media in Massachusetts. The money comes from the millionaires’ tax, which is restricted to education and transportation. Ryan reports that the money will be spent on children’s television programs.
Fundraising and revenue from events are up at WBUR as well, Ryan writes, noting that WBUR and GBH are fundamentally two different types of entities — although both are committed to digital, GBH has a massive television operation in addition to a local radio station, whereas ’BUR is primarily a radio station. It’s in radio that the two operations compete on local news coverage.
Last August I wrote for CommonWealth Beacon on plans Goldberg and WBUR chief executive Margaret Low were making to negotiate the post-federal-funding era. At a webinar sponsored by the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, they said they planned to emphasize trust and community.
That approach seems to be working so far, with the public responding to the harm done by Trump and his legislative lemmings. The question is whether public media outlets across the country can hang on until January 2029, when the political tides may shift in the White House and in one or both branches of Congress.
Fintan O’Toole’s review in The New York Times of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” includes a perfect summation of the fundamental challenge to journalism in the Age of Trump:
The profession is shaped by an assumption that has been around at least since the Greek tragedians: Revelation is followed by reversal. When Oedipus’ (or Richard Nixon’s) crimes are exposed, he must fall from power. But not so Trump. With a few notable exceptions, he relies on a collective shrug of indifference from those in his support system, and defies exposure. What can journalists do in a world where there is no shame and, apparently, no consequence?
It calls to mind then-Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron’s well-known response to a question about whether the Post was at war with Trump. “We’re not at war with the administration, we’re at work,” he replied — a succinct statement of how journalists should approach their coverage.
Bunker Hill Monument. Photo by John S. Moulton, taken between 1860 and 1889, is part of the Boston Public Library Collection.
You could call the Trump regime’s campaign against so-called woke ideology an ongoing effort to muzzle our nation’s history. From the start of his second term, the National Park Service has engaged in a rampage of censorship, targeting historical sites in Philadelphia, Georgia, New York and elsewhere.
Now Trump has come for Boston. On Wednesday, Jake Spring reported in The Washington Post that the park service “has ordered the removal of three quotes” at the Bunker Hill Monument. Thus has the National Park Service earned a New England Muzzle Award. Spring writes:
The site includes panels with quotes from historic figures or writings that reflect on the 200-year-old monument. A visitor at the site complained to park staff about a quote related to women’s suffrage as being “woke” feminist ideology, the people familiar said, and the visitor later sent an email complaint.
The Boston Globe’s Tonya Alanez and Chloe Pisani on Thursday added to (sub. req.) the Post’s reporting, writing that they had confirmed the story with U.S. Sen. Ed Markey’s office. The Globe reported that one of the three quotes to be removed was from an 1846 letter by G.B. Stebbins to The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery newspaper:
As we drew near to Boston, there stood Bunker Monument, towering up towards the heavens, as if in silent, bitter mockery of the millions of slaves guarded by the professed lovers of Liberty, who reared its lofty column.
Another, addressed to “Our Irish Societies,” appeared in The Pilot, the newspaper of Boston’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese, in 1875:
Now that a public orator has declared that foreign-born men have no association with the men of the Revolution, it is our duty to show that in love of freedom and loyalty to the republic, the citizens of foreign birth take no second place.
The third quote that was removed was from a letter to the Globe written in 1971 by two members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
It seems significant that the three quotes pertain to the rights of Black people and immigrants as well as an antiwar message — all at odds with Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant, war-mongering administration.
The government’s officially sanctioned vandalism coincides with another act of vandalism at Boston’s Museum of African American History. Malcolm Gay reports (sub. req.) in the Globe that decorations to be used in Juneteenth celebrations had been set on fire.
Ironically, the investigation is being led by the Boston Police Department — and the National Park Service.
I want to call your attention to a bill in the U.S. House that would severely restrict the books that are available to students in public schools, either in the classroom or in school libraries. I don’t know whether there’s a serious chance of its being enacted into law, but it’s bad news, and it needs to be quashed at the earliest opportunity.
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The proposal, H.R. 7661, is called the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act. It would “prohibit the use of funds provided … to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.” It’s cosponsored by 22 House members, all Republicans.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Photo (cc) 2023 by BruceSchaff.
Donald Trump and his acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, are targeting The Wall Street Journal in an effort to learn the identity of sources who leaked information to its journalists about internal dissent over the war in Iran, according to CNN reporters Hannah Rabinowitz and Kaitlan Collins. Trump himself has reportedly told Blanche that reporters for the Journal and other news organizations committed “treason.” More about that below, but first: How did we get here?
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In October 2022, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland issued guidelines that severely restricted the conditions under which the Justice Department could seek to force journalists to identify anonymous sources or turn over confidential documents.
Garland’s action was intended as a response to the discovery that Justice had secretly obtained phone records of three Washington Post reporters during Trump’s first term. In fact, though, presidents had been pursuing reporters over leaks for years. Journalists were threatened with jail under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Garland’s order reversed actions taken during the early months of Joe Biden’s administration as well.
Despite the Trump regime’s ongoing attempts to dismantle the First Amendment, there are important checks that remain in place. Libel protections against frivolous lawsuits remain strong — as long as news organizations use them rather than caving in to Donald Trump’s threats. Prior restraint is almost unheard of.
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One aspect of press freedom that has been left outside the walls of the First Amendment, though, is a recognition that journalists need to protect their anonymous sources and confidential documents. Forty-nine states, including Massachusetts, provide some protection. But the federal government does not. And one of former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first actions after Trump returned to the White House was to weaken Justice Department guidelines put in place by her predecessor, Merrick Garland, to make it easier for the government to demand access to that information.
The Boston Globe’s Tonya Alanez and Chloe Pisani on Thursday 
