Tag: mainstream media

Does Reporting Bad News About the Iran War Make You a Foreign Agent?

The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to censor bad news about the Iran war. President Donald Trump even accused journalists of treason during the war. Now the administration has found a specific (if extremely tenuous) legal justification for his claims: the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

After The Bulwark journalist Tim Miller shared someone else’s paraphrase of an Iranian TV news report about the ceasefire negotiations, the official White House Rapid Response account on X commented that Miller is “starting to take Iranian state media as fact and peddle disinformation on their behalf. Maybe Tim should register under FARA for being an agent of a foreign country.”

On its face, Miller’s criticism falls far outside of FARA. All he did was comment on a public report. But it wouldn’t be the first time the federal government tried to weaponize FARA against domestic critics.

Passed in 1938 to root out Nazi agents, the law requires anyone conducting political activities “at the order, request, or under the direction or control” of a foreign power to register publicly or face jail time or fines.

In 1951, the Department of Justice tried to prosecute civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois under FARA for republishing an international communist-led petition against nuclear weapons. A judge threw out the case after prosecutors failed to present evidence of any concrete Soviet ties. Since then, the government has mostly used FARA to prosecute foreign spies short of the Espionage Act, to add another layer of red tape to foreign lobbying, and to throw the book at corruption schemes involving foreigners.

Still, the law is “strikingly sweeping, capturing much other conduct that most people would not think should be registrable,” according to a 2022 article in Just Security, which recommended narrowing the foreign-agent law to avoid abuse. The Department of Justice once required an American church to register as a foreign agent for bringing foreign congregants to the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. Until 2024, the department also considered paid tourism promoters foreign agents.

The first Trump administration pushed Russian, Chinese, and Qatari news outlets to register as foreign agents. The nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists accused the Department of Justice of using FARA as a political cudgel and undermining freedom of the press.

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The mainstream media is ignoring Israel’s role in the killing of journalist Amal Khalil

Amal Khalil was a brave Lebanese reporter who for the past two decades has reported from the often dangerous southern part of her country for the Al-Akhbar daily newspaper. On April 22, while doing her job, she died in agony — and there is compelling evidence that the Israeli military murdered her. She was 43 years old.

But once again, the mainstream U.S. media is guilty of sickening malpractice. Journalists are supposed to make special efforts to follow the story when their colleagues are killed in action, but the leading American cable news networks, so far, have mostly not reported her death at all. On MS NOW, the more progressive outlet, nothing on air. Ditto for CNN, (although the network’s “CNN International” subdivision did air a 2:16 report — which most American subscribers will have missed). Neither did the major legacy TV networks cover the story: nothing on ABC, NBC, or CBS.

(There was one honorable exception, on the PBS News Hour. Geoff Bennett raised the killing of Amal Khalil in an interview with Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, and pressed Danon hard.)

Here’s what actually happened. Back in 2024, Amal Khalil had already received death threats from an Israeli media commentator with close ties to the military, who warned her to leave southern Lebanon. On April 22, 2026 she was reporting near the village of al-Tiri when an Israeli air strike hit the vehicle in front of her. As usual, she had been wearing protective equipment that clearly identified her as a journalist. She and a fellow reporter took refuge in a nearby home. That reporter, Zeinab Faraj, told the Associated Press “Amal was crawling, she was wounded — her nose and head and shoulder and leg.” Both women were able to speak by phone to family and other colleagues. 

Then, a second Israeli air strike hit their refuge. Rescue workers got to her colleague, but the Union of Journalists in Lebanon charges that Israeli forces used stun grenades to prevent further efforts to free Amal. She continued to lay in that rubble for hours, surely in pain. Six hours later, the rescuers finally got through. But she had already died.

Back to the mainstream U.S. media. Unlike television news, newspapers did not entirely ignore the killing of Amal Khalil, but their coverage was mostly minimal, with — so far — little or no follow-up. One New York Times report especially stood out for its grotesque contortions to try and hide the compelling evidence that the Israeli military had prevented her rescuers from saving her. 

The sub-headline to Max Bearak’s April 23 report telegraphed the paper’s concealment strategy. “Mourners paid respects to Amal Khalil, who remained trapped under rubble for hours before emergency medics recovered her body.” You had to read all the way down to the 7th paragraph to learn who had actually “trapped” her, and was stopping those “emergency medics.” And, astonishingly, here was the explanatory sentence: “The Israeli military denied in a statement that it had prevented rescuers from reaching the injured journalists, and said the incident was under investigation.”

This is quite extraordinary. The New York Times is reporting Israel’s denial before it even bothers to tell you what the charge is. 

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Mediaite Founding Editor Colby Hall Out After Suspension for ‘Fabricated Quotes’

Colby Hall, the founding editor of the far-left media site Mediaite, is out after a 30-day suspension for, among other things, fabricating quotes.

In the middle of last month, Mediaite’s editor-in-chief Joe DePaolo announced Hall’s suspension.

“We presented the findings to Colby Hall, who insists the errors were purely a result of sloppiness in how he aggregated and categorized information, not from the use of AI,” DePaolo wrote. “Regardless, it is completely unacceptable, and Colby has been suspended from Mediaite pending further investigation.”

What was fascinating is that Hall was exposed by his ideological counterparts in the far-left media. From my earlier report:

On Monday, the far-left media outlet Status told Semafor that One Sheet “appeared to outright fabricate a quote and attribute it to our very own Jon Passantino, putting us on heavy blast on its website and newsletter for something we never did.”

Semafor further reports that since its launch, One Sheet has serially misattributed quotes to the wrong people and outlets, including CNN, Fox News, Status, and Politico. In other words, those dumb enough to pay for One Sheet were misinformed about who said what. Hell, I can’t imagine anyone dumb enough to read Mediaite for free.

Semafor summed it up as a “series of mishaps… including misattributed information and made-up quotes.”

Apparently,  DePaolo’s “further investigation” didn’t come out too well for Hall because Hall has announced he’s out at Mediaite to spend more time with his Substack.

“After 15 years as Founding Editor of Mediaite, I’m stepping away from the site I helped launch, and that has been my obsession for well over a decade,” he announced last week. “The decision follows the editorial errors in the One Sheet newsletter that surfaced in April. I addressed those mistakes on the record at the time, and I stand by what I said then.”

He then spun the 30-day suspension as a plus. “What I didn’t expect, when the suspension started in April, was that the past month would turn out to be one of the most clarifying experiences of my professional life,” he said. “It also gave my brain a chance to do something it hadn’t done in a long while: rest.”

He does admit that the suspension was “about as dark as anything I’ve gone through professionally.” But it was still good because he realized “I’d been running on fumes for longer than I wanted to admit, and that some of what I thought was professional rigor was actually just exhaustion dressed up as urgency.” Whatever that means.

We all make mistakes, and out of humility and even self-preservation, we need to show some grace when others make those mistakes. Making up quotes doesn’t sound like a mistake. You can accidentally plagiarize by not indenting a paragraph. I’ve done that. You can accidentally misattribute a quote. I’ve done that. The thing, though, is that after you make those errors, you know you’re prone to making those errors, so you’re extra careful about double-checking. Fabricating quotes, though?

Now, Hall says, he plans to do some consulting and disappear into that massive pile of Substack with the rest of the disgraced, like Jim Acosta and Taylor Lorenz and Ryan Lizza and Terry Moran…

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Germany Moves to Control Social Media: ‘Trusted’ News Sources To Be Algorithmically Boosted By Law

Germany is moving toward what critics are calling a sweeping new form of state influence over online speech, after plans surfaced to force social media platforms to prioritize content from government-approved outlets—raising serious concerns about censorship, narrative control, and the future of free expression in Europe.

According to documents obtained by Apollo News, regulators are preparing a system that would require platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to give preferential treatment to content from so-called “reliable” media.

What makes the proposal particularly controversial is not just the intent, but the mechanism. For the first time, state-linked authorities would directly shape the algorithms that determine what information citizens see—effectively inserting government priorities into the digital public square.

At the center of the plan is the concept of “public value” media. In theory, these are outlets that provide socially beneficial information, but in practice, critics argue, they are media organizations vetted and approved by the same political system they are meant to scrutinize.

That distinction is crucial. The power to define what is “reliable” would rest with regulatory bodies tied to the state, not with citizens, readers, or independent market forces.

Once granted this status, approved outlets would receive algorithmic advantages. Their content would be pushed higher in feeds, made easier to discover, and given preferential visibility over competing voices.

The proposal does not stop there. Individual articles and videos could also be labeled as “public value,” creating a two-tier information system where some content is actively promoted while other viewpoints are quietly deprioritized.

Platforms would then be required to adjust their recommendation systems accordingly. In some cases, regulators are even discussing quotas to guarantee exposure for approved content, effectively turning private platforms into vehicles for state-guided messaging.

For many critics, this crosses a fundamental line. It transforms social media from an open marketplace of ideas into a managed information ecosystem shaped by political authorities.

Supporters of the initiative claim it is necessary to combat “disinformation” and preserve democratic discourse.

But that justification is precisely what alarms opponents. They argue that “fighting disinformation” has increasingly become a catch-all rationale for restricting dissent and controlling narratives.

“This is not about removing illegal content,” one observer noted. “This is about deciding which legal speech deserves to be seen—and which does not.”

Critics describe the system as a form of “soft censorship.” Instead of banning opposing views outright, it ensures they are drowned out by state-preferred content.
“It is reverse censorship,” analysts warn. “You don’t delete the message—you just make sure nobody sees it.”

The consequences for independent and alternative media could be severe. Outlets that challenge government policy or question mainstream narratives may find their reach quietly throttled, without any formal accusation or legal recourse.

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Don Lemon Discovers Rules After a Church Service Gets Disrupted

“Independent journalist” and former CNN anchor Don Lemon filed a motion today in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis seeking the release of grand jury transcripts in the federal civil rights case against him. From the AP:

Lemon pleaded not guilty in February to federal civil rights charges, following a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor. He is one of 39 people charged in the January incident.

Lemon insists he was at the Cities Church in St. Paul to chronicle the Jan. 18 protest but was not a participant.

Lemon and another independent journalist, Georgia Fort, filed a motion in February seeking transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that resulted in the indictments against them and seven others.

In the latest filing in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Lemon’s attorneys argue that “the past 15 months have seen an unprecedented and growing distrust in the Justice Department’s use of the grand jury process.” For that reason, the transcripts from Lemon’s grand jury should be released, his attorneys said.

“In the past two weeks alone, several courts have chastised Justice Department prosecutors for irregularities in the grand jury process and gone so far as to dismiss indictments for grand jury misconduct,” Lemon’s attorneys said in the Wednesday filing.

Lemon and journalist Georgia Fort face charges tied to a Jan. 18 protest that disrupted worship at Cities Church in St. Paul. Prosecutors charged 39 defendants in the case, while Lemon insists he attended the protest to document events as a journalist, not to join the disruption.

The case centers on a protest at a house of worship connected to David Easterwood, a Cities Church pastor who also serves as acting director of the ICE field office in St. Paul.

Protesters entered during Sunday worship, chanted, confronted people inside, and turned a sacred space into a political theater.

Lemon’s defenders want the country to see only a journalist with a camera. Worshippers had reason to see something else: a service interrupted, a congregation targeted, and a church treated like fair game because activists disliked the pastor’s government job.

Lemon is now arguing that recent grand jury problems in other federal cases make the transcripts necessary, with his attorneys pointing to dismissals and judicial rebukes in Chicago, Wyoming, and Rhode Island. 

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Fox News Issues Explanation After Guest Goes Mega-Viral for Allegedly Wearing a ‘Creepy Full-Face Mask’

Fox News has issued a statement after one of its guests went viral for supposedly wearing a “creepy full-face mask” during his appearance on the network.

As The Gateway Pundit’s Cassandra MacDonald reported, social media users erupted on Thursday night after a Fox News segment featuring retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward went viral because he appeared to be wearing a “creepy full-face mask.”

Harward is a retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral and decorated Navy SEAL. He has served as Deputy Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), led special operations across multiple theaters, and is fluent in Farsi, having lived in Tehran as a teenager.

The topic of the interview was President Donald Trump’s hardline approach to Iran, including crushing sanctions, potential military options, control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the strategy of forcing the regime to capitulate without another nuclear deal.

Harward told viewers that Trump “has time on his hands” and can deliver a decisive strike. He stressed the importance of sustained economic pressure and naval strength over rushed negotiations.

But the clip did not go viral for what he was saying. Instead, social media was captivated by Harward’s neck, which had a dark line or what appeared to be a “separation” below the jawline and at the collar.

Immediately, people began insisting it was the edge of a hyper-realistic silicone full-face mask.

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Reuters Peddles Fake News After Defense Contractor Misuses Civilian Starlink Terminals

Reuters dropped another misleading article today – this time attempting to manufacture drama between the Pentagon and SpaceX over Starlink usage during the Iran conflict.

The story framed routine commercial contract discussions and terms-of-service enforcement as major “tensions” and growing Pentagon reliance giving Elon Musk undue leverage.

Reuters’ version of events was that SpaceX used wartime urgency to raise the price of Starlink connections on U.S. drones from roughly $5,000 to $25,000 per terminal, forcing the Pentagon to pay up while exposing how dependent the military has become on Musk-controlled infrastructure.

The reality, according to Musk, is that the dispute centered on a more basic issue: a drone manufacturer or contractor allegedly used civilian Starlink terminals on military weapon systems, including drones, in violation of Starlink’s commercial terms of service, when the proper government and defense product is Starshield. In other words, Reuters framed the episode as a price-gouging and leverage story, while SpaceX and the Pentagon framed it as a contract-compliance story involving the misuse of civilian satellite service for weapons applications.

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MSNOW Appalled After Republican Senate Candidate Says “It’s Not A Sin To Be White” In Anti-DEI Campaign Ad 

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MSNOW had a full meltdown after Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rep. Andy Barr released a campaign ad attacking DEI and declaring, “It’s not a sin to be white.”

Barr, who recently won the Republican nomination for Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race, is running to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell. He will face Democrat Charles Booker in November, setting up a major general election fight in a state Republicans have dominated in federal races for years.

The controversy began with Barr’s campaign ad, where he blasted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as “dumb, evil indoctrination.”

“You know what DEI really stands for? Dumb, evil indoctrination. Woke liberals spew it. Corporate losers fall for it. But thanks to Trump, America is rejecting that trash. And I’m leading the fight to end it for good,” Barr said in the ad.

Then came the line that sent the left into hysteria.

“It’s not a sin to be white. It’s not against the law to be male. And it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be a Christian,” Barr said. “I’m Andy Barr, and I approve this message to give woke liberals something else to cry about.”

Apparently, that was enough to leave MSNOW stunned.

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The FCC Is Asking the Public to Weigh in on Whether ‘The View’ Is ‘Bona Fide News’ After Disney Files Petition

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is asking the public to weigh in on whether ABC’s “The View” truly qualifies as a news program, and therefore not subject to broadcast laws requiring it to provide access to differing political views.

Of course, anyone who watches the program at all knows its political views range from left to hard left.

Carr posted on social media on Friday, “Disney has filed a petition with the FCC asking the agency to declare that The View is exempt from the statutory equal opportunities requirements that would otherwise apply to broadcast shows.”

ABC is part of the Disney Corporation.

“Disney argues that The View qualifies as ‘bona fide news’ under the law, comparing itself to Meet The Press or Face The Nation,” he added. “Therefore, Disney argues, it can have one partisan candidate for office on The View while denying equal opportunities to all others.”

Carr noted that the FCC is now seeking public comment on the matter online. “Is The View a ‘bona fide news interview program’?” he asked.

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Daily Mail lies: Oct 7 victim saved from rape by non-existent Muslim prohibition on violating scarred women

The latest Oct. 7 rape hoax propaganda piece from The Daily insists that the only reason a woman at the Nova music festival wasn’t raped by Hamas members is that she had a scar – and falsely claims that “scars have a spiritual significance in the eyes of the terrorists.”

In one of its most brazen disinformation efforts in years, the British tabloid The Daily Mail has published a fake news story claiming that an Israeli woman who was permitted to leave by Hamas militants only avoided being sexually assaulted by showing her captors her scar.

According to the woman in question, May Hayat, she had been taken prisoner by “terrorists” at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when she began to detect “an energy and look in their eyes that every woman knows what’s going to happen next.”

However, she insists the men declined to rape her because Muslims subscribe to a belief system under which “a scar like [hers] means a strong woman,” and “if something happened to her because of them, the 72 virgins they are promised will not come looking for them in heaven.”

This claim contradicts all known Islamic jurisprudence, including the mainstream Sunni doctrine espoused by Hamas – which forbids fighters (and men more generally) from carrying out sexual violence against women, and which does not in any way single out women with scars for special treatment.

But The Daily Mail article, entitled “October 7 survivor reveals how a childhood scar saved her from Hamas terrorists,” fully endorses Hayat’s extraordinarily suspicious claim. Hayat, the outlet states credulously, was later “told that such scars have a spiritual significance in the eyes of the terrorists.”

Hayat’s story, in which she now claims she narrowly avoided being raped, has changed significantly over the years. One month after the attack, Hayat alleged that she escaped her supposed Hamas captors, telling Reuters: “I could see how they were fighting over whether to kill me or not, and I ran away.”

Now, however, The Daily Mail writes that Hayat was actually freed when “the leader” of a Hamas cell acknowledged her scar, and “shook his head at his fellow terrorist before telling May she was free to go.”

It’s not The Daily Mail’s first attempt to launder Israeli rape hoax propaganda. In June 2024, The Grayzone revealed that what the tabloid billed as an “exclusive” story confirming Palestinians raped Israeli women on October 7 actually consisted of coerced confessions which were so full of contradictions about nonexistent victims that they are all but guaranteed to be false.

The author of that debunked report, Natalie Lisbona, has been photographed smiling with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for his involvement in war crimes in Gaza.

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