Tag: media

No, State Media And Democracy Don’t Go “Hand In Hand.” Just The Opposite

The press watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or FAIR.org, which I read regularly as a young reporter, weighed in on the NPR debate:

One could look at this threat as part of Trump’s general distrust of major media and desire to seek revenge against outlets he believes have been unfair to him… Going after public broadcasters is also a part of the neo-fascist playbook authoritarian leaders around the world are using to clamp down on dissent and keep the public in the dark, all in the name of protecting the people from partisan reporting. That’s largely because strong public media systems and open democracy go hand in hand.

Titled “Cuts to PBS, NPR Part of Authoritarian Playbook,” the above is either satire or written by someone consciously ignoring the history of state media. Yes, Car Talk and the MacNeil/Lehrer report were cool, but outlets like Neues Deustchland, Télé Zaïre, and Tung Padewat more often went “hand in hand” with fingernail factories or firing squads than democracy. It’s bizarre to see Americans trying to whitewash this.

The office of my first full-time reporting job with the Moscow Times was in the Pravda building. I used to spend lunch hours walking through the doors shown in the photo above, beering up in a cafeteria with writers from the sports section of Komsomolskaya Pravda, at the time the Guinness Book record-holder for world’s largest circulation. With over 21 million readers, “Komsomolka” sure as hell qualified as “strong public media,” but hardly went “hand in hand” with democracy. Like the rest of ex-Soviet media, its owed its circulation to decades of forcing insane lies on readers, like cheery dispatches about the “Doctor’s Plot” purges of 1953.

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From One Fake Left-wing Hysteria to the Next

The decade-old age of fables like Russian collusion, laptop disinformation, or the pangolin/bat cause of COVID is not over; it is just hitting midstream.

For much of April, amid stock downturns, in the classical paranoid style, we were assured by the Wall Street Journal news reporters and the liberal press that Trump had either a) guaranteed an inevitable recession, b) engineered a losing trade war he likely regretted, c) crashed the stock market, d) lost his once majority favorability ratings, e) mostly had a failed first 100 days, or f) all of the above.

Some of us thought these diagnoses and prognoses were absurd. How in mediis rebus, during a radical counterrevolution never quite seen before, could anyone issue such bleak predictions? Would these same observers have said the U.S. was doomed to lose World War II after the bleak first five months of mostly failure in the Pacific, or North Africa, after the utter U.S. army disaster at the Kasserine Pass?

When the Biden administration compiled two consecutive quarters of negative GDP—the supposedly classic definition of a recession—most of these same pundits assured us that the data was meaningless and irrelevant. The same left-wing media throng insisted Biden was in his cognitive prime until hours before he abdicated from the ticket under pressure. They swore to us that Robert Mueller’s “walls were closing in” on Donald Trump, who would legitimately go to jail, buried by 93 lawfare indictments.

As for their polls showing that Trump was all but through after three months in office, almost all of them were not just off in the 2016 presidential race, but again in 2020. And given the chronic temptation to warp polls to create Democratic momentum and fundraising, they rigged their polls yet again in 2024—even when they knew in disgrace that they were ruining their brand. A former Harris campaign official just admitted that internal polls never showed Harris ahead—even as the majority of polls predicted her victory.

So why would anyone believe any of these people? Take the now-defunded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Its recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll assured us that 45 percent of the public gave Trump an F for his first 100 days, with only 42 percent expressing approval of his job so far.

But this is the same bunch that also assured us in its final authoritative 2024 election poll, on the very eve before the voting, that Kamala Harris would win the race by 4 points—a lead proverbially “outside the margin of error.” (The next day, she lost the popular vote by 1.5 percent or 2,284,952 votes and the Electoral College by 312-226). The public broadcasting polling partnership was off 5.5 points, perhaps suggesting that it wished to aid the Harris campaign more than either adhering to professional and ethical norms or fearing to lose what little was left of its reputation.

As soon as the Washington Post and the New York Times issued their dismal Trump bias polls, observers quickly pointed out they had, by intent, vastly underpolled those who voted for Trump in 2024. In contrast, the polls with the best 2024 records had Trump’s 100-day approval ratings near even or positive: Rasmussen was 50-49%, and the joint national surveys by Insider Advantage and Trafalgar Group had Trump up at 100 days, 46-44%.

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Columbia Journalism Review editor fired after insisting on ethics, deadlines: report

The Columbia Journalism Review fired Sewell Chan as its executive editor after he insisted on ethics, deadlines, and showing up in the office for work, the longtime journalist alleges. A journalism expert told The College Fix that it seems Chan acted appropriately and within his bounds as the executive editor.

Chan, who recently started a new job at the University of Southern California as a senior fellow in its Annenberg communications school, alleges the school fired him after “three pointed conversations.”

Chan (pictured) is the former editor of the Texas Tribune and also worked for the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.

“One was with a fellow who is passionately devoted to the cause of the Gaza protests at Columbia and had covered the recent detention of a Palestinian graduate for an online publication he had just written about, positively, for CJR,” Chan wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“I told him there was a significant ethical problem with writing for an outlet he had just covered,” Chan wrote.

This description fits CJR Journalism Fellow Meghnad Bose, who wrote an article about the Substack page Drop Site News for Columbia Journalism Review in February.

In late March, Bose wrote an article for Drop Site about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 8. The article quotes Khalil’s claim that his arrest was a “direct consequence of exercising [his] right to free speech as [he] advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

Bose did not respond to two emails sent in the past week that asked about the accuracy of Chan’s statements on what happened.

While Chan declined to comment further to The Fix, a journalism professor at DePauw University said, “it would seem [Chan] has a good point in trying to reel in the apparent conflict of interest for the one fellow.”

“This kind of management would be expected from an executive editor who values the reputation of his outlet,” Professor Jeffrey McCall told The Fix via email. McCall regularly writes about journalism ethics and the media.

“Normally, an executive editor has wide leeway in making personnel and content decisions, and it appears Chan was perhaps having his role undercut,” McCall said.

“Conflict of interest policies are essential to any media organization in that they protect both the readers and the reporters, and provide transparency for news decisions,” he said.

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Did You Notice What Was Missing From This NYT Piece About This Illegal Alien’s Heinous Crime?

This story is almost unbelievable. If you haven’t heard it, it’s likely due to the liberal media either ignoring the story or sanitizing it to the point where most would gloss over it. In New York City, an illegal alien was busted for raping a corpse on the subway. I’m not kidding. But, of course, the publication didn’t say the man was her illegally. He’s a ‘Brooklyn man’ in this warped narrative. Trump officials were quick to point out that a key fact was omitted from the piece (via NYT):

A Brooklyn man was arrested on Monday [April 28] after the police said he violated a corpse on an R train in a Manhattan subway station earlier this month. 

The man, whom police identified as Felix Rojas, 44, was charged with first-degree rape, more than two weeks after the event. He is expected to be arraigned later on Monday, according to a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer. 

A law enforcement official familiar with the case said a man, later identified by police as Mr. Rojas, entered an R train while it was at the Whitehall Street-South Ferry station in the financial district around 11 p.m. on April 9 and was on the train for about 45 minutes before noticing the unconscious man in the car. 

The man who died had boarded the train earlier that evening at about 8 p.m., the official said. A spokeswoman for the Police Department said Monday that he had died of natural causes. 

After seeing the man’s immobile body, Mr. Rojas rummaged through the dead man’s pockets and had sex with the body, according to an internal police document. Then, they said, he fled the train. 

The entire episode was caught on surveillance cameras in the car. There were no other passengers on board at the time. 

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60 Minutes prepares to drop bombshell Trump report despite lawsuit threat

CBS is planning to drop a bombshell report on Donald Trump despite the ongoing $20 billion lawsuit leveled against the network by the president. 

The broadcaster has said it will be running a segment on Sunday titled ‘The Rule of the Law’, which scrutinizes Trump’s executive orders against law firms. 

‘On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to wield the power of the presidency to go after his perceived enemies,’ the program description reads. 

‘Now in the White House, Trump is using executive orders to target some of the biggest law firms in the country that he accuses of “weaponizing” the justice system against him.’ 

Taking aim at CBS and its parent company, Paramount Global, Trump’s lawsuit accuses producers of editing an October interview with Harris to sway public opinion in her favor. 

The broadcast channel is also facing a probe by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into whether the interview violated ‘news distortion’ rules.

Complainants said the station broke the law by cherry picking only a portion of Harris’ answer to a question about Middle East policy to present her in a favorable light. 

Sunday’s 60 Minutes segment will be hosted by veteran reporter Scott Pelley, who shocked viewers last month when he issued a blistering criticism of his own corporate bosses live on air. 

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Want To Know The Truth Behind Those Anti-Trump Polls?

You’ve no doubt heard the media narrative about President Trump’s poll numbers according to most pollsters—you know, the ones who got the 2024 election so wrong,

Make no mistake about it — the legacy media is at it again with their dishonest polling tactics against President Trump. But this time, their deceptive game has been called out by none other than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Appearing on Hannity Thursday night, Gingrich exposed how the media’s recent polling showing Trump’s approval dropping is nothing but smoke and mirrors. The reality? These polls are deliberately skewed to paint a false narrative about Trump’s standing with the American people.

Let’s look at the facts. The same media outlets that got it wrong in 2024—ABC News, CBS News, and CNN—are now pushing polls that show Trump’s approval is declining from his February high of 53%. 

But are they really?

“I got a little preview about poll numbers that are coming out tomorrow, and from both Robert Cahaly and Matt Towery, who I respect a lot,” Hannity said. “And as I suspected, all of the polls that the media has been pushing on the American people about Donald Trump are false, and that’s what the early indications are.”

He pointed out the absurdity of the numbers being hyped by the media, especially when far-left figures such as Chuck Schumer were polling in the teens. “All the pollsters that got the election in ‘24 wrong and got every election about Donald Trump wrong—all of those people—the ones saying, ‘Oh, he’s plummeting.’ But meanwhile, they’re ignoring Chuck is at 17% and the Democrats are in the 20s. I’m trying to understand that logic. Can you help me out?”

Gingrich didn’t mince words.

“Well, I mean, first of all, they’re just plain lying,” Gingrich replied. “And I think we’ve got to be tougher and clearer about how dishonest these people are.”

He cited conversations with veteran GOP pollsters, pointing to the way poll samples are rigged to undercount Republicans. “The fact is, and I talked to John McLaughlin and I talked to Matt Towery about this, they have some polls there that are like 27% Republican when Trump got 50% of the vote. So if you add the 23 points they didn’t test, suddenly he’s in great shape. This is deliberate. It is willful.”

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No, Trump Did Not Just Bring Back Segregation to Schools

Once again, the mainstream media is distorting the facts. Following the Justice Department’s recent dismissal of a decades-old desegregation case in Louisiana, critics rushed to frame the action as a rollback of civil rights or, worse, a return to racial segregation in schools. But the facts do not support this narrative.

In 1966, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to desegregate schools in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. The resulting federal consent decree mandated the dismantling of the district’s racially segregated school system.

By 1975, the court found the district had achieved integration. However, the case remained open for decades due to administrative oversight, including the death of the presiding judge, and no formal court action was ever taken to close it.

In April 2025, as part of a broader review of dormant cases, the DOJ under the Trump administration formally moved to dismiss the order.

According to a joint filing with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, there had been “zero action by the court, the parties or any third-party” in nearly 50 years.

The DOJ’s official press release, titled “Justice Department Dismisses Half Century Old Louisiana Consent Decree,” stated: “No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon.

For the school district, remaining under the outdated court order meant compiling and submitting annual data to the DOJ on hiring practices, student discipline, and demographics. It imposed a bureaucratic burden on a small district with fewer than 4,000 students.

Local officials described the process as time-consuming and unnecessary, diverting limited staff and resources from more pressing educational needs.

For the DOJ, maintaining the inactive case consumed time and attention that could be better directed toward active civil rights enforcement.

Despite these facts, critics quickly claimed the dismissal would lead to “resegregation.”

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Judge Orders Trump Admin To Disburse $12 Million In Funding To Radio Free Europe

A federal judge ruled on April 29 that the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) must disburse the funding appropriated by Congress to the nonprofit news organization Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a temporary restraining order sought by the media group, directing USAGM to immediately disburse over $12 million in funding for the month of April to Radio Free Europe.

Lamberth said the plaintiff had shown it would suffer irreparable harm absent a restraining order, noting that USAGM’s actions to terminate the grants agreement “threaten the very existence” of the group.

The judge also stated that Radio Free Europe is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that USAGM had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by terminating the grants agreement.

Lamberth said the Trump administration must seek congressional approval to take such action, noting that it “has no residual constitutional power to refuse” to spend appropriations by Congress.

“It is, after all, Congress that makes the laws in this country. In this case, for example, it was Congress who ordained that the monies at issue should be allocated to RFE/RL,” Lamberth stated, referring to the acronym for Radio Free Europe.

The judge also determined that USAGM’s decision to change the grant agreement after the start of the fiscal year was “arbitrary and capricious.”

According to the court order, USAGM presented “a radically different grant agreement” in mid-April, leaving little time for a meaningful negotiation as Radio Free Europe was running out of funding.

“If our nation is to thrive for another 250 years, each co-equal branch of government must be willing to courageously exert the authority entrusted to it by our Founders,” Lamberth stated.

USAGM moved to terminate Radio Free Europe’s grant agreement following President Donald Trump’s order directing officials to eliminate non-statutory components of the agency. USAGM has an annual budget of around $900 million and operates networks broadcasting in more than 60 languages and around 100 countries.

The cutbacks affect the organizations and agencies under its umbrella, including Voice of America (VOA); the Office of Cuba Broadcasting; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other organizations such as Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

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Fake News Has No Shame: “60 Minutes” Picks Up 13 Emmy Nominations Including Segment Where They Selectively Edited and Spliced their Kamala Harris Interview before Election

Fomer CNN star Brian Stelter announced Thursday on X that “60 Minutes” picked up 13 Emmy nominations this year for their junk reporting.

The Emmy’s even nominated the infamous Kamala Harris interview they selectively edited and spliced sentences together to make her sound like a normal human. It as quite a piece of work.

It was completely fake. But that didn’t stop the Emmy’s from nominating their fake news segment in the television news and documentary category.

In the runup to the 2024 election, Fake news 60 Minutes was caught editing Kamala’s answers to make her sound coherent and normal.

it was so bad that ’60 Minutes’ spliced her nonsensical answer and replaced it with a completely separate sentence she said earlier in the interview.

Mixing and matching questions and answers. This isn’t journalism. It’s fraud.

Here is a sampling of the fake news they pushed on Americans.

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Trump terminates NPR, PBS federal funding with sweeping executive order

President Trump signed an executive order late Thursday terminating federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

NPR and PBS, which have long been targeted for cuts by conservatives, both receive partial funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which the president argued is unnecessary in the current media environment.

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump wrote in the order.

“The CPB Board shall cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage,” he added. “The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

Trump further directed the CPB to end indirect funding to NPR and PBS, including by “ensuring that licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds, do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.” 

The president gave the CPB until June 30 to effectuate his directive. 

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