Media

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Crass, flashy, outrageous: Trump media blitz redefines meaning of presidential

      by

      There was a disturbance in the Force. Donald Trump celebrated “Star Wars Day” this week with an AI-generated image of himself as a muscle-bound warrior holding a red lightsaber in front of two US flags and eagles.It seemed like a bit of fun but appeared on the White House’s official X account with a dark political message: “Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. You’re not the Rebellion – you’re the Empire. May the 4th be with you.”Star Wars nerds were quick to point out that a red lightsaber implies that Trump has embraced the Dark Side. Actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, wrote on social media: “Proof this guy is full of SITH.” But the joking-not-joking post was also indicative of a wider trend: a revolution in the way the White House communicates with the American public.Over the past three-and-a-half months, the US president and his team have launched a relentless media offensive based on crass language, flashy tactics, shock-value videos and social media memes and posts that are outrageous by design. They have used platforms and personalities to bypass traditional outlets and directly engage the Maga (Make America great again) base. They have found new ways to drown out critics, goad opponents and antagonise the world.The embrace of viral far-right culture has nurtured a parallel information ecosystem through pro-Trump outlets enjoying a significant growth in influence, access to power and financial investment. It is helping the president dominate the “attention economy” and reshape narratives around the economy, immigration and other policy issues. But it also alarms critics who warn that insults and lies are going unchecked.Tara Setmayer, a political commentator and former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump has always understood mass communication and the power of propaganda and his rise and success politically will go down in history as one of the most successful propaganda operations ever. He has completely upended any semblance of decency, of class, of gravitas when it comes to presidential communications.“It’s literally turning presidential methods of communication into the WWE – the imagery, the immaturity, the outrageousness. All of those things seem to be more important than truth or respect for the office and what it means to use the power of the bully pulpit to speak to the American people and the world.”Presidential communications have come a long way. Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential press conference in 1913. Franklin Roosevelt pioneered radio with his informal “fireside chats” during the Great Depression and the second world war, articulating policies such as the New Deal directly to citizens.View image in fullscreenJohn F Kennedy leveraged TV for live addresses – for example, during the Cuban missile crisis. Ronald Reagan, a former actor, relished televised addresses, earning the nickname “the great communicator”. Barack Obama was the first president to use platforms such as YouTube and Twitter extensively, hosting online town halls and bypassing old media.Over the past decade, Trump has combined the old with the new, holding traditional in-person rallies while also being prolific on Twitter during his first term – a single all-caps tweet could dominate headlines, move financial markets or upend global diplomacy – and now his own Truth Social platform.But only since returning to office has he turned the White House into a quasi-content provider in its own right, continuing the aggressive media strategy honed during his winning election campaign to achieve what his communications director, Steven Cheung, has called “full-spectrum dominance”.In January, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, posted a photo of men in chains boarding a plane and wrote: “Deportation flights have begun.” In February, the White House posted on X a Valentine’s Day card with the faces of Trump and “border czar” Tom Homan with the caption: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.”It also posted a video of shackled immigrants being loaded on to planes, with the sounds of clanking chains and whirring jet engines in the background. The caption said “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight”. In March, on the day of Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, the White House’s rapid-response account posted more than 200 times to X, promoting clips and favourable reactions.Trump has spent his career living by the rule that, when he takes a hit, he hits back harder. That philosophy now infuses the White House. When the actor Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video in which she cried about the deportation of children, it quickly produced video interviews with the mothers of children killed by undocumented immigrants.When Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland man with protected legal status, was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Leavitt said “outrage” about the case by Democrats and the media “has been nothing short of despicable”. Dozens of posters of arrested undocumented immigrants were placed along the White House driveway, ensuring they would appear in the live shots of TV journalists.View image in fullscreenSome content is downright bizarre. The White House shared a photo of a fake Time magazine cover with Trump in a golden crown and the caption, “LONG LIVE THE KING”. Another post contained an AI-generated video that showed the Gaza Strip transformed into a luxurious, gilded resort called “Trump Gaza”. And earlier this month, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself dressed as the pope as the mourning of Pope Francis continued.Setmayer, who now runs the Seneca Project political action committee, commented: “It’s so outrageous that it would be comical if it weren’t so serious. There’s nothing funny or comical about insulting one of the world’s largest religions and putting yourself in that role. It’s blasphemous. But it’s also a window into how Donald Trump views himself: this is part of that malignant narcissism.“He is so desperate for adulation and attention and being all-powerful that he would project himself in a cartoon-like rendering of positions of power using the White House platform to push it. This is something a maladjusted 12-year-old does. Not the most powerful man in the world.”The Trump White House has a symbiotic relationship with a new wave of podcasters, X users and YouTubers who enjoy access to the briefing room and presidential press pool, often asking Trump conspicuously sycophantic questions. Employees of outlets such as the National Pulse and the Daily Wire have been invited on foreign trips with cabinet officials. The exposure is leading to bigger advertising deals and distribution contracts.No one embodies the new era of White House communications better than Leavitt, who at 27 is the youngest-ever press secretary and probably the most zealously on-message. She has shown an uncanny ability to channel Trump’s political psyche, his relish for disparaging the so-called legacy media and his willingness to play fast and loose with facts.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “She’s approaching it in a very different way than others have done. She is forthrightly being a person who communicates the message of the White House rather than responds to the questions of the press. You can query whether that’s the job she ought to be doing but she is doing it in an outstanding way.View image in fullscreen“She is mature beyond her years. She’s articulate. She both can deliver the message and respond in an interactive way, which is something that some press secretaries have difficulty with. If the job of the press secretary is to send the message of the administration on a regular basis in person, she is knocking the ball out of the park.”But Mike McCurry, who was White House press secretary under Bill Clinton, is among those who query whether that is what the job is about. He said: “She seems to be in nonstop belligerent mode and showing disdain for the reporters in the room. It’s nothing but a propaganda show. She’s not doing the job as it’s traditionally been defined. She’s got a whole different role in the Trump cosmos.”Leavitt presents a weekly “Maga Minute” roundup video on TikTok, YouTube and other platforms. Last week also saw the launch of White House Wire, a news-style website that publishes exclusively positive coverage. Its format closely resembles the Drudge Report, the rightwing site founded in the 1990s that broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal.When he was working for Clinton, McCurry initially tried to dismiss questions about Lewinsky by retorting: “Are you really going to ask a question based on something in the Drudge Report?” He acknowledges that today’s White House is operating in a very different media environment – but argues that is no excuse for its lack of accountability.McCurry said: “The concept is if you keep throwing stuff up against the wall all the time, the press tries to chase everything down and they get befuddled a little bit because they don’t have a way of focusing back on things that might truly matter in the world.“It’s a strategy to try to overwhelm all of the legitimate sources of discourse and just keep changing the tune every day to match whatever it is that you want to try to get done. It’s either completely malevolent or completely brilliant. It’s hard to know which.” More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks

      by

      The lead plaintiff in a lawsuit fighting Donald Trump’s order to dismantle Voice of America has said the media has to resist as the administration becomes increasingly aggressive against the press.“I never in a million years thought I would have to fight for freedom of the press in the United States of America. And yet here we are,” says Patsy Widakuswara, the White House bureau chief for the broadcasting network. “As journalism is under attack, it feels empowering to fight back. We need more people to resist and fight back.”Kicked out of press conferences on multiple continents for asking pointed questions, Widakuswara is not the type to balk at challenging powerful leaders. In her three decades as a journalist those instincts have served her well, and perhaps at no better time than now.The White House reporter is now leading the charge to save VOA, which the US president has described as “anti-Trump” and “radical”. In March, Trump signed an executive order that effectively cut off its funding via its parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).Launched in 1942, initially to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA is a federally funded international broadcasting network, produced in dozens of languages that reach about 350 million people around the globe.View image in fullscreenFor decades it has been seen as a form of soft power, encapsulating the values of liberal America. But after Trump’s order its operations have been suspended, with virtually all of VOA’s staff of 1,300 placed on immediate administrative leave and about 600 contractors terminated.The lawsuit filed by Widakuswara and several of her colleagues follows lawsuits the Trump administration has taken out against ABC News and CBS’s 60 Minutes in the US, and attempts to expel some press from the White House. Those backing the case argue that VOA has for decades provided an important source of objective information, especially in illiberal environments.“These are not just women in Afghanistan or farmers in Africa,” said Widakuswara of VOA’s audience. “They’re also activists in Russia and decision makers all around the world who are also facing the onslaught of disinformation and propaganda from Russia, Iran, China, and extremist organisations like [Islamic State] and al-Qaida.”At home having a quiet Saturday when she received the email about VOA’s demise, Widakuswara says to do nothing was inconceivable. In a matter of days she had rallied a team to fight against it, and by Friday morning had filed a lawsuit.“It’s just the way I’m wired,” she says over the phone from Washington. “Congress gave us a mandate to tell America’s story to the world through factual, balanced and comprehensive reporting. If they want to change the size, structure or function of VOA, they can’t just shut us down. They must go through Congress. That’s the law.”View image in fullscreen‘Holding autocratic governments to account’Starting her career in Jakarta in the late 90s, just as Indonesia’s decades-long dictator Suharto was being toppled, the Indonesian-born journalist has seen first-hand the impacts of authoritarian regimes.Widakuswara worked at a campus radio station, and later as a fixer for foreign journalists when they flooded in to cover the event, as mass student protests inundated the parliament building and forced Suharto to step down.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That was my first taste in media,” she says. “Holding autocratic governments to account.”The experience led to a career in television, and a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship to obtain her master’s in journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. After stints at the BBC and Channel 4, she was named VOA’s White House bureau chief in 2021.Now, she finds herself pushing against fascistic tendencies in her adopted home. “I grew up in 80s Indonesia where there was no press freedom and newspapers had to be careful what they printed to avoid government closure,” she says. “Could the US backslide that far? Not if enough people resist, and that’s why I’m fighting back.”Her lawsuit, backed by Reporters Without Borders and four unions, argues the Trump administration, through the actions of the defendants, USAGM, and the government’s special adviser Kari Lake, are attempting to unlawfully dismantle VOA’s operations because they deem it contrary to the government’s agenda.Widakuswara argues that Trump’s executive order is a violation of press freedom, the first amendment, and laws to prevent executive overreach, with VOA funding approved by Congress, not the president.Another motivating factor is to support her 47 colleagues at VOA on J-1 or journalist visas in the US, who could be sent back to countries such as Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and Myanmar which have previously jailed journalists.Widakuswara’s efforts to save VOA appeared to score an early win, with a judge in April ordering the Trump administration to restore funding to VOA and other US-funded media. But the preliminary injunction was only a temporary measure.On Saturday, just as VOA staff were preparing for a “phased return” to work, a court of appeals issued a stay on that ruling, saying the court did not have the authority to block Trump’s executive order regarding employment matters.Keenly aware of the unfavourable political climate she is up against, Widakuswara says it is hard to know if their case will ultimately prevail, but the only choice is to try. “Even if it’s just like a 5% chance or even a 1% chance, that’s better than a 0% chance, which is what happens if we do nothing.” More

    • 188 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      NPR and PBS push back against Trump’s order to cut funding: ‘This could be devastating’

      by

      The heads of embattled US public broadcasters, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), defended themselves against efforts by the Trump administration to cut off taxpayer funding, with both telling a Sunday political talk show they were looking at legal options.PBS chief executive, Paula Kerger, told CBS News’s Face the Nation that Republican-led threats to withdraw federal funding from public broadcasters had been around for decades but are “different this time”.Kerger said: “They’re coming after us on many different ways … we have never seen a circumstance like this, and obviously we’re going to be pushing back very hard, because what’s at risk are our stations, our public television, our public radio stations across the country.”Donald Trump last week issued an executive order blocking NPR and PBS from receiving taxpayer funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).The White House said that unlike in 1967, when the corporation was established, the media landscape is now filled with news options and the concept of government funded news media was “not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence”.The order added: “Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”On Sunday, Kerger warned that some stations in smaller communities across the US could lose 40 to 50% of their funding. “And for them, it’s existential, and that’s what’s at risk if this funding goes away,” she said.NPR chief executive, Katherine Maher, who like Kruger was grilled by Republicans on Capital Hill last month over claims that programing at both operations was politically-biased, said her organization is “looking at whatever options are available to us”.But she added: “I think it’s a little preliminary for us to speak to the specific strategies that we might take.”Maher warned that the impact to local radio stations was immediate, “especially in a time where we’re seeing an advance of news deserts across the nation, 20% of Americans don’t have access to another local source of news. The impact of this could really be devastating, particularly in rural communities.”But the NPR boss also sought to resist the US president’s claims that her operation is left-leaning and pointed to reluctance by Trump administration officials to come on NPR shows.The point of public broadcasting, Maher said, is to “bring people together in those conversations and so, we have had a whole host of conservative voices on air of late”.Maher added: “We’ve been making requests of the Trump administration to have their officials air. We would like to see more people accept those invitations. It’s hard for us to be able to say we can speak for everyone when folks won’t join us.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a university commencement address in Alabama last week, Trump told journalism majors that he’s not sure he likes the press, but acknowledged a free press is important even though he has repeatedly called American journalists “enemies of the people”.“We need a brilliant press. They’re like a watch-keeper. They’re very important. And you can go out and take it down a new track. Help save the country. The people of this country, they know the truth when they hear it. That’s why the ratings, the approval numbers of the media, are so low.”However, ongoing arguments over media bias and threats to defund public broadcasters put children’s programming is at risk, including those that are not enrolled in formal pre-K schooling, Kerger warned on CBS.“That was the idea of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, and everything that has followed since, is to make sure that children that do not have an access to a full array of resources have the opportunity to learn … That’s what’s at risk.” she said. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Sheet show: MyPillow pitchman Mike Lindell’s Trumpified ‘news venture’

      by

      Millions of votes were stolen in the presidential election – only in the 2020 one, the 2024 one was fine. Freedom is under attack! DEI judges are going after Americans! President Trump is keeping his promises. Freedom is making a comeback! Bed sheets, any size, any color, are available for $25 a set if you use the promo code L77, offer is for a limited time only.Welcome to LindellTV, a strange mashup of a rightwing conspiracy theory news channel and bedroom-focused shopping platform.LindellTV is one of several pro-Trump media outlets that was granted highly prized White House press credentials earlier this year – a move the government said would boost democracy, but which so far seems to have only boosted “make America great again” propaganda.Founded by Mike Lindell, a pillow company CEO turned election fraud obsessive, LindellTV features fawning coverage of Trump and his allies, mixed in with conspiracy theories about voting machines – an issue which has already seen Lindell sued for millions of dollars. The channel isn’t carried by any actual television network, and its production values are comically poor, but that hasn’t stopped LindellTV working its way into the highest arena of US journalism.Access to the White House briefing room, where the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, holds daily briefings for the world’s media, is highly coveted, and eyebrows were raised when the likes of LindellTV and Steve Bannon’s podcast were invited in. Only about 60 journalists can fit in the room, where they get a chance to ask tough questions of the government, an opportunity to hold the White House to account on behalf of the US and the world.LindellTV reporters rarely take that chance.“Will you guys also consider releasing the president’s fitness plan?” Cara Castronuova asked Leavitt in April, after the White House said it would share results from Trump’s annual medical exam.“He actually looks healthier than ever before, healthier than he looked eight years ago, and I’m sure everybody in this room can agree. Is he working out with Bobby Kennedy, and is he eating less McDonald’s?”The addition of friendly media outlets like LindellTV has helped take the edge off what has been a traditionally adversarial relationship between journalists and the White House press secretary. But it has also denied a seat at the table for people who might ask questions not about the remarkable health of the 78-year-old, 224lb president.Instead, LindellTV’s daily content features hourlong shows from obscure rightwing podcasters, each lining up to tell the viewers – no data is available on how many people actually watch the network – what a superb job the Trump administration is doing.The flagship show is hosted by Lindell himself, a Minnesota-born, moustachioed businessman whose MyPillow business enjoyed relative success before being dropped by almost all high street retailers after Lindell descended into election conspiracy chaos.Lindell broadcasts his litany of conspiracy theories from what appears to be his home, but sometimes he does a walkabout, as was the case on Thursday, when he co-hosted The Mike Lindell Show from outside the White House. Most of his theories relate to judges “going after” him over his sustained and untrue claims that the 2020 election was stolen.A segment on Thursday afternoon, nominally on “election integrity”, featured Lindell speaking into the camera for almost an hour, flanked by two women from LindellTV, each holding a microphone in front of their boss and each looking very bored.Atypically for a broadcaster, Lindell was on a phone call while speaking to the camera, and at one point put the caller on speaker so he could also address the viewers. The sound was muffled, and Lindell eventually hung up the phone – “I’ll call you later,” Lindell said – before throwing to a woman called Vanessa in the LindellTV studio.Vanessa wasn’t listening. “Are you there?” Lindell said.Vanessa snapped to attention. Lindell talked at her for three minutes, before asking that the channel’s producers show a photo on screen of him talking to the press. LindellTV duly flashed to a blurry photo of Lindell speaking to a row of cameras.Lindell paused, and Vanessa finally got the chance to say something.“The people are depending on you,” she told Lindell.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVanessa, with Lindell still on screen, asked her production team to play a clip of Trump speaking about Lindell at a rally. The viewers heard a panicked producer saying they didn’t have that footage, a message Vanessa relayed to viewers, before Lindell took charge, imploring people to buy his pillows and bedsheets.“They’re $25 a set,” Lindell said. “Any size, any color, while they last,” he added. The network then showed the MyPillow website, as Lindell told the production team to scroll down to the particular product he wanted people to buy. “We have over 250 products!” Lindell told the viewers.One of the reporters then joined in to tout the benefits of MyPillow “dream sheets”. “Most comfortable, best, softest sheets of my life,” she said.It was an unusual segment for a news network, and got stranger when one of the reporters then went on to urge people to buy Lindell’s book.“You will not ever have a dull moment,” the reporter said. “And praise Jesus for bringing you through this whole journey.”This shopping channel oeuvre is interspersed with a difficult-to-follow list of Lindell’s grievances.Earlier this week, above a chyron that read “DEI judge is going after Mike!!!!”, Lindell continued his four-year crusade to, in his words, restore election integrity.“The United States has the worst, everybody, elections on planet Earth. There’s nobody worse than us. You can find communist countries – nobody has worse elections than the United States,” Lindell said.The channel then cut to an advert for MyPillow, of course, but also invited viewers to claim $20,000 in silver from a website called MikeLindellGold.com.When the Guardian tried to access the website, Google Chrome denied access, warning that it “might be trying to steal your information”.It was a neat metaphor for a channel that is built on chaos and slip-ups and dodgy facts and figures, a channel that despite those flaws, has been granted much sought-after access to the Trump administration. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Voice of America to resume airing after court halts Trump’s dismantling of broadcaster

      by

      Voice of America (VoA), the US-taxpayer funded news service for overseas listeners, could be back on the air as soon as next week, after a federal appeals court granted a temporary stay on an executive order dismantling the broadcaster.VoA was effectively shut down after Trump signed an order on 14 March dismantling or shrinking seven agencies including the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).The USAGM is an independent government agency that oversees VoA and distributes congressionally appropriated funds to several non-profit broadcasters which provide news and information in almost 50 languages in countries with limited or no access to independent media sources.After nearly every affected network sued, US district judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, granted a preliminary injunction in late April, ruling that the executive order was arbitrary and likely exceeded the president’s authority.The Department of Justice appealed. On Thursday, a Washington DC federal appeals court, which included two Trump appointees, partly upheld the lower court ruling that will enable VoA to resume broadcasting while the appeal plays out.VoA staff can begin a “phased return” to the office and resume programming next week, according to an email from the justice department shared with the Washington Post. Some VoA and USAGM staff have had access to their government email accounts restored.But the latest court ruling was bad news for the other publicly funded broadcasters.The Trump administration’s freeze on congressionally approved funds for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks will remain in place while the lawsuit makes its way through the court.While VoA is a federal entity, the other broadcasters are private non-profit organizations. The funding freeze has already forced them to make staffing cuts and reduce content.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe USAGA had, until now, enjoyed bipartisan support, due to the vital role VoA and the other foreign-news broadcasters play in advancing democracy and US interests by reaching about 360 million people in countries that have little to no independent press.The Guardian has contacted both the USAGA and VoA for comment. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

      by

      Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for the news outlets NPR and PBS, accusing them of being biased.NPR and PBS are only partly funded by the US taxpayer and rely heavily on private donations.The US president has long had an antagonistic relationship with most mainstream news media, previously describing them as the “enemy of the people”.A notable exception is the powerful conservative broadcaster Fox News, some of whose hosts have taken on leading roles in his administration.“National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) receive taxpayer funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB),” Trump said in his executive order. “I therefore instruct the CPB board of directors and all executive departments and agencies to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”He added that “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens”.The CPB budget has already been approved by Congress through 2027, which raises questions about the scope of Trump’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than 40 million Americans listen to NPR public radio each week, and 36 million watch a local television station from the PBS network each month, according to their estimates.The NPR director, Katherine Maher, estimated in March that the radio station would receive about $120m (£102m) from the CPB in 2025, “less than 5% of its budget”.The media rights group RSF warned on Friday about “an alarming deterioration in press freedom” in the US under Trump and “unprecedented” difficulties for independent journalists around the world. More

    • 225 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      The loss of editorial freedom at 60 Minutes is a sorry milestone for US media | Margaret Sullivan

      by

      There have been so many red alerts for press freedom in the United States over the past few months that it can be hard to know which ones really matter.The one at CBS’s 60 Minutes really matters.It came as a one-two punch. First, Bill Owens, the highly respected executive producer of the venerable news show stepped down, writing in a letter to employees that he no longer felt he had crucial editorial independence. It had become clear, he wrote, “that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it”.Although he wasn’t specific, corporate interference was clearly the problem, as the network’s parent company, Paramount, has been trying to get federal approval for a big media merger.Owens’s departure was a shocker, but one that was mostly felt internally at CBS and in media-watching circles.Last Sunday night, the problem went public – dramatically so. One of the most well-known faces of 60 Minutes, the correspondent Scott Pelley, closed out the program with a remarkable statement to the audience. He praised Owens and made the context painfully clear.“Stories we’ve pursued for 57 years are often controversial – lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration,” Pelley said. “Bill made sure they were accurate and fair … but our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”Pelley said that, to date, no story had been killed but that Owens “felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires”.Pelley’s comments were picked up widely, and now the world knows that viewers can no longer fully trust what they see on the Sunday evening show that has done such important and groundbreaking journalism for decades.Of course, as with so many of the red alerts mentioned above – lawsuits, threats, changes in long-held practices that protect the public’s right to know – the problem involves Donald Trump’s overweening desire to control the media. Controlling the message is what would-be authoritarians always do.Trump sued 60 Minutes for $20bn a few months ago, claiming unfair and deceptive editing of an interview with his then rival for the presidency, Kamala Harris. And his newly appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, took an aggressive approach by reopening an investigation into CBS over supposed distortion of the news. The editing of the Harris interview, by all reasonable accounts, followed standard practices.What has happened with 60 Minutes is a high-octane version of what is happening everywhere in Trump 2.0.Those who could stand up to Trump’s bullying are instead doing what scholars of authoritarianism say must be avoided, if democracy is to be salvaged. They are obeying in advance.Not everyone, of course. It’s inspiring to see prominent institutions – Harvard and other universities, many law firms, Georgetown law school and the Associated Press – refusing to buckle.They may pay a price. Perhaps a lucrative merger won’t go through, perhaps important federal grants will be lost, perhaps they’ll lose access to news sources, or be punished in some other way. But they’ll have their reputations and integrity intact.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor universities, for law firms and certainly for media companies like CBS, that’s extremely important.And what’s more, yielding to Trump’s bullying is never successful in the long run. The goalposts of appeasement will be moved, again and again.Just think of what happened with Jeff Bezos, who has put at risk the editorial independence of the Washington Post, which he owns, in order to please Trump and protect the fortunes of his companies, including Amazon.Did all his bending the knee – including killing a Post endorsement of Harris just before the election – buy him long-term protection? Certainly not. When Amazon reportedly planned to display the cost of Trump’s tariffs next to prices on the site, the White House went ballistic, calling it a “hostile and political act”.You can guess what happened next. Amazon buckled, disavowing and scrapping the plan.If the rich and powerful won’t stand up to Trump, what hope can there be for the disenfranchised and powerless?Journalists at 60 Minutes are telling us that Shari Redstone, the executive and heiress who is the controlling shareholder of Paramount, is doing real damage by appearing to intrude into her venerable show’s independence. She may get the merger she wants but only at great cost to the journalism of which she should be a stalwart steward.There was another road to take – certainly a less traveled one but one with a far better destination in mind.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Why is the US sleeping as autocracy approaches? | Governor Jay Inslee

      by

      When a woman asked me a couple of weeks ago why leaders were not standing up to Donald Trump, my thoughts went immediately to political leaders. When I started to answer, she corrected me and said: “No, no, I’m talking about college presidents and law firms. Where the heck are they?”Where indeed? From all observations, most have been asleep as the US president dismantles democracy piece by jeweled piece. They are either cutting sweet little deals on their knees, or just remaining silent as the fruits of 250 years of national labor and life are strangled by Trump’s tentacles. From the cowering of major media companies to the shameful capitulation of some law firms, and oppressive silence from virtually all of them, the nation is sleepwalking into a slow but ever encroaching totalitarian state.As the woman continued her outpouring of anger and grief, I thought of John F Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize-winning book, Why England Slept, his brilliant exposition of why a proud and resilient nation ignored Germany’s mounting threat to their democracy when it was so obvious and imminent. Kennedy recognized the centrality of moments we now face, writing: “Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It’s the system that functions in the pinches that survives.” We are now being pinched by an autocrat who eats laws for breakfast and will not be stopped by any internal restraint.Whether our democracy survives to preserve the rule of law depends on so much more than senators and representatives. In a way, they are merely personal reflections of the public’s will. Depending exclusively on their personal commitment to the constitution is a good bet for the party now in the minority, but a sore loser for the majority party, or more accurately, the majority cult. The moment demands so much more than eloquence on the floor of the House and the Senate – it demands full-throated, continuous and united rebellion against the perverse oppression and malignant illegality of this authoritarian in the White House.Unfortunately, we are not seeing the necessary courage, not in the east, not in the west, not in large law firms, not in boardrooms, not in school district superintendents, not in chambers of commerce. The silence is deafening.Where was the united voice of major law firms when Trump maliciously began to target several of them? They were hiding. Where are the concerted voices of college presidents as their colleagues are being hung out to dry? Do they not teach history at these colleges, where any freshman could tell you that the Trump plan is right out of every autocrat’s playbook? First you tame the press, then you tame the colleges, then you tame the law firms so that no one can even get to court, then you eventually ignore the orders of the supreme court.We are well on our way to that final death knell of democracy, as we advance through the first three steps.My motivation to rally for our country is not driven solely by my love for democracy. Like millions of Americans, I see my own family being jeopardized by Trump’s callousness. I have seen first-hand the power of special education teachers to raise the prospects of special needs kids in my clan. I rebel at the Musk-Trump administration’s chainsaw attack eliminating the one agency that safeguards our kids’ access to special education investments, the US Department of Education. To Elon Musk, the department may be just a bureaucracy – to our family, it is a guardian angel.Is this passivity and lack of resistance understandable? Of course it is. That’s why the old saw “first they come for the … then they come for you” was invented.But we should call upon our college presidents, law firms, leaders of civil society, to get in touch with their responsibility to democracy itself, as well as their own institutions, which surely will end up on the firing line someday if Trump continues to be emboldened by his victims’ servility.Perhaps it is too strong to refer to these organizations as collaborators. Perhaps. But this wholesale timidity and collapse must be considered rank appeasement at best, modest complicity at worst.Kudos to Harvard University, Perkins Coie and others who have stood up, but some of the finest higher educational institutions in world history are now ignoring the well-trod path of autocracy in world history. Some of the best and brightest law firms in the nation are now providing free legal services to the very administration that has broken laws beyond counting the very legal codes the law firms purport to defend.Certainly, these silent aiders and abettors can explain their individual decision making, but their cumulative damage to the very fabric of democracy calls us to heed Benjamin Franklin when he said we must “all hang together, or all hang separately”. Is it asking too much for the college presidents of the US to band together and say this choking of research funds is unacceptable? Are the law firms just too busy to all say they are not going to yield to Trump’s perverse bullying and say what any good lawyer ought to say: “We’ll see you in court”?In fighting Trump’s assaults on democracy, I speak from experience. As the first governor to come out against his Muslim ban, one of the most vocal in speaking out against his Covid negligence, and telling him to his face to stop tweeting and start protecting our children, earning me the honor of being called a “snake”, I know standing up brings the heat. So be it.But my more important experience is decades watching a courageous citizenry force its federal government to change course. In the 50s and 60s, the government was forced to change, thanks in large part to a woman refusing to sit in the back of the bus. In the 70s, the Vietnam war ended only because thousands marched, including myself, proving the ability of committed people, though unelected, to compel change. In the 80s it was private citizens who forced the federal government to start treating HIV patients like humans.In each of these decades, small acts of defiance led to national change as courage rippled outwards. The benefit of having lived these decades during the American experiment is learning that leaders in civil society who resist should be exalted, joined, and followed.Those who believe that this call to action is an overstatement of the threat understand neither the nature of the tyrant-in-chief nor the slow but inexorable nature of how democracies are lost. I witnessed Trump’s cruelty and lack of empathy as I dealt with him during the Covid pandemic, as he willfully withheld help and then consciously spread misinformation that caused so many needless deaths. Anyone who saw this up close would make the call for resistance I am making today. How can anyone not understand that the refusal to follow the law on January 6 continues in full force today? Why would it stop unless it is made to stop?More importantly, we should listen to the late Justice William O Douglas, who said: “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” It is past time for all our leaders in civil society to wake up, stand up and speak up. We are right in calling them to do so. Hiding is no longer acceptable.

      Jay Inslee served as the governor of Washington from 2013-2025 More