Perceptions of Media Freedom

Many posts have discussed freedom of the press.

Benedict Vigers  at Gallup:

As the world marks World Press Freedom Day this weekend, perceptions of media freedom worldwide show little movement, remaining near the levels recorded each year since 2010. Overall, a median of 64% of adults across 131 countries in 2025 said they believe the media in their country have a lot of freedom, while 30% disagreed.

...

Three in four U.S. adults (75%) in 2025 think the U.S. media have a lot of freedom, among the lowest totals measured in the past 15 years and statistically tied with the other low point of 78% in 2023. This year also marks one of the few times the U.S. has been statistically tied with, rather than ahead of, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in these perceptions.

Since 2022, Americans’ perceptions that the press in their country has a lot of freedom have fallen 11 points (from 86%), compared with a one-point decline in the median among OECD countries. While this decline has been uneven — the measure rebounded slightly in 2024 before dipping again in 2025 — only three other countries have seen larger absolute declines in perceived media freedom than the U.S. since 2022: Ukraine (-18 pts.), Pakistan (-18 pts.) and Morocco (-15 pts.).

 

 

Getting Local News

 Many posts have dealt with media problems.

From Pew:

Americans turn to a range of sources for their local news, and while some traditional local news sources such as TV and radio remain common, growing numbers get local news in other ways.

About two-thirds of Americans (65%) say they at least sometimes get news from their local TV news station – down slightly from the 70% who said the same in 2018, though this remains one of the most popular sources of local news. Americans’ use of local newspapers is decreasing, too: 36% of U.S. adults say they get news from their local daily paper at least sometimes in 2025, compared with 43% in 2018.

Rising shares of Americans are getting local news at least sometimes from online forums or discussion groups (52%, up from 38% in 2018), as well as from local government agencies or officials (40%, up from 30%).

The sharpest growth in usage came from other online-only sources. As of 2025, 42% of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from a source that publishes online only (and was not included in any of the other categories), more than double the share that used these sources in 2018 (15%).

Whisper Network

Many posts have discussed social media. 

Melanie Mason and Jeremy B. White at Politico:

Five months before Arielle Fodor, better known on social media as “Mrs. Frazzled,” helped set in motion the downfall of Rep. Eric Swalwell, she was singing his praises on Instagram.

“You know how I love to tell you when I meet a politician who acts like a normal human and not a robot!” she posted the day after the California Democrat launched his campaign for governor. “Eric is that.” 

It was a fairly anodyne post for Fodor, a prodigious professional poster. But it drew an unusual response: Three people privately warning her that Swalwell was no good.

Those messages were the embers of a firestorm that in short order incinerated Swalwell’s campaign, and is now engulfing what remains of his political career.

Swalwell suspended his campaign Sunday, days after multiple news outlets reported on allegations that he sexually harassed women, had sexual relationships with subordinate staff and, in two cases, committed sexual assault. Swalwell has denied accusations he had nonconsensual sex with anybody, though he acknowledged “personal failings.”

The broad contours of Swalwell’s alleged behavior, if not the specifics, did not come as a surprise to many working in and around politics, especially in Washington. The 45-year-old cable news darling and Trump antagonist had developed a reputation for unsavory and sometimes unwanted behavior toward women. Those warnings were shared in whisper networks but rarely traveled outside the circle of political insiders.

That is, until Swalwell sought a promotion to lead the nation’s most populous state and a pair of content creators worked to spill that open secret into public view. His breakneck undoing is a testament to the striking power of a new media ecosystem in which influencers with huge audiences can not only publicize politicians, but control the political conversation. Their growing clout has thrust campaigns into a new digital Wild West, where long-buried allegations and unsubstantiated rumors can find their earliest stages of vetting, a warning for politicians at all levels, including in the run-up to 2028.

On paper, it was a lopsided matchup. Swalwell had a national profile and support from many in the Democratic Party apparatus. Fodor and another content creator, Cheyenne Hunt — along with behind-the-scenes help from Hunt’s friend, a woman who alleged she had been personally harassed by Swalwell and still remains anonymous — had their keyboards and iPhone cameras.

Bad Newspaper News

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Taylor Herzlich at NY Post:

The Washington Post suffered the worst decline in print circulation among the top 25 newspapers in 2025 ahead of bloodbath layoffs earlier this year, as Jeff Bezos’ cancellation of a Kamala Harris endorsement outraged loyal readers, according to new data.

Average daily print circulation at the broadsheet tanked 21.2% in the six months through the end of September 2025 — down to 87,576 from 111,171 the previous year, according to a Press Gazette report citing data from the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Los Angeles Times, owned by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, saw the second-largest drop in average print circulation, falling 19.8% to 63,492,according to the data.

It was another rough year for print papers across the industry, as the combined average daily print circulation of the top 25 largest newspapers fell 12.5% over the same period, and all but one of the top 25 saw declines.

But WaPo and the LA Times were hit especially hard following significant subscription cancellations after the papers’ editorial boards were blocked from printing endorsements of Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to the Press Gazette report.

Last month, the Washington Post axed a third of its newsroom — more than 300 journalists, including its entire sports desk — ignoring reporters’ impassioned pleas to Bezos.

Alice Brooker at PressGazette:

The combined average daily print circulation at 25 of the largest audited newspapers in the US fell by 12.5% in the six months to the end of September 2025, according to new data from Alliance for Audited Media (AAM). Figures supplied exclusively to Press Gazette show that only one title among the top 25 by combined print and digital circulations saw a rise in print circulation year on year. However, AAM has flagged that its circulation data does not include all digital newspaper subscriptions, and the non-profit organisation rolled out new digital reporting rules in February 2026.

Americans and the News

Many posts have dealt with the news media 

Kirsten Eddy el al. at Pew:

Americans today describe a complicated relationship with the news. Most say being informed is essential for civic life – especially voting – yet many feel overwhelmed, skeptical and selective about how they engage with information, according to a new Pew Research Center study from the Pew-Knight Initiative.

A central tension shapes today’s news landscape. Most people believe Americans have a civic responsibility to be informed when they vote. But far fewer say regularly following news is extremely or very important in general, and roughly half say they can stay informed even if they don’t actively follow it.

The reality of how people get news nowadays plays into this tension. Americans are evenly split between those who mostly get news because they are seeking it out and those who mostly let news find them. But either way, the high volume of information reaching people from a wide variety of sources brings with it several challenges.

For one, people feel the onus is on news consumers to check whether the news they get is accurate. Americans have far more confidence in their own ability to do this than in other people’s ability.

News fatigue is also widespread – and shaping Americans’ news choices. About half of U.S. adults say they are worn out by the amount of news these days, and people are more likely to say most of the news they come across is not relevant to their lives than to say it is relevant. Following the news often feels like an obligation, and only about one-in-ten Americans say they follow it solely because they enjoy it.

Many have adjusted their news habits: Two-thirds say they have stopped getting news from a specific source, and six-in-ten say they have reduced their overall news intake.

These are some of the key findings of a survey of more than 3,500 U.S. adults that Pew Research Center conducted in December 2025 and nine focus groups held in June 2025. To learn more about this study, read “About this research.”

AI and Reporting

Artificial intelligence is an increasingly important topic in politics, policy, and law.

Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson at NYT:

Ryan Sabalow, a reporter for the newsroom CalMatters, noticed something peculiar when he began covering California lawmakers in 2023. Politicians would often give impassioned speeches against a bill, then refrain from voting entirely.

He began to wonder how often legislators were ducking tough votes — and how that influenced California’s laws....

He and his team turned to an A.I. tool, Digital Democracy, which tracks every word uttered in California legislative sessions, every donation and every vote taken. It led to an article, and an Emmy-winning segment on CBS, that revealed that Democratic lawmakers had killed a popular fentanyl bill by not voting at all.

...

Artificial intelligence is sweeping through newsrooms, transforming the way journalists around the world gather and disseminate information. Traditional news organizations increasingly use tools from companies like OpenAI and Google to streamline work that used to take hours: sifting through reams of information, tracking down sources and suggesting headlines.

... 

The Associated Press used A.I. tools this year to quickly sort through tens of thousands of pages of documents relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The tools made the documents searchable and summarized them, while also allowing journalists to see which parts of the files had been unredacted for the first time.

"Off the Record" Is Not Retroactive

  Anna Bower at Lawfare reports a text exchange with prosecutor Lindsay Halligan:

Through the whole of our correspondence, however, there is something Halligan never said: She never said a word suggesting that she was not “on the record.”

It is not uncommon for federal prosecutors to communicate with the press, both through formal channels and sometimes informally. My exchange with Halligan, however, was highly unusual in a number of respects. She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution that she is personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting—or, more precisely, my summary of someone else’s reporting. But several of her messages contained language that touched on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information, which is protected from disclosure by prosecutors under federal law.

As a legal journalist covering the Justice Department, I had never encountered anything quite like my exchange with Halligan. Neither had my editor. Over the last several days, he and I spoke with multiple former federal officials and journalists who cover the justice system. None could recall a similar instance in which a sitting U.S. attorney reached out to chastise a reporter about matters concerning grand jury testimony in an active case.

...

After I reached out to the department for comment on Halligan’s texts, Halligan texted me yet again, for the first time in several days, insisting that our entire correspondence had been off the record. Our full exchange, linked below, allows readers to make their own judgments on that question.

...

Halligan had said quite a lot during our correspondence, although much of it was hard for me to parse. But there was an important thing she had not said during the entirety of our communications: “Off the record” or “On background” or anything whatsoever about the terms on which we were talking.

As anyone who professionally engages with the media as routinely as Halligan would know, the default assumption when a reporter speaks with a public official is that everything is “on the record,” meaning that anything the source says can be printed with attribution. If the source wishes to speak confidentially, she can negotiate how the information will be used. “On background” means that the information the source provides to a journalist can be published, so long as the journalist doesn’t reveal the source’s name or identifying information. “Off the record” means the reporter can’t print what the source tells them at all. There are other variations too. But with any condition, a fundamental premise is that the reporter must agree to speak on that basis.


In the course of my work as a journalist, I frequently agree to speak with sources on background or off the record. I take my duty of confidentiality seriously and I have never burned a source by revealing confidential communications.


I certainly would have been willing to speak with Halligan on background or off the record. But she never raised the terms on which we were speaking at any point during the two days in which we exchanged texts.

AP FightsVaccine Misinformation

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.The greatest spreader of vaccine misinformation is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

From AP:

In response to perplexing White House declarations on autism, a collaborative AP team delivered essential, comprehensive reporting that pushed back on misinformation. Weeks of careful planning, including prep work on precise wording for all formats, ensured facts remained at the core. A powerful collaboration between Washington teams, Health and Science, and Standards editors enabled rapid yet accurate coverage.

The team aggressively, yet sensitively, covered the breaking news, highlighting that Trump’s statements ignored established science. A smart lineup of follow-up stories addressed the aftershocks: a fact-focused piece, a feature on pregnant women’s confusion, a political analysis of the impact on RFK Jr.’s movement, and an exclusive interview with the maker of a drug Trump touted. This unmatched speed and scope resulted in stories dominating APNews.com with 464,000 page views and a YouTube livestream garnering nearly 500,000 views, showcasing the power of thorough, fact-based journalism.

Submission Links

• https://apnews.com/article/tylenol-cause-autism-trump-kennedy-0847ee76eedecbd5e9baa6888b567d66
• https://apnews.com/article/trump-doctor-vaccines-autism-tylenol-covid-disinfectants-22f5bcfe2fd3c18fdd412419941541f8
• https://apnews.com/article/autism-tylenol-pregnancy-mothers-trump-fact-check-6e03fb199acf0c5ce313536c53424788
• https://apnews.com/article/maha-activists-trump-autism-vaccines-tylenol-medical-6fca8bb1b436bb76d1a223adc0f56112
• https://apnews.com/article/trump-tylenol-vaccines-pregnancy-8c8c44e40657a2338533c59ebefaa83a
• https://apnews.com/article/autism-trump-pregnancy-tylenol-65e9c04d05014345364212ecaec4ee3e
• https://apnews.com/article/trump-tough-it-out-pregnancy-women-pain-acetaminophen-dc48caddabef2f086a50b48c5b86a3ca
• https://www.youtube.com/watch

Silencing Critics by Threatening Litigation

Filmmaker Mary Strause made a docuseries critical of UnitedHealth.  The companies used the threat of litigation to coerce streaming services to take it down.

David Enrich at NYT:

In legal letters and court filings, UnitedHealth has invoked last year’s murder of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of the company’s health insurance division, to argue that intense criticism of the company risks inciting further violence.

The tactics have had an impact. Amazon and Vimeo both removed Ms. Strause’s film. The Guardian postponed publishing an investigation of the company after UnitedHealth sued over a previous article it said was defamatory.

UnitedHealth joins a growing group of companies and wealthy individuals, including President Trump, who are using legal threats and lawsuits to deter or penalize criticism.

Over the years, there have been scattered examples of embattled companies — such as Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin — deploying legal offensives against a broad spectrum of journalists and critics, said Lee Levine, a retired First Amendment lawyer who has defended news outlets, including The New York Times.

“Some version of this has been going on for a long, long time,” Mr. Levine said. But, he added, “the incidence of it has increased.”

The Evaporation of Local Journalism

 Many posts have dealt with media problems.

From Muck Rack:

In 2000, many Americans lived in a community with journalists — people whose job it was to cover school board decisions, announce small business openings and closures, root out corruption at city hall, warn commuters about road work and trumpet the exploits of the high school teams. Today, most of those journalists are gone. The evaporation of local news coverage has hit small towns and big cities, suburbs and rural areas. Even as the country has grown, we’ve lost journalists.

 

Using data that’s never been tapped before, we now know just how severe this local journalist shortage has become. Less than a quarter-century ago, the United States had about 40 journalists per 100,000 residents on average. Now, the equivalent number is 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents, about a 75% decline. (Local Journalist Equivalent is a new measure we’re introducing, akin to a Full Time Equivalent or FTE).

...

We also cannot assume the local news crisis is largely a rural phenomenon. The new data shows the extent to which the layoffs of journalists over time have left acute reporting shortages in many urban and suburban areas. If you’re in a big city like Los Angeles, which has a mere 3.6 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people, your neighborhood might be covered if there’s a serious crime but not much else. You may get little reliable information on local candidates in many of L.A. County’s cities, whether the schools in your neighborhood are improving, whether the hospital nearby has a bad mortality rate, or how inspiring people might be working to repair your playground.

Paywalls

Many posts have dealt with media problems.

Emily Tomasik and Michael Lipka at Pew:

Newspaper revenue has been in decline for decades, and most Americans now prefer to get news from digital devices. In this environment, many news organizations – and not just newspapers – put paywalls on their websites or apps, blocking access to articles or other content unless news consumers pay or subscribe.

The vast majority of Americans (83%) say they have not paid for news in the past year, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March. Another 17% say they have directly paid or given money to a news source by subscribing, donating or becoming a member during that time.

At the same time, 74% run into paywalls at least sometimes when they are looking for news online. This includes 38% who say they come across paywalled articles extremely often or often. 

What Is News?

  Kirsten Eddy at al. wrote a Pew study of the meaning of news:

Key findings:

• Defining news has become a personal, and personalized, experience. People decide what news means to them and which sources they turn to based on a variety of factors, including their own identities and interests.
• Most people agree that information must be factual, up to date and important to society to be considered news. Personal importance or relevance also came up often, both in participants’ own words and in their actual behaviors.
• “Hard news” stories about politics and war continue to be what people most clearly think of as news. U.S. adults are most likely to say election updates (66%) and information about the war in Gaza (62%) are “definitely news.”
• There are also consistent views on what news is not. People make clear distinctions between news versus entertainment and news versus opinion.
• At the same time, views of news as not being “biased” or “opinionated” can conflict with people’s actual behaviors and preferences. For instance, 55% of Americans believe it’s at least somewhat important that their news sources share their political views.
• People don’t always like news, but they say they need it: While many express negative emotions surrounding news (such as anger or sadness), they also say it helps them feel informed or feel that they “need” to keep up with it.
• People’s emotions about news are at times tied to broader feelings of media distrust, or specific events going on at that time – perhaps in combination with individuals’ political identities. For instance, partisans often react positively to news about their own political parties or candidates and negatively to news covering their opposition, which means feelings can shift with political changes.

The answers to the question “What is news?” are not always straightforward. As this study confirms, the definitions people hold for news may not be consistent with their actual behaviors. There are sometimes clashes between what people believe others think of as news and what “feels” like news to them. And people often categorize information as “news” along a continuum rather than as a simple yes-or-no question. Those perceptions vary depending on the platform, source and individual.

Polarized Concern About Press Freedom

 

Many posts have discussed freedom of the press.

Naomi Forman-Katz snd Kirsten Eddy at Pew:

Overall, seven-in-ten Americans are at least somewhat concerned about potential restrictions on press freedom – a right that is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This includes 43% who say they are extremely or very concerned. These numbers are almost identical to the findings of an April 2024 survey, when 41% said they were extremely or very concerned and an additional 29% were somewhat concerned.

But in many cases, it is not the same people who are worried. In 2024, during the Biden administration, 47% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they were extremely or very concerned about restrictions on press freedoms. Fewer Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (38%) said the same.

Press Freedom: W and L

Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin at NYT:

CBS News entered a new period of turmoil on Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence.

In an extraordinary declaration, Mr. Owens — only the third person to run the program in its 57-year history — told his staff in a memo that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

“So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.

“60 Minutes” has faced mounting pressure in recent months from both President Trump, who sued CBS for $10 billion and has accused the program of “unlawful and illegal behavior,” and its own corporate ownership at Paramount, the parent company of CBS

...

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Katie Robertson and David Enrich at NYT:

A federal jury on Tuesday ruled against Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential nominee, in her yearslong defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. The jury reached the verdict after two hours of deliberations.

Ms. Palin sued The Times in 2017 after the newspaper published — and then swiftly corrected and apologized for — an editorial that wrongly suggested she had incited a deadly shooting in Arizona years earlier.

The case became a bellwether for battles over press freedoms and media bias in the Trump era, with Ms. Palin’s lawyers saying they hoped to use it to attack a decades-old Supreme Court precedent that makes it harder for public figures to sue news outlets for defamation.

This is the second time a federal jury has concluded that The Times was not liable for defaming Ms. Palin in its editorial. The case first went to trial in 2022, and both the jury and the judge ruled in favor of The Times. But last year, a federal appeals court invalidated those decisions, setting the stage for this month’s retrial.

How the White House Press Briefing Is Changing

Many posts have discussed the relationship between presidents and the press. 

How the White House Press Briefing Is Changing

By Ashley Wu, Claire Hogan, Laura Salaberry, Ruru Kuo and Doug Mills•April 16, 2025

AP and the First Amendment

A ruling from U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden:

 About two months ago, President Donald Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.  The Associated Press did not follow suit.  For that editorial choice, the White House sharply curtailed the AP’s access to coveted, tightly controlled media events with the President.  The AP now sues the White House chief of staff, her communications deputy, and the press secretary (collectively, “the Government”), seeking a preliminary injunction enjoining the Government from excluding it because of its viewpoint. 

 Today, the Court grants that relief.  But this injunction does not limit the various permissible reasons the Government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events.  It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government spaces.  It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer.  And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views.   

No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.  The Constitution requires no less.   

Trump v. Freedom of Expression

Ted Johnson at Deadline:

In an early morning rant, Donald Trump went off on Seth Meyers‘ late-night NBC show, declaring that “Comcast should pay a BIG price” for shows that he calls “political hits.”

In Trump’s 1:24 a.m. ET post on Truth Social, he said that he had watched Meyers’ show recently. Meyers’ humor for years has been biting when it comes to Trump, with his segments also serving as a form of commentary.

Trump wrote, “How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC, a ‘network’ run by a truly bad group of people — Remember, they also run MSDNC. I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast. These guys should be paying a lot of money for the right to give these ‘in kind’ contributions to the Radical Left Democrat Party. These are not shows or entertainment, they are simply political hits, 100% of the time, to me and the Republican Party. Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!”

Trump has long bashed Comcast, NBC and MSNBC. During his first term, he suggested pulling the network’s FCC license after he got angered by an NBC News report. Ajit Pai, who he appointed FCC chair, later noted that the agency licenses stations, not networks, and that news programming was protected by the First Amendment.

But Trump’s appointee as chair of the FCC during his next term, Brendan Carr, has suggested that the agency can examine complaints over news programming, including one that challenged the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. He also bashed NBC for featuring Harris on Saturday Night Live in the final show before the election, warning that it was a violation of equal time rules. The network gave Trump’s campaign time the next day, but Carr warned that other third-party candidates may have been denied airtime.

David Enrich and Katie Robertson at NYT:

Reporters and editors at national newspapers are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas.

Multiple media organizations are evaluating whether they have enough insurance coverage to absorb a potential wave of libel and other litigation from officials who have already shown an inclination to file such suits.

And a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet is preparing for the possibility that the government will investigate issues like whether its use of freelancers complies with labor regulations.

With President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to the White House, media outlets large and small are taking steps to prepare for what they fear could be a legal and political onslaught against them from the new administration and Mr. Trump’s allies inside and outside the government.

For nearly a decade, Mr. Trump has demonized and tried to delegitimize the media. He has attacked reporters as “the enemy of the people.” He has repeatedly sued news organizations. In his first administration, the White House at times barred out-of-favor journalists from attending events.

But the early indications are that his new administration could be more hostile to the press. For example, Mr. Trump’s choice to run the F.B.I., Kash Patel, said before the election that a new Trump administration would “come after the people in the media.” Brendan Carr, the expected chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, recently raised the prospect of revoking federal broadcast licenses for television stations that he perceived as biased against conservatives.

 But even if FCC does not license networks themselves, it can cause trouble for media companies.  On September 15, 1972, Nixon discussed using it to punish The Washington Post.

PRESIDENT: The Post has asked -- it's going to have its problems.

HALDEMAN: (Unintelligible)

DEAN: The networks, the networks are good with Maury [Maurice Stans]coming back three days in a row and --

PRESIDENT: That's right. Right. The main thing is the Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of this one. They have a television station.

DEAN: That's right, they do.

PRESIDENT: And they're going to have to get it renewed.

HALDEMAN: They've got a radio station, too.

PRESIDENT: Does that come up too? The point is, when does it come up?

DEAN: I don't know. But the practice of nonlicensees filing on top of licensees has certainly gotten more,...

PRESIDENT: That's right.

DEAN: more active in the, in the area.

PRESIDENT: And it's going to be God damn active here.

DEAN: (Laughs)

PRESIDENT: Well, the game has to be played awfully rough.

Media Watchdog Role

 Many posts have dealt with news media .

Pew:

News Deserts and Newspaper Closures

Many posts have dealt with media problems.

From the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University:

The number of local news deserts expanded in the U.S. this year, with 127 newspapers shuttering, leaving nearly 55 million Americans with limited to no access to local news, according to the Medill State of Local News Report 2024 released today.

Key Findings :

• The nation has lost more than one-third of its newspapers since 2005. With 127 newspapers closing in the past 12 months — nearly two and a half per week — the U.S. has now seen a decline of 3,300 since 2005 as of September. The pace of newspaper closures did not slow appreciably in the past year.
• As a result of those losses, the number of news desert counties rose to 208 this year from 204 in 2023. News deserts are counties without any locally based source of local news. In addition, the number of counties with only one news source rose to 1,563. Taken together, those counties include nearly 55 million people with limited or no access to local news. More than half of the nation’s 3,143 counties have little to no local news.
• More than 7,000 newspaper jobs vanished between 2022 and 2023, compared to a few hundred the year before..
• The number of newspaper mergers and acquisitions skyrocketed 43% this year, with 258 papers changing hands in 75 transactions. Smaller and newer chains, including Carpenter Media Group, are leading the acquisition surge.
• Using predictive modeling developed by the school’s Spiegel Research Center, the Medill team substantially increased the number of counties on its “Watch List” — those at high risk of losing local news — to 279 from 228 last year. That’s a 22% percent rise.
• For the first time, Medill tallied the growing number of national networks providing original local reporting. Researchers counted 740 network digital sites, but none of them are covering previous news desert counties.
• There’s been a net increase of 81 stand-alone local digital news sites, the biggest one-year gain in recent years. About one-third of them are less than five years old. That gain, however, includes 30 newspapers that converted from print to digital. Nearly 90% of them are in metro areas, not in hard-hit rural counties.
• For the second consecutive year, Medill mapped every local news startup in the U.S. And the Medill Local News Initiative identified 12 “Bright Spots” news outlets that are showing promise after receiving more than 60 nominations for that designation. The Bright Spots map was developed with support from Microsoft.

Not Trusting Media

 Many posts have dealt with media problems .

Megan Brenan at Gallup:

Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media -- such as newspapers, television and radio -- first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year.

For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.

Gallup first asked this question in 1972 and has measured it in most years since 1997. In three readings in the 1970s, trust ranged from 68% to 72%, yet by Gallup’s next readings in the late 1990s and early 2000s, smaller majorities of 51% to 55% trusted the news media. The latest findings are from a poll conducted Sept. 3-15, which includes Gallup’s annual update on trust in the media and other civic and political entities in the U.S.

As has been the case historically, partisans have different levels of confidence in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. Currently, 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. Independents’ trust matches the record low in 2022, while Democrats’ and Republicans’ are statistically similar to their historical low points.