Radio station parts ways with host who interviewed Biden with questions from his aides Interview “violates our practice” said WURD president and CEO Sara M. Lomax. The station “is not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other Administration.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/07/biden-interview-wurd-campaign/ excerpt: The head of a Philadelphia radio station said Sunday it has parted ways with a host who acknowledged that she interviewed President Biden with questions submitted by his campaign, going against the station’s practice and those of most news outlets. “On July 3, the first post-debate interview with President Joe Biden was arranged and negotiated independently by WURD radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders without knowledge, consultation or collaboration with WURD management,” Sara M. Lomax, president and CEO of WURD Radio said in a statement. “The interview featured pre-determined questions provided by the White House, which violates our practice of remaining an independent media outlet accountable to our listeners. As a result, Ms. Lawful-Sanders and WURD Radio mutually agreed to part ways, effective immediately.” Lomax described the station as Philadelphia’s only independently owned Black talk radio station. She said such a move violated the trust the station has developed with its audience over the last two decades, and “is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy.” She added: “WURD Radio is not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other Administration,” and that “we will commit to reviewing our policies, procedures, and practices to reinforce WURD’s independence and trust with our listeners. But mainstream media should do its own introspection to explore how they have lost the trust of so many Americans, Black Americans chief among them.” In a one-minute video posted on Facebook on Sunday, Lawful-Sanders said, “effective immediately I am no longer an on-air host at WURD. I tendered my resignation yesterday. It was accepted.” more at the link
https://reason.com/2024/07/08/if-you-dont-trust-media-now-wait-until-its-government-funded/ 19 minutes ago If You Don't Trust Media Now, Wait Until It's Government-Funded by J.D. Tuccille 7.8.2024 7:00 AM In May, the New York State government agreed to subsidize news media. With audiences declining for news reports, many Very Concerned People have called on governments to Do Something to prop up outlets failing to win enough public support to keep the lights on. That something comes in the form of money unlikely to win back an indifferent public but that stabilizes employment prospects for reporters. The result may be that journalists will cater to state officials rather than woo readers and viewers. New York's Welfare for Journalists "With the passage of this bill, New York is now the first state in the nation to incentivize hiring and retaining local journalists," trumpeted Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D–Manhattan), who pushed the idea as separate legislation before getting it incorporated into the state's massive 2025 budget. Specifically, the legislation allows tax credits for up to half of journalists' salaries. "The Local Journalism Sustainability Act was included in New York's recently passed state budget, setting aside $90 million to subsidize local news for the next three years," reportedCameron Joseph of the Columbia Journalism Review. "Eligible outlets can apply to receive a refundable tax credit of up to $25,000 for the first $50,000 worth of employees' salaries, with a per-company cap of $300,000. That's a lot of money for a small newsroom, and could help stave off further layoffs and outlet closures." Not every outlet can write off employment costs. Excluded, maybe accidentally, are nonprofit operations as well as those owned by publicly traded companies, which means most of the state's TV and radio stations are out of luck. Despite years of lobbying and repeated attempts to introduce media subsidies as stand-alone bills, the proposal was incorporated into the state budget in "a last-minute scramble," according to Jon Campbell of Gothamist. That left legislators unsure about what was in the bill and confused about its application to organizations the tax code treats in different ways. "The law doesn't try to police the viewpoints of eligible media outlets," adds Campbell. "But the law allows the state's economic development agency to 'list certain types of establishments as ineligible' — a broad phrasing that gives the agency a huge amount of leeway as it crafts regulations in the coming months." When Government Officials Become the Intended Audience That could be a problem if it turns into an overt effort to regulate media content at a time when governments have tried to penalize political foes and suppress dissenting views. But using tax dollars to underwrite media operations that are shedding readers and viewers is a problem as well. If a massive chunk of journalists' income comes from one reliable source—government coffers—they'll inevitably treat government as the audience to please rather than locals who've proven difficult to court and who distrust the press. Under such subsidies, the future of local media could be one of well-funded media outlets ignored by their nominal communities as they produce reports tailored for the tastes of bureaucrats with funding power. That's been an ongoing problem with publicly funded journalism. "In Europe, we have seen governments harm the reputation and independence of public media to the point of limiting their citizens' access to differing points of view," Freedom House research analyst Jessica White wrote last month. "Reversing years of political pressure on weakened or totally co-opted outlets is a tall order. But newly elected governments in Europe are seizing the opportunity to do just that." White places much blame on authoritarian regimes, such as Viktor Orbán's self-described "illiberal" democracy in Hungary. But she concedes one of her supposed champions of reform, Poland's Donald Tusk, "raised eyebrows within the legal community" when he bypassed parliament to gain control of public media from partisans of the previous populist government. Now public media is "criticized for favoring Tusk's government." In fact, alleged champions of liberal democracy have been poor custodians of free expression across much of the world. more
conclusion Government Is No Champion of Free Expression In December, a report from The Future of Free Speech, an independent think tank at Vanderbilt University, warned, "the global landscape for freedom of expression has faced severe challenges in 2023. Even open democracies have implemented restrictive measures." The report documented how obsession with "hate speech," "terrorist content," and "disinformation" are wielded as bludgeons by officials against critics of government officials and their policies. Those "newly elected" reformist governments in which Freedom House's Jessica White places so much faith may not be riding to the rescue. The problem probed by The Future of Free Speech report isn't confined to public media, but rather features holistic attacks on expression by government officials grown intolerant of dissent. It's worse, though, when outlets are directly controlled by the state—or even when they're just tax-funded. Uri Berliner, then of NPR, described in April how the public broadcaster came to be dominated by "the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population." The broadcaster has been shedding audience, but its finances remain stable—backed heavily (though not exclusively) by public funds. That's not a function of government censorship, but of an institutional culture pleasing its participants, and its patrons, in the absence of pressure to court listeners from the general public. In a country with a multitude of alternatives, that's less dangerous than cause for changing the station. But if government gets in the habit of subsidizing media outlets that are struggling to find audiences, government officials will become the only audience that matters to a growing number of newspapers and broadcasters. And New York isn't alone. Last year, Catherine Buni of Nieman Reports found "state-level experiments designed to support local journalism as a crucial public service are expanding, from New Jersey to California, New Mexico to Wisconsin, Illinois to Washington, and beyond." None are yet as ambitious as the New York effort, but all represent a move toward divorcing journalism outlets from a need to serve readers and listeners to remain financially afloat. Maybe Control Is the Whole Point To some, that's a feature. Media activists Robert McChesney and John Nichols have long favored government funding of news media. They also believe "the urgency to assert public control over the media system has never been greater." It's easy to see state subsidies leading to their desired control. Americans are fleeing traditional news media now over trust issues and concerns about bias. But they can still seek out competitors with different takes. Just wait until the real audience is government.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...-biden-trump/#link-3VPKM2YF4ZGNXOBEEEHBZMBZ6E By Nicole Markus Vice President Harris criticized the press for not covering issues “to the extent that they should,” pointing to the recent Supreme Court presidential immunity decision as an example. She also called out Project 2025 and put the focus on the dangers of a second Trump administration.
we've lost George George Stephanopoulos says ‘I don’t think’ Biden can serve 4 more years after ABC interview https://nypost.com/2024/07/09/us-ne...n-can-serve-4-more-years-after-abc-interview/
I have not heard much of this but from what I gather this is about preserving local media In rural communities. Because of Media consolidation many rural are losing local media like newspapers and radio stations. As such specific issues like municipal Government aren’t being reported.
MSNBC does not air ‘Morning Joe’ after Trump assassination attempt https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4772483-msnbc-morning-joe-not-aired-trump-assassination-attempt/ excerpt: CNN reported Monday, citing a person familiar, that the decision to not air "Morning Joe" after the shooting was made to "avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole." more at the link
2024’s Biggest Loser Is The Corporate Media Industrial Complex Kamala Harris is only the second-biggest loser of the night. Her media shills are nursing wounds that will take far longer to recover from. https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/06/2024s-biggest-loser-is-the-corporate-media-industrial-complex/
