Qatar’s WAR against Israel & The U.S. (Dominating the media and academia with oil money)
Qatar’s WAR against Israel & The U.S. (Dominating the media and academia with oil money)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obs_a5jW0Tk
Tag: media
He took the iconic Trump fist-pump photo. Now he’s fighting Trump to be allowed back in the Oval Office.
“When a would-be assassin’s bullet struck Donald Trump’s ear, Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci — dodging bullets himself — captured the iconic image of a bloodied Trump, rising to his feet and pumping his fist.
But for the past six weeks, Vucci has been barred from covering many other historic moments in the Trump White House, thanks to the president’s decision to punish the AP for its refusal to embrace his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/27/associated-press-court-hearing-trump-00253952
Probably The Most Unhinged Joe Rogan Podcast Ever | ANYTHING ELSE
Huge podcaster facilitates the spreading of false information to his gigantic audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NxnuWM6tnY
Trump Is Targeting Media and Chilling Free Speech
“Multiple lawsuits he’s filed against media operations are “chilling attempts to convert Trump’s complaints about press coverage into causes of action are legally baseless and blatantly unconstitutional,” notes Reason’s Jacob Sullum. He used as an example Trump’s recent social-media post after MSNBC cancelled a TV show: “Fake News is an UNPARDONABLE SIN! The whole corrupt operation is nothing more than an illegal arm of the Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.”
Trump, who calls the media the “enemy of the people,” is all for a free press as long as it’s parroting his political line. He recently booted the Associated Press—which despite its biases provides mostly nuts-and-bolts reporting—from presidential events after it refused to start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, following our Chief Mapmaker’s childish edict. This is bullying.
The New York Times reported that the administration “would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, the small, rotating group of reporters who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public.” This is not just an assault on protocol, but a glaring attempt to punish outlets that don’t bend the knee. A California Assembly speaker once denied my reporting team press passes for dubious reasons. It’s hard to do one’s job as a journalist if the government denies you access to its activities.
Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, recently threatened criminal investigations of members of Congress and the media who have criticized Elon Musk and his team of DOGE budget-cutters. It’s preposterous for prosecutors to treat feisty comments as “threats,” which is the justification used by Martin’s office. And, as a letter from various civil-rights groups points out, it is certainly not a crime “to identify individuals openly conducting government work that is of the utmost public concern.”
A Trump executive order relating to anti-Israel protests called on universities to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff.” It’s fine to deport visiting students who engage in violence and law-breaking—but the highly respected and non-ideological rights group, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), argues that this edict “would make universities monitor students’ constitutionally protected speech.”
There are plenty of other examples to belie MAGA’s boast that it champions free-speech absolutism.”
https://reason.com/2025/03/07/trump-is-targeting-media-and-chilling-free-speech/
Associated Press blocked from Oval Office for not using ‘Gulf of America’
‘Media, if you don’t use the words we want you to use, we are gonna make your job harder.’
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/11/associated-press-gulf-of-mexico-oval-office-016418
Paramount Shouldn’t Fold to Trump
“CBS is back in the news. Less than two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, the network’s parent company Paramount is considering settling his lawsuit claiming CBS’ coverage of the presidential campaign—and, in particular, an allegedly deceptively edited interview with Kamala Harris—was unfair and somehow harmed him. Reports have tied this possible settlement to Paramount’s planned merger with Skydance, which Paramount shareholders fear the new administration could try to block or delay.
Notably, this also comes against a backdrop of President Trump’s appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr rattling his saber at broadcast networks that have earned the president’s ire.
Shortly before the inauguration, under the guidance of its former, Joe Biden–appointed chair, the FCC dismissed complaints against ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC regarding broadcasts during the campaign—including CBS’ 60 Minutes Harris interview. In doing so, the FCC emphasized the importance of honoring CBS’ editorial discretion and broadcasters’ First Amendment right to report on matters of public concern as they see fit. But Trump’s handpicked successor has indicated the FCC will reconsider that dismissal, along with the NBC and ABC dismissals (but not the Fox dismissal, unsurprisingly).
Freedom of the press protects journalists and the news media in publishing information—especially in the political sphere—free from official censorship. In that way, a free press serves a vital role as the “Fourth Estate” in our democratic society, keeping citizens informed so that individuals may oversee their government’s actions. As Ida B. Wells stated, “The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.”
That’s why it’s concerning that CBS would go to the mattresses over a halftime show for a game it gets once every fourth year, or even a bread-and-butter scripted show like Without a Trace, but would capitulate when it comes to its news and political coverage. Already the network is reportedly poised to comply with an FCC demand for the transcript and camera feeds from the 60 Minutes interview.
When parties to legal disputes resolve them with monetary payments rather than seeing them through to a decision, it is often said they are “buying peace.” Here, there is no peace to be bought, at least not without reassurance from the courts that CBS can cover political matters as its editorial discretion dictates, no matter how much it might displease the president or his appointees.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/04/paramount-shouldnt-fold-to-trump/
Given George Stephanopoulos’ Carelessness, ABC’s Defamation Settlement With Trump Seems Prudent
“In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC’s This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been “found liable for rape.” A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed Trump civilly liable for “sexual abuse,” not “rape.” Over the weekend, ABC News announced that it had reached a $15 million settlement with Trump in the form of a contribution to Trump’s presidential library. ABC also agreed to cover $1 million in Trump’s legal expenses.
The settlement is highly unusual in the annals of Trump’s many lawsuits against news outlets, which typically feature claims with a much weaker legal and empirical basis. Some Trump critics explicitly or implicitly faulted ABC for folding, saying its decision is apt to have a chilling impact on journalism. But any such threat can be mitigated by applying normal standards of journalistic care—standards that Stephanopoulos conspicuously failed to uphold in this case.
In his interview with Mace, Stephanopoulos was talking about two cases involving the journalist E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In one case, a New York jury last year concluded that Carroll had proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump had “sexually abused” her. The jurors also agreed that Trump had defamed Carroll by calling her a liar and awarded her $5 million in damages. But they expressly concluded that Carroll had failed to prove Trump had “raped” her.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/16/given-george-stephanopoulos-carelessness-abcs-defamation-settlement-with-trump-seems-prudent/
D.C. Circuit Court Upholds TikTok Ban, Prioritizing ‘National Security’ Over Free Speech
“The law defined the term “controlled by a foreign adversary” to include not only companies owned wholly by Chinese entities but also one in which a citizen of an adversarial nation “directly or indirectly own[s] at least a 20 percent stake.” In other words, even if the overwhelming majority of a company’s shares were owned by Americans, it could be banned or forced to divest so long as the remaining shares were held by Chinese, Russian, or Iranian citizens.
In order to continue operating within the United States, the only recourse would be to sell TikTok to an American company by January 19, 2025—Joe Biden’s last full day in office.
TikTok and ByteDance sued, asking courts to declare the law unconstitutional. “For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” the lawsuit argued. Lawmakers’ “speculative concerns fall far short of what is required when First Amendment rights are at stake.”
The plaintiffs claimed that the law’s restrictions were subject to strict scrutiny—the highest standard of review that a court can apply to an action, reserved for potential burdens on fundamental constitutional rights. “The Act represents a content- and viewpoint-based restriction on protected speech,” the lawsuit said, and the law’s divest-or-be-banned provision constitutes “an unlawful prior restraint.”
…
“a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs, finding “the Government’s justifications are compelling” and that it did not violate the First Amendment for the state to single out one company for disfavored treatment.
“We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote for the majority. “We therefore deny the petitions.”
Ginsburg notes that while the law does require “heightened scrutiny,” it satisfies the requirements of strict scrutiny because of how narrowly tailored it was: “The Act was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents. It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC.”
In fact, that “national security threat” was not very “well-substantiated” at all—but the court didn’t seem to mind.
“TikTok contends the Government’s content-manipulation rationale is speculative and based upon factual errors,” Ginsburg wrote, referring to lawmakers’ concerns that Beijing could manipulate content on TikTok to promote Chinese propaganda. “TikTok fails, however, to grapple fully with the Government’s submissions. On the one hand, the Government acknowledges that it lacks specific intelligence that shows the PRC has in the past or is now coercing TikTok into manipulating content in the United States.” But “the Government is aware ‘that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to PRC demands to censor content outside of China'” and “‘have a demonstrated history of manipulating the content on their platforms, including at the direction of the PRC.'”
…
“It may be that the PRC has not yet done so in the United States or, as the Government suggests, the Government’s lack of evidence to that effect may simply reflect limitations on its ability to monitor TikTok,” Ginsburg shrugs. “In any event, the Government reasonably predicts that TikTok ‘would try to comply if the PRC asked for specific actions to be taken to manipulate content for censorship, propaganda, or other malign purposes’ in the United States.”
The court’s decision is yet another instance where vague claims of “national security” trump individuals’ First Amendment rights. Claiming that Congress has the authority to force a company to sell one of its holdings—not through an established power like antitrust, but simply because they don’t like how it could be used in the future—is not only a weak justification; it is a plainly unconstitutional one.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/06/d-c-circuit-court-upholds-tiktok-ban-prioritizing-national-security-over-free-speech/
An Overlooked — and Increasingly Important — Clue to How People Vote
“While 3 percent of seniors get their information from social media, 46 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds do.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/09/social-media-traditional-news-elections-00188548
Megyn Kelly’s Phony Feminism On Full Display With Hegseth
Trump pick accused of sexual assault and abusing women claims accusations are based on nothing when there’s a police report and the words of his own mother. He acts like “they” are out to get him rather than dealing truthfully with the evidence against him. Megyn Kelly lets such bullshit go unchallenged like she doesn’t care or didn’t do basic homework before talking to an important guest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc0xxKO0f0M