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misinformation
Dying in Broad Daylight: Media Outlets That Self-Censor for Trump
What we are witnessing is not simply right-wing ascendency in national politics but a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism.
Jan 13, 2025
Two billionaire publishers, the Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos and the LA Times Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked their editorial page editors from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election (a Washington Post editorial cartoonist than quit when her cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos, Son-Shiong and other billionaires abasing themselves in front of Trump was killed). If you believe the Washington Post’s slogan that ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ their owner was the first to switch off the light.
Soon-Shiong also blocked an editorial asking the Senate to perform its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on Trump’s cabinet picks. Next ABC News (owned by Disney) agreed to pay $15 million in a settlement of a Trump defamation lawsuit plus $1 million in attorney fees because George Stephanopoulos said on his Sunday show that Trump was found liable for the ‘rape’ of writer E. Jean Carroll. Actually, he was found guilty of ‘sexual abuse’ because a New York civil jury believed her claim that he forced his fingers into her vagina but was uncertain if he also used his penis. New York law states only penile penetration is considered rape. This was a case ABC could have easily pursued in court but made a political—really a business—decision not to because Disney has less courage than a mouse.
Trump is now suing the Des Moines Register and their pollster for a pre-election poll suggesting he would not do as well as he did in Iowa. And, while you probably shouldn’t be getting your news from Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has also announced the end of fact-checking on his Meta platforms in the U.S. which won him a compliment from president-elect Trump.
While billionaire 'tech bros’ like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg embrace Trump and Trumpism, working journalists are portrayed as part of an elite that he has defined as ‘enemies of the people’ mainly for exposing the machinations of those in power including the president-elect.
It seems likely that top-down self-censorship may preempt the expected legal attacks on critical coverage from the incoming administration that has been promised by Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel and, of course, by Trump himself.
This is in large measure the result not simply of right-wing ascendency in national politics but of a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism. Also, helping to undermine the public’s ability to stay informed is the rise of the internet as a selective news source which generates revenue by reinforcing existing biases through algorithmic infrastructure that aims to keep viewers online longer.
While billionaire tech ‘bros’ like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg embrace Trump and Trumpism, working journalists are portrayed as part of an elite that he has defined as ‘enemies of the people’ mainly for exposing the machinations of those in power including the president-elect.
The proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and incitement to hate on social media or through the use of AI fakes also raises questions about who’s left to mediate what passes for news and to sort facts from fabrication...
I’ve worked as a freelance journalist for half a century. According to a study by the job recruitment company Zippia there are close to 15,000 freelance reporters working in the U.S. whose demographics skew slightly more white and female, than the nation as a whole and who earn an average of $61,000 a year compared to full-time journalists who average $86,000. Freelancers make up a third of the 45,000 working journalists in the U.S. so figure your news is coming not from some media “elite,” that promote “fake news,” but working people like myself covering wars, politics, pandemics and the climate emergency.
Earlier in this century I got to train colleagues in Poland, Turkey, Tunisia and elsewhere on environmental reporting. I remember in Turkey going over some of the basics of investigative reporting including always keeping good notes and tapes stored and dated including by year as some stories become beats that can continue over a lifetime. Sergei Kiselyov, a Ukrainian colleague who’d covered the Chernobyl disaster, offered an addendum, “I’d just suggest you also keep your notes and files somewhere other than your home or office so that when the police come to look for them, they won’t be there.” This tip is worth keeping in mind over the next several years.
Most journalists of course are less likely to be jailed than to be laid off. Many of my friends and colleagues who worked in newspapers are now freelancers like myself, the newspaper industry being in a near terminal stage of collapse. This is largely due to loss of revenue to online advertising, corporate consolidation, and hedge fund predation where operating enterprises are bought up, wrung out (staff layoffs focused on older higher-paid reporters doing complex investigative work), and then sold off for parts (printing presses, data-bases, real-estate). This has resulted in massive job loss. Newsroom employment dropped 26 percent between 2008 and 2020 according to a study by the Pew Research Center and continues today. I know of one Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who agreed to a one-third pay cut rather than see a second wave of layoffs further hollow out their publication.
Most journalists of course are less likely to be jailed than to be laid off.
The loss of competitive newspapers has resulted in the absence of a lot of good reporting, particularly at the local and regional level where many papers continue to shut down each year. Since most local TV news stations depend on local newspapers for their hard news this has also had a cascading effect on the public’s ability to access reliable information about those with and in power and how they’re wielding it from zoning boards to local corporations and government agencies. Many people have turned instead to unreliable online social media including bloggers and influencers to get their information.
The proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and incitement to hate on social media or through the use of AI fakes also raises questions about who’s left to mediate what passes for news and to sort facts from fabrication, particularly at a time when much of the public now agree with Donald Trump. An October 2024 Gallup poll found 69% of the public has either “no trust” or “not very much confidence” in the media. When I began working in 1974 over 70% of the public trusted the news media. And with some reason.
When I was covering the wars in Central America I asked my friend photo-journalist John Hoagland how he saw our role. “I don’t believe in objectivity because everyone has a point of view,” he said. “What I say is I’m not going to be a propagandist for anyone. If you do something right, I’m going to take your picture. If you do something wrong, I’ll take your picture also.” He was killed in crossfire a year later. Ironically the best recent movie on how reporters actually behave under fire and under stress is ‘Civil War’ that is set in a near-future America at war with itself.
With the “legacy” network news operations of ABC, CBS and NBC now under the control of Disney, Comcast, and ViacomCBS, major corporations dependent on the regulatory whims of Donald Trump, and with Trump’s talk of eliminating public funding for PBS (and its ‘News Hour’ and ‘Frontline’ reporting) plus ‘news outlets’ such as Fox and the Sinclair Broadcast Group that owns 294 TV stations covering 40% of U.S. households, acting more as propaganda arms of the MAGA movement than traditional sources of broadcast journalism, the likelihood of much critical mainstream coverage during a second Trump administration is doubtful even before the expected lawsuits, indictments, and jailing of journalists.
To paraphrase a quote from a darker time, “First they came for the journalists and then we don’t know what happened.”
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Musk Slammed for Spreading Disinformation as He Seeks to Boost Far Right in Europe
Musk wants countries including Germany "to be weakened and plunge into chaos," said one critic.
Jan 06, 2025
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday was the latest European leader to lambast Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and top adviser to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, for his meddling in political battles in Europe after he exerted enormous influence over the U.S. elections.
In a foreign policy speech in Paris, Macron expressed disbelief that Musk, who owns the social media platform X and has used it to boost far-right ideologies in the U.S., would now "support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany."
Displaying an apparent "sense of having the world as his stage," as Jackson James of the German Marshall Fund toldThe Hill, Musk wrote in an op-ed at the German magazine Welt am Sonntag last week that "as someone who has invested significantly in Germany's industrial and technological landscape, I believe I have earned the right to speak candidly about its political direction."
According to Musk, that direction should move toward Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that last year included a candidate who asserted the Nazi paramilitaries were "not all criminals."
The party is virulently ant-immigration and has been designated by the German domestic intelligence service as a "suspected extremist" organization. Authorities also warned last month that other states could attempt to influence the country's snap elections in February through disinformation, cyberattacks, and other means.
As German voters prepare to go to the polls, AfD has about 20% support in recent opinion polls, compared to an alliance between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), whose support stands at 31%. All the country's political parties have said they would not form a coalition with AfD.
In his op-ed Musk invoked the sexual orientation of AfD co-chair Alice Weidel, suggesting the party isn't on the far right.
"The description of AfD as far-right is made obviously false simply by noting that Alice Weidel, the party leader has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka!" wrote Musk. "Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please."
Lars Klingbeil, leader of German Chancellor Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party, compared Musk to Russian President Vladimir Putin, tellingFunke media group that "both want to influence our elections and are deliberately supporting the AfD, the enemies of democracy."
"They want Germany to be weakened and plunge into chaos," Klingbeil said.
Musk's commentary on Germany's upcoming elections has tended toward vulgar, with the SpaceX CEO responding to accusations of meddling by calling Scholz "Chancellor Oaf Schitz or whatever his name is."
When a researcher in Finland said on Sunday that Musk is "rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history," the top adviser to the incoming president of the United States replied: "F U retard."
In the United Kingdom—where Musk has significant business interests, as he does in Germany—the entrepreneur last week boosted the far-right Reform Party, adding days later that the organization's leader, Member of Parliament Nigel Farage, "doesn't have what it takes."
Musk met with Farage and Reform treasurer Nick Candy last month at Trump's Florida estate, and Candy told The Financial Times recently that Musk could be a billionaire donor to the party through his electric vehicle company, Tesla, which provides grid batteries in the U.K.
As he's promoted Reform—which opposes "uncontrolled immigration" and would impose drastic cuts to "wasteful government spending"—Musk has taken aim at the center-left Labour Party.
On Sunday Musk took to his social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, to ask whether the U.S. should "liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government."
Musk attacked Jess Phillips, parliamentary undersecretary of state for safeguarding, as a "rape genocide apologist" for denying requests for the Home Office to open an inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the town of Oldham.
Phillips should "be in prison," Musk said—a comment that Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the Labour Party said amounted to the "poison of the far right" and led to serious threats against Phillips.
Musk accused Starmer of being "complicit in the rape of Britain" by allegedly failing to confront a child sexual abuse scandal more than a decade ago in northern England. Starmer defended his record as the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as Phillips'.
“And those attacking Jess Phillips, whom I'm proud to call a colleague and a friend, on protecting victims—Jess Phillips has done 1,000 times more than they've even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse throughout her entire career," said Starmer on Monday. "And when I was chief prosecutor for five years, I tackled that head-on, because I could see what was happening, and that's why I reopened cases that have been closed and supposedly finished."
The prime minister added that "those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they're not interested in victims. They're interested in themselves."
Ed Davey, leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats Party, said Monday that "people have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country's democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain."
"It's time to summon the U.S. ambassador to ask why an incoming U.S. official is suggesting the U.K. government should be overthrown," said Davey. "This dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric is further proof that the U.K. can't rely on the Trump administration."
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What Can We Do as Democracy’s Enemy—Disinformation—Gains Ground?
Deep change requires courage. So, with pounding hearts let us jump into this contentious arena.
Dec 23, 2024
It’s a crisis. America is now among 11 nations deemed most threatened by both mis-and disinformation.
Little wonder that almost 90% of us fear our country is on the “wrong track.” And, President-elect Trump has led the way with 492 suspect claims in just the first hundred days of his first presidency. Then, before the 2020 vote, in a single day he made 503 false or misleading claims. By term’s end he’d uttered 30,573 lies, reports The Washington Post.
Now, he is joined by his promoter Elon Musk who is flooding his own platform X with disinformation—for example, about the bipartisan end-of-year funding deal.
The stakes are high as “post-truth is pre-fascism,” warns Yale history professor Timothy Synder in On Tyranny. Pretty grim.
Some play down our current “mis-and-disinformation” crisis as nothing new. Referring to the Vietnam War era, the Heritage Foundation says “Trump is not guilty of any lie, falsehood, fabrication, false claim, or toxic exaggeration that equals the lies of one past president [Lyndon Johnson] whose Alamo-sized ego caused the deaths of thousands of Americans.” In 2018, Heritage dismissed Trump’s lies as insignificant embellishment about “his wealth, his girlfriends of decades ago, or the size of his inaugural crowd.”
Yet, his more recent lies have had deadly consequences. Playing down the severity of Covid-19, Trump described it as “like the flu,” “under control,” and “already disappearing.” His casting doubt about protective measures likely contributed to “tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths,” reported health scientists.
After losing the presidential race in 2020, he repeatedly reinforced unsubstantiated questioning of electoral integrity. “Trump’s big lie”—sparking a violent insurrection on January 6—caused multiple deaths and helped trigger stricter voter-registration laws.
Trump’s actions may have taken us into a new era some call “post-truth” politics. So, what might this mean? And how might we learn from democracies standing up against mis- and disinformation?
Lies are about a particular event—as in former President Bill Clinton’s denial of an extramarital affair; whereas “post -truth” refers to a “shift to another reality” in which facts don’t matter anymore, observes Irish philosopher Vittorio Bufacchi.
The stakes are high as “post-truth is pre-fascism,” warns Yale history professor Timothy Synder in On Tyranny. Pretty grim.
But to step up most of us need to sense the possibility of success, or at least movement in the direction of well-being. So, where might we find grounds for honest hope? Let’s look at what courageous peer nations are doing.
Between 2011 and 2022, 78 countries passed misinformation and disinformation laws covering social media, including Germany’s “anti-hate-speech law.” Yes, some measures have been criticized for unintended consequences. In authoritarian states and those with weak guardrails against misuse, they can cause harm. As in the monarchy Bahrain. It used fake news laws to control content and threaten journalists with arrest. Some critics note that Germany’s anti-hate-speech risks “over-blocking” content.
But we cannot afford to give up.
Fact-checking news websites such as PolitiFact and Snopes—flagging content on social media—are valiant efforts. So far they’ve been only moderately helpful, but we can learn from their experience to create a holistic, long-term approach to countering mis-and-disinformation.
One key will be more independent and public journalism, including PBS and NPR, driven not by narrow profit or partisan agendas. As local journalism—perhaps easiest to hold accountable—has suffered a sharp decline in the past decades, state and local governments can step up with financial support and incentives. Here, many peer nations can inspire us.
Several have much to teach us about addressing disinformation with public news media. One exemplar is New Zealand with a unique approach. Since 1989, its Broadcast Standards Authority has offered an easily accessible, transparent online platform for any citizen to call out disinformation. The authority is tasked with investigating and requiring removal of what is both false and harmful material.
The BSA seems to have been both cautious and effective.
In the early years, complaints were upheld in 30% of cases. But by 2021-22, those upheld had shrunk to just under 5%. That’s a big change. And, a possible implication? Knowing one can be exposed for harmful lies can discourage perpetrators.
“BSA has, over more than three decades, overseen a standards system that has been a game changer in delivering on a vision of freedom in broadcasting without harm,” says its chief executive Stacey Wood.
Want to know more?
See our exploration in Crisis of Trust: How Can Democracies Protect Against Dangerous Lies?
Another key?
Strengthening media literacy. Sadly, as of 2023 only three states required media literacy classes. So let us quickly spread this opportunity to strengthen our ability not only to critically assess information but also identify motives behind the lies. The News Literacy Project provides helpful resources and programs.
Finally, we can encourage public debate and action to transform social media platforms into fact-based public discourse, functioning without harm. “At the end of the day,” observes Cornell psychologist Gordon Pennycook, “you cannot use psychological interventions to resolve this problem. There are structural, systematic, underlying problems that need to be dealt with.” Platforms such as X systemically spread disinformation.
So, what can we do?
Initiatives around the world are calling for public-or-user-owned platforms, such as the Platform Cooperativism Consortium. We can strengthen emerging alternatives like Bluesky or Mastodon, as we simultaneously urge for public regulation, such as the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
There’s no “silver bullet,” of course. But the good news is that many Americans are awakening to the disinformation crisis after experiencing tragically unnecessary Covid-19 deaths and facing today’s unprecedented lies from our president-elect.
For sure, deep change requires courage. So, with pounding hearts let us jump into this contentious arena. We can spark discussion-and-action commitments within our own families, friendship circles, schools at all levels, and workplaces. We can fortify our determination by exploring and sharing the innovations of others.
Together, we can make history as we help save our democracy from today’s deadly disinformation plague.
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