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Mark Zuckerberg Abandons Fact-Checking on Facebook

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2025 //
10

Oliver Darcy, media journalist, reports that Mark Zuckerberg has followed the lead of Elon Musk by abandoning fact-checking.

The No-Fact Zone: Meta announced Thursday it will launch its forthcoming “community notes” feature next week to replace fact-checkers, once again going to Fox News for the rollout as the Mark Zuckerberg-led social giant runs to the right. Joel Kaplan, Meta’snew global affairs officer, blasted the company’s own longstanding fact-checking program, telling Fox’s Brooke Singman it “proved to be really prone to partisan political bias” and was “essentially a censorship tool,” echoing false claims parroted by right-wing media figures and lawmakers. Unlike the fact-checking program, Meta’s community notes will rely on users who are not bound by ethical guidelines to police content for fairness and accuracy, taking a page straight out of Elon Musk’s X. Kaplan told Singman that posts with a community note applied will not be penalized and will continue to thrive on the platform, setting the stage for viral misinformation. While Zuckerberg and Kaplan are portraying the move as a win for free speech—earning praise from Donald Trump—it will surely serve to muddy the waters on some of the world’s biggest social platforms.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Reform, Ethics, Fake News, Ignorance, Lies, Media

Trump Shutters “Voice of America”

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2025 //
25

Trump has closed down the Voice of America, the government-run radio service that has brought news to 420 million listeners around the world since 1942, during World War II. Although he appointed Kari Lake, a Trump ally and election-denier who lost races for Governor of Arizona and the U.S. Senate, to take charge of Voice of America, her assignment just disappeared.

The Washington Post reported (with an emphasis on Kari Lake’s tough luck):

During his first term, Donald Trump accused Voice of America of speaking “for America’s adversaries — not its citizens.” Over the weekend, he essentially dismantled it.
Late Friday, Trump issued an executive order that directed VOA and an array of federal offices to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” About 1,000 journalists were placed on indefinite leave. Those who showed up to work to broadcast their programs were locked out of the building…

Voice of America delivers news coverage to countries around the world where a free press is threatened or nonexistent. At its start, VOA told stories about democracy to people in Nazi Germany. VOA and affiliates such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia are designed as a form of soft diplomacy, a way to tout the United States’ free-press values in countries where antidemocratic forces prevail.

Who benefits by closing the VOA?

Russia. China. North Korea. Iran. And every other authoritarian regime.

Tough luck for Lake but good news for repressive dictatorships.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Extremism, Media, Trump

Washington Post: New White House Strategy: Promote Trump as “King”

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2025 //
16

Jeff Bezos may have neutered the editorial pages of The Washington Post but he has not silenced the news reporting. Here is a terrifying example. Their communications strategy is to focus relentlessly on Trump as a “king,” a man of supernatural power. This is a gift article so you should be able to open the link and see the illustrations.

Drew Harrell and Sarah Ellison wrote:

When actress Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video in January in which she cried about the Trump administration’s deportations of children, the viral clip threatened to stoke nationwide unease over the policy’s human impact.

But the White House digital strategy team had a plan. They dispatched videographers to interview the mothers of children killed by undocumented immigrants. They put President Donald Trump’s face on a Valentine’s Day card reading: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.”

And they mimicked a style of video popular for its meditative soundscapes, known as ASMR, with a presentation that featured the rattling handcuff chains of a deportation flight. Gomez deleted her video shortly after posting, without specifying why. The Trump team’s video has been viewed more than 100 million times.

The effort was part of a new administration strategy to transform the traditional White House press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation, disseminating messages directly to Americans through the memes, TikToks and podcasts where millions now get their news.

After years of working to undermine mainstream outlets and neutralize critical reporting, Trump’s allies are now pushing a parallel information universe of social media feeds and right-wing firebrands to sell the country on his expansionist approach to presidential power.

For the Trump team, that has involved aggressively confronting critics like Gomez, not just to “reframe the narrative” but to drown them out, said Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president who runs the digital team.

“We thought it was necessary to provide pushback in the harshest, most forceful way possible,” he said. “And through that, we had a viral hit on our hands.”

Stephen K. Bannon, a senior White House aide during Trump’s first term and the host of the “War Room” podcast, said the White House has reimagined itself as a “major information content provider.” What Trump does “is the action, and we just happen to be one of the distributors,” he said.

“Rapid-response communications are normally defensive,” he said. “They’re all offense, all the time.”

The White House’s rapid-response account posted 207 times to X on Tuesday, the day of Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, or nearly nine posts an hour, including Trump sound bites, supporter interviews and Democrat-slamming memes and attack lines. When a Fox News analyst called Trump “the political colossus of our time,” the team got the clip cut, captioned and posted online within 11 minutes.

In press rooms, the administration is welcoming friendly “new media” podcasters, X users and YouTubers to deliver what White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt calls “news-related content” to their millions of followers.

And on social media, the White House is firing off talking points across every platform in a bid to win online attention and reach viewers who have tuned out the traditional press. In an X post, communications director Steven Cheung described their goal: “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”

The administration has produced news-style reports trumpeting Trump’s successes and put them in email newsletters and Leavitt-narrated “MAGA Minute” video segments; soon, they’ll be delivered via text.

The team has worked to humanize the president with picturesque postcards of a White House snowfall and behind-the-scenes videos from the Oval Office — where a New York Post showing the president’s mug shot hangs framed just outside the door. But the digital team has also gone for shock factor, posting a photo of chained men shuffling onto a transport jet (“Deportation Flights Have Begun”) and a portrait of Trump with a golden crown (“LONG LIVE THE KING”).

The president has appointed influential social media figures across the federal government — like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel — who amplify his messages with their own marketing pushes. Trump has also fired off attention-getting posts of his own, including an AI-generated videotransforming the war-torn Gaza Strip into a gilded Trump beach resort, in line with his call to forcibly remove millions of people from Palestinian land.

The administration’s brash campaign-style tactics are designed to stand out on a crowded internet and speak to voters that officials believe are hungry for aggressive action.

“Even the tagline we’ve been using — ‘America is back’ — is very much saying: ‘We’re here. We’re in your face.’ It’s irreverent. It’s unapologetic,” Dorr, 32, said. (A veteran of both Trump campaigns, Dorr also worked as a “head of engagement” at Gettr, the right-wing social network run by Jason Miller.)

The posts have shocked and repulsed the left, leading Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to say on X: “To find joy and entertainment in this is truly vile.” But the Trump team has been emboldened to go even further by the millions who have watched, shared and followed the accounts since Trump’s inauguration. Half of the White House’s Instagram views have come from non-followers, Dorr said, a sign that the team’s messages are gaining traction beyond Trump’s base.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the approach is built to reach audiences without the media’s help and to broadcast Trump’s “America First message far and wide.”

But this model of messaging could supercharge the presidential bully pulpit until it shifts Americans’ perception of events, according to experts who study propaganda and the press. Like Trump’s moves to shore up loyalty in Congress and remake the judiciary, the strategy is designed to weaken his opponents and dismantle checks against executive power.

Undermining the accountability mission of the Fourth Estate and building a viral pipeline of state media helps the administration — and future ones — stifle dissent, said Anya Schiffrin, a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs.

And by replacing dispassionate observers with partisan cheerleaders, political leaders are elevating a class of messengers incentivized to defend their decisions, no matter the seriousness or scale. Every policy maneuver could turn into a meme.

Said Renee Hobbs, a communications professor at the University of Rhode Island: “It’s an effort to replace the mainstream press with a partisan press” that will function as the new “purveyors of reality.”

‘Going to be great television’

Though members of the digital team serve on the front lines of what the White House calls the “most transparent administration” in history, Trump officials requested that their identities remain anonymous, citing personnel policy and concern over public backlash.

The team is made up of roughly a dozen employees — people mostly in their 20s and 30s from outside politics — who work out of the White House and are given wide leeway to craft content. By removing layers of bureaucracy before publishing, the team avoids the “analysis paralysis” of other messaging shops, Dorr said.

And members are expected to move at internet speed. When a federal judge declined to block the White House from banning the Associated Press from certain news events, the team raced to declare “VICTORY” in graphics that members slapped across White House TVs and social accounts.

They “have the buy-in from the [Trump] team to go out there and be unapologetic in our pursuit of advancing the administration’s goals,” Dorr said, “with the ferocity and the quickness and the pointedness” the White House demands.

For its rapid-response account, the White House employs video producers and editors, known as clippers, to create and post short videos on the fly. The role was first popularized by political activists looking to highlight opponents’ gaffes on the campaign trail, but Trump’s clippers often promote his moments, hoping to make them go viral in real time.

On Friday, within minutes of Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s fiery confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the White House accounts blasted out video of major punch lines, meme-ready photos and images of the American flag. “This is going to be great television,” Trump said as reporters filed out of the Oval Office.

The approach seems to be resonating online: Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, which was live-streamed and featured billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk, has more than 6 million views on X. “Trump is literally overwhelming them with information” in a way that is “changing the nature of the presidency,” Bannon said. “How many young men under 30 years old would ever watch two seconds of a Cabinet meeting?”

That fast-twitch model has spread beyond the White House, including to the Defense Department, which this month launched a rapid-response account to praise Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, grapple with senators and declare that “REAL journalism is dead.” But it has also helped seed major advertising campaigns to reach viewers beyond the web.

Kristi L. Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, has posted videos of herself in a flak jacket at the southern border and on immigration raids, including one on Tuesday at an apartment complex in Northern Virginia.

Footage from the raids is used in an international TV and digital ad blitz that warns undocumented immigrants to leave the country or be hunted down. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, Noem said the ads had a budget of up to $200 million and had been personally requested by Trump.

“We’re not going to let the media tell this story,” Noem recalled Trump saying, as was first reported by Rolling Stone. “We’re going to run a marketing campaign to make sure the American people know the truth.”

‘Desecrate their idols’

As the administration has expanded its marketing arm, it has also worked to uproot the classic structure of the White House press corps. In her first briefing, Leavitt called on “podcasters, social media influencers and content creators” to apply for credentialed access to a briefing room long filled by legacy news outlets. More than 12,000 have since applied, according to the White House, and several have been ushered to exclusive new-media seats near the podium.

Administration officials have said the change reflects a fundamental shift in American culture, as journalists compete for relevance with a new generation of influencers who speak to audiences of millions online.

But virtually all of the new-media creators have come from right-wing outlets friendly to the Trump cause. The Breitbart writer Matt Boyle asked whether the White House would continue its “breakneck” pace. (Yes, Leavitt said.) The pro-Trump podcaster John Ashbrook asked whether the media was “out of touch” about the border. (Yes, Leavitt said.) And John Stoll, the head of news at Musk’s X, asked about the White House’s “confidence” in going “toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin.” (Very confident, national security adviser Michael Waltz said.)

“The Trump White House is loyal, and they are loyal to people who stood with them,” podcaster Dan Bongino said while toasting Rumble chief Chris Pavlovski’s moment in the new-media spotlight. (Days later, Bongino was named deputy director of the FBI.)

Some of the new-media figures have eagerly promoted Trump’s domestic agenda. A few hours after podcaster Sage Steele asked about the importance of passing a law to ban transgender women and girls from women’s sports, she stood behind Trump as he signed an executive order on the same issue.

Other Trump-boosting creators have joined the administration outright, like the “Dear America” podcast host Graham Allen, newly hired as the Defense Department’s digital media director. Brenden Dilley, a pro-Trump meme maker, said of the news, “There’s going to be nobody left doing podcasts soon because the top people are all going to work for the government.”

Friendliness between the White House and its messengers of choice is nothing new, including during the first Trump term, when right-wing provocateurs like Mike Cernovich and blogs like Gateway Pundit held credentials alongside the legacy press.

But back then, the traditional press corps set the tone, Bannon said. The softer questions during Trump’s recent Cabinet meeting, he said, made the first term’s briefings look like “hand-to-hand combat.”

Today “the powerful media is the ecosystem of the right,” Bannon said, “while the mainstream media [is] suffering layoffs.”

The right-wing media figures embraced by the Trump administration have often returned the favor. After the banning of the AP, Brian Glenn — a correspondent for the pro-Trump media network Real America’s Voice and the boyfriend of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) — was given the rare opportunity to question Trump in the Oval Office. A few days later, he posted a selfie with Trump on X that read: “So much accomplished, and we’re still under a month in office.”

For those working closely with Trump’s public-relations infrastructure, the first weeks have marked a huge opportunity for exclusive content. Benny Johnson, a Tampa-based MAGA influencer who calls himself the “Front Seat to the Golden Era,” got to interview Vance last month, then headed to the Capitol, where he live-streamed a friendly chat with two Republican senators before they voted to confirm Patel as FBI director.

“First time in history we’ll have the stream going from the senator’s office. This is amazing,” Johnson said on stream.

The night before, Johnson had posted a video of himself stopping to rejoice outside the shuttered offices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, once the world’s largest provider of food aid. “Destroy the idols of the conquered church, right?” he said with a laugh. “Desecrate their idols. Look at this. There it is. Blacked out. It’s gone.”

Cat Zakrzewski and Michael Scherer contributed to this report.

Categories Extremism, Lies, Media, Trump

Timothy Snyder: A Critique of Jeff Bezos’ Editorial Limits at The Washington Post

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2025 //
2

Timothy Snyder is Professor of European History at Yale University and a bestselling author. See his book “On Tyranny.”

He writes here about Jeff Bezos’ attempt to limit editorial expression at The Washington Post. When Bezos, the world’s second richest man–after Elon Musk–bought the newspaper, he insisted that he would not interfere in its editorial content. Many assumed that his vast wealth would insulate him from political pressure.

But the prospective return of Trump changed his views about editorial independence. He has other businesses (Amazon, Blue Origin) that made him a billionaire and that have government contracts. He blocked the publication of an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. After Trump’s election, he gave $1 million to his inauguration fund. Then his company Amazon–source of his riches–paid $49 million to Melania for producing a film about her life; a tidy sum for a person with no experience as a film producer.

Bezos’ ham-handed efforts to mute criticism of Trump has hurt the reputation of the Washington Post. It has suffered a huge loss of readers–more than 300,000–and an exodus of some of its best writers. Just this week, Deputy Editor Ruth Marcus quit after Bezos or his henchman Will Lewis killed her latest column.

Snyder here takes issue with Bezos’ intervention into the Post’s editorial space:

On February 26th the Washington Post announced a new editorial line that refers to freedom while restraining it. I submitted a proposal to them on the question of what it would meant to support freedom in a newspaper. I have waited two weeks for a response. I would still happily write that opinion piece! In the essay below, I explain how the Post’seditorial line is nonsensical and authoritarian.

Jeff Bezos, who owns Washington Post, has announced its editorial line: “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” The use of these terms in this way demeans the concept of freedom and pushes the country in the direction of tyranny. 

I will start from some arguments that are more conventional and that others have rightly made. But I want here, in ten steps, to push the point to the end. On February 27th, the day after the new editorial lines was announced, I enjoyed myself and did this as parody. Today I ask for your patience as I do so as philosophy.

1. “Liberty” is self-contradictory as an editorial code. To use liberty as a demarcation of what is and what is not to be published shows a deep misunderstanding of what liberty means. Liberty is an open meadow, not a fence. An editor who believes in liberty helps writers to make their own arguments well, because their freedom has to do with them. Liberty has to mean that people have the right to say what they want, including (for example) that liberty doesn’t need to be qualified by the adjective “personal,” that liberty is an infinite concept and not one that can be listed as specific “liberties,” that the concept is in tension with the fiction of the “free market”, or that the word is being put to pernicious, Orwellian purposes by American libertarian billionaires.

2. Editors who take “personal liberties” as a restriction on what contributors write would need protocols of measurement and control. Can we accept that a certain someone knows, for certain, whether a given article trends in favor or against personal liberty? What could this mean? To grant such authority is absurd, and also tyrannical. The whole point of freedom is that it extends beyond the boundaries of any one mind at any one moment. James Baldwin called truth “freedom which cannot be legislated, fulfillment which cannot be charted.” And surely this is all the more true of the truth about freedom! Treating the issue as impersonal makes matters no better. Imagine an official list of “personal liberties” hanging on the walls of the Posteditorial offices, each with a definition. Who decides what that says, though? And such a list would not be enough. There would then have to be some set of rules (algorithms?) by which to establish whether an article met the definition. Very quickly (on day 1? has this perhaps already happened?) we get to the Kafkaesque situation of a Post editor submitting a proposed opinion essay to an AI and asking whether it “supports and defends personal liberties and free markets.” Freedom is what distinguishes us from machines. It has to do with affirming values over the course of a limited time on earth, with taking risks, with building character. No machine can capture that. None of these practice that could be used to enforce the editorial line can possible affirm “personal liberties.” Enforcement means either human arbitrariness or mechanized abasement.

3. The qualification of the noun “liberties” by the adjective “personal” is unfounded. Any qualification is unfounded. This particular one suggests that we can become free people without society, which is absolutely not true. We all begin life as helpless infants. Whether we can become free or not depends on circumstances beyond our control. No amount of declaiming “personal liberty” will create the conditions in which a baby grows up with the capacities and structures needed to be a free person. That effort to create a person must be social, beginning with the parents, and extending to friends, teachers, child-care workers, and others. A child needs a special kind of time at a special time of life, and that time will only exist if we recognize that the entire situation is about freedom and that freedom requires cooperation. If we want liberty, in other words, we cannot limit ourselves to the personal. The example of the newborn is important, because it is what we all share, but also because it suggests a truth that continues throughout life. In one way or other, we are always vulnerable, and our ability to be free will always depend on cooperation.

4. The pairing of the phrase “personal liberties” with the phrase “free markets” suggests an understanding of freedom that is negative: freedom as just an absence of oppression, or an absence of government. The editorial line implies a world in which there is nothing more than isolated individuals and a government that might or might not oppress them, with nothing in between. To be sure, the government should not oppress people. But to ensure that governments are not oppressive, people need freedoms that go beyond the personal: that we can all vote, for example. Voting is not just a personal freedom: if you think about it that way, you will be unconcerned about equal voting rights for others, and your democracy will soon become something else. And the government is not, as negative freedom indicates, the only possible instrument of oppression. Companies and oligarchs can also oppress. And when they do, democratic governments are the only institution that can defend freedom. But for governments to be democratic, people have to be able to act together. They need a freedom that goes beyond the personal: not only to vote in fair elections, but to protest in groups, to join labor unions, to assemble and cooperate.

5. The use of the plural “liberties” (rather than “liberty” or “freedom” in the singular) is not an extension but an unwelcome qualification, in fact a limitation. The use of the plural suggests that there is a finite list of specific liberties, rather than freedom for all people as such. This indicates that liberty is constrained for people. Interestingly, no such constraint is placed upon the inhuman abstraction that also figures in Jeff Bezos’s editorial line, “the free market.” What has unqualified freedom, according to Bezos? Not people. The market. And this, as we shall see, is not only incoherent but authoritarian.

6. The two parts of the editorial line would be contradictory in practice. The “free market” and “personal liberties” would have to contradict one another in editorial decision-making, to the point that they could not be enforced together (even leaving aside the inherent problem, discussed already, of defining and “personal liberties”). If “personal liberties” include anything meaningful, they would have to include the freedom of expression — which would include the freedom to debate what markets should be like and how they should work. Otherwise the (nonsensical) orthodoxy of the “free market” functions as a restriction on freedom of speech, and “personal liberties” just turns out to mean repeating an unquestioned political orthodoxy.

7. The two parts of the editorial line are also contradictory in principle. The assumption that “free markets” and “personal liberties” work together as “pillars” is mistaken. These two concepts are not the same, and very often point in opposing directions. A “free market,” for example, would mean that companies can pollute as much as they like. But if the atmosphere poisons me and I die of cancer, I am not enjoying “personal liberties” of any sort.

8. Any reasonable concept of “personal liberties,” of freedom, will in fact constrain the market. Consider the market in human organs, which of course exists. Should there be a “free market” in human kidneys? Should rich people have the right to hunt you down on the street, tranquilize you, and harvest your organs to sell them? If not, why not? The answer has something to do with the freedom of human beings, the autonomy of their bodies, their right not to have them violated. There is no way to get to that answer, however, from the starting point of the “free market.” A “free market” includes your kidneys.

9. The editorial code requires writers to affirm the non-existent. Americans say “free market” all the time, so it sounds like something that exists, but it does not and cannot. There is no such thing as a “free market,” in the sense of a market that functions unconstrained, without government. The basis of a market is the right to property, which is of course enforced by a government. A government decides that there is such a right, and whether or not it extends to organs (or people, for that matter). Property rights are thus “government intervention,” in the jargon of the people who like to talk about “free markets.” Once this undeniable fact is recognized, we are simply in a conversation about which government action we advocate and which we oppose. Once we understand that we need governments for markets to work, and that we are inevitably making choices about how markets work, we can have a reasonable conversation about what sort of markets we want and how we want them to function. We can ask, for example, whether monopoly capitalism is the best sort of capitalism. If editors insist on calling markets “free,” they are insisting that writers connive in political fiction. And a very dangerous one, especially right now.

10. The language of “free markets” is authoritarian. Freedom belongs only to people. It does not belong to institutions or abstractions — and least of all to non-existent institutions or abstractions. The moment that we yield the word “free” to something besides a person, we are yielding our freedom. And we should be aware that others who abuse the word by taking it from us intend to oppress us. When we endorse the fiction of “free markets,” we are entering a story told by others than ourselves, in which we are the objects, the tools, the non-player characters. We are accepting that we people owe duties to those markets. By way of an unreal concept we pass into real submission. We are accepting that we have the duty to oppose “government intervention,” which is to say that we must oppose political actions that would help us to be more free: safety for workers, protection for consumers, insurance for banks, funding for schools, legality for unions, leave for parents, and all the rest. We must accept whatever the market brings us, to go wherever the billionaires take us, to surrender our words, our minds, ourselves.

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump

Washington Post Fact-Checker: Trump’s Lexicon of Lies

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2025 //
2

Jeff Bezos, the multibillionaire owner of The Washington Post, has driven away great reporters and many readers because of his groveling before the Great Trumputin, but the Post still has Glenn Kessler, perhaps the best fact-checker in the business. It was Kessler who counted the public lies of Trumputin in his first term. He had the exact number but I recall only the round number of 30,000. Loyalist KellyAnne Conway called them “alternative facts.” Yes, indeed, Trump’s outright lies were “facts” in an alternative universe, not this one.

Glenn Kessler wrote recently about Trumputin’s latest attack on facts and truth:

The Trump administration is sweeping through the U.S. government, terminating dozens of programs, laying off tens of thousands of workers, even dismantling entire agencies. At the same time, the White House has adopted a unique lexicon to describe its agenda — in some cases, using words that in ordinary contexts mean the opposite.

Here’s a guide to the verbiage, drawn from remarks made by President Donald Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
‘Transparency’

Traditionally, transparency in the federal government has meant access to data, federal contracts and government reports, even if they shed light on problems.

But Trump has fired nearly a score of inspectors general, who root out fraud and malfeasance in federal agencies. (Eight have filed suit, saying they were fired illegally.) One IG, for the U.S. Agency for International Development, was booted as soon as he issued a critical report on the aid stoppage ordered by the president. When reports emerged that a State Department website revealed that Tesla, a company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest financial backer, received a $400 million contract, the contract document was scrubbed to remove any reference to Tesla. Moreover, websites across the government were deleted — including every page for USAID.

Meanwhile, the Musk-led U.S. DOGE Service — which is targeting agencies for contract terminations and personnel cuts — operates in secret and the people on his team have not been revealed, though reporters have figured out the identity of some key players.

But the White House says the administration is transparent because Trump often answers questions from reporters. (His predecessor, Joe Biden, rarely did so and usually in controlled settings.)

“President Trump has led by example on this front as the leader of the free world, the president of the United States, with his show of access and transparency on a daily basis,” Leavitt told reporters. “The president takes questions from all of you almost every single day and really reveals what he’s thinking and feeling.”

Unfortunately, as we’ve documented, much of what Trump says is inaccurate or misleading. So he’s not an especially accurate source, compared to rigorously vetted reports and databases.


‘Free speech’

The First Amendment enshrines a right to “free speech” — the right to articulate opinions and ideas without interference, retaliation or punishment from the government. There’s always been some tension in this notion — does this give someone the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire?

Conservatives objected to social media platforms such as Twitter (before Musk bought it and turned it into X) and Facebook downgrading or removing posts that contained inaccurate or false information, especially during the covid pandemic. Trump himself was removed from many platforms after he instigated a riot at the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory in 2020. But he’s been reinstated and many social media companies have scaled back efforts to police false information circulating on their platforms.

“I stopped government censorship once and for all and we brought back free speech to America,” Trump told House GOP members after taking office.

But the White House in recent days has barred Associated Press reporters from news events because the agency still refers to the Gulf of Mexico, the internationally recognized name for the body of water that has been in use since the mid-17th century. In an executive order, Trump directed federal agencies to change the name to “Gulf of America.” The AP is an international news organization, and the rest of the world does not recognize Trump’s name change. Taylor Budowich, White House deputy chief of staff, said in a statement that the AP’s stance “is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.” He said that as a result of “irresponsible and dishonest reporting” — citing the name used by the rest of the world — the AP could not expect the “privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One.”

Similarly, Leavitt told reporters: “I was very up front in my briefing on Day 1, that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.”

‘Fraud and abuse’

Fraud generally means deception, often criminal, in pursuit of financial and personal gain. But the Trump administration has upended that definition — broadening it to include programs and policies it disagrees with — while at the same time making it harder to detect fraud.

“We’re finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse,” Trump said as Musk stood by his side in Oval Office. But a Fact Checker accounting of the announcements from DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, of terminated programs found that most concern diversity, transgender and climate change programs. Musk has also led an assault on USAID, the agency that long had bipartisan support to distribute billions of dollars in development aid around the world.

“It’s a scam,” Trump said of USAID. “It’s a fraud. A lot of it, most of it, but it’s a fraud.” Asked for evidence, the White House provided a list that was often wrong or misleading — and in any case amounted only to a pittance of the agency’s $25 billion budget.

In addition to firing IGs, Trump fired top ethics officers and neutered offices that protect workers from retribution. He also suspended enforcement of a nearly half-century-old law that investigates corporate corruption in foreign countries, while his Justice Department ordered the dismissal of bribery charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) for political reasons (Adams supports Trump’s immigration policies).

A Feb. 13 White House news release berated states and localities pushing back against Trump’s executives orders on diversity and immigration. “President Donald J. Trump and his administration have a simple message: follow the law,” the news release was titled.


‘Deficit’

In Washington, the deficit usually means the federal budget deficit. But for Trump, the deficit that matters is the trade deficit. He imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum, threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico and proposed to upend the current trading system by imposing reciprocal tariffs.

“We have a tremendous deficit with Mexico,” Trump said last week. “We have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We have a tremendous deficit with Europe, the E.U., with China, I don’t even want to tell you what Biden is allowed to happen with China.”

(Actually, under Biden, the trade deficit with China fell to its lowest level in 10 years, according to the Census Bureau.)

In an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News, Trump said: “Why are we paying $200 billion a year essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now, if they’re our 51st state, I don’t mind doing it.”

According to the website of the U.S. Trade Representative, the goods deficit with Canada was $63 billion in 2024. The United States has a services surplus of about $30 billion with Canada, which brings down the overall deficit even more. But since Trump took office, the website does not display trade-in-services numbers.

Unlike a budget deficit — which depends on whether the government spends more than it raises in revenue — a trade deficit is shaped by underlying factors, such as an imbalance between a country’s savings and investment rates. A bigger federal budget deficit — caused by, say, a large tax cut contemplated by Trump — can boost the trade deficit because the country saves less and borrows more from abroad. A booming economy can also be at fault — the more money people have, the more they can spend on goods from overseas. And a strong currency means those foreign goods are cheaper for a particular country and its goods are more expensive for foreign consumers.

In other words, trade deficits may be beyond Trump’s ability to control.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Fake News, Lies, Media, Propaganda, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Why Does the Media Ignore Nazi Symbolism at Trump-Musk Events?

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2025 //
20

Thom Hartmann, independent journalist, finds it curious that the Republican Party so frequently displays Nazi symbolism. And why does the major media ignore usually overlook the fondness for Nazi iconography by Trump, Musk, and their allies? Is it their youth? Their historical ignorance? Their caution?

He writes:

Is it a shout-out to the hardcore racists and haters that make up the GOP’s base, all just a performance to get enough votes to win elections? Or a proclamation that the end-goal of Republican governance is the destruction of American democracy, perhaps in deference to Vladimir Putin? How about it’s being a bizarre attempt at trolling people old or well-educated enough to remember or know what Nazism inevitably leads to?

One of the enduring mysteries in today’s American political life is why so many Republican politicians and their friends are adopting or promoting openly Nazi symbols, iconography, and slogans.

And why are America’s mainstream media so unwilling to even report on, much less discuss, all the Nazi and neo-Nazi references surrounding Trump and today’s captive Republicans?

Elon Musk, Trump’s #1 campaign donor and co-president, threw two Nazi “Sieg Heil” salutes following Trump’s inauguration, causing the media to fall all over itself trying to make excuses for his behavior. Actual, declared Nazis and white supremacists were thrown into an ecstatic tizzy, however, with the Ohio Proud Boys posting the clip with the words, “Heil Trump!”

The neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe posted the Musk clip with the Waffen SS lightning-bolt emoji; their leader, Christopher Pohlhaus, wrote: “I don’t care if this was a mistake. I’m going to enjoy the tears over it.” Other neo-Nazi, Nazi, and white supremacist groups across the web jumped in to celebrate the salute, as Rolling Stone extensively documented.

It all seems to have really picked up steam after young neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville in 2017, chanting Nazi slogans, murdering a young woman protestor, and giving Hitler salutes. 

Our media completely failed to identify them as Nazis, even though they were proclaiming that themselves. 

Since Trump’s endorsement of their behavior with his “good people on both sides” comment, which he continues to defend, such behavior has been emulated across the nation.

Poke anything associated with Trump and odds are Nazi memes will pop out. 

The “America First” slogan was the name of an openly pro-Nazi movement in America in the 1930s, a fact that seems to have been lost down the memory hole. And Trump told his former Chief of Staff, Marine General John Kelly, that “Hitler did some good things…” along with referring to American soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.”

And then there are Trump’s attacks on the media, echoing Joe Stalin and Adolf Hitler with their “enemy of the people” rhetoric. He’s suing media outlets left and right, just like Putin and Orbán did in their early years to intimidate reporters and bankrupt opposition publications and websites. 

Elon Musk just called for reporters for CBS’s 60 Minutes program — “the biggest liars in the world” — to receive “a long prison sentence.”

In an echo of Hitler’s “denunciations,” his “border czar” is even calling for the police at the Department of Justice to investigate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for telling immigrants about their constitutional rights. 

After pointing out at a rally that Hitler said that Jews were “poisoning the blood” of Germany (yes, he pointed it out himself), Trump then said of nonwhites in America:

“It’s true. They’re destroying the blood of the country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country, and we’re going to have to get them out.”

The 2021 CPAC meeting featured a stage resembling the Odal Rune, a potent Nazi symbol, that drew a rebuke from the hotel hosting the conference.

In 2022, Trump dined with Nick Fuentes, a prominent and out Holocaust denier. Trump later posted a 30-second video that twice references a “unified Reich.” Trump’s buddy Steve Bannon has repeatedly endorsed the notoriously antisemitic and racist novel The Camp of the Saints” which characterizes Black Americans, “dirty Arabs,” and “feces-eating Hindu rapists” as engaging in a conspiracy to destroy white people and civilization.

His son, Don Jr., retweeted a message by a white supremacist who attacks interracial dating and queer people, “liked” tweets by another account that postspictures of Jews with exaggerated noses, made a “joke” about gas chambers and our media, and participated in an interview with a talk show host who said slavery was the best thing to have ever happened to Black people.

When Vice President Vance visited Germany this past week, instead of meeting with that nation’s chancellor or his peer, he hung out with the leader of the Nazi-adjacent AfD party, while giving a speech in which he extensively quoted Putin’s sentiments. Proud to be known by the company he keeps…

And then there’s DOGE, the official title of the iron-fisted, massively rich oligarchs who ruled Venice for ten centuries that’s been reclaimed by billionaire Musk for himself and his work. The logo is arguably explicit, as Jim Stewartson points out at his excellent mind-war.com newsletter/website:

“On the DOGE logo there are 8 stars above the cartoon, and 8 stars on the flag inside the gear. This is another National Socialist signal. It means Heil Hitler. Musk has used this signal numerous times, in addition to quite literally doing two Hitler salutes at the inauguration.”

There are also 14 teeth on the gear that makes up the O in DOGE in the logo, a direct rip-off from Hitler’s Nazi labor movement of the 1930s, reflecting the famous “14 words” memorized by every white supremacist: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children….”

Following that theme, Trump, Vance, and multiple Republican politicians and media figures have, for years, promoted the Naziesque “Great Replacement Theory” that posits American Jews are paying their agents in business, government, and society to hire Black, brown, and queer people and women to replace white men.

Additionally, when Trump tweeted out his Anders Breivik quote about saving the country and thus violating no laws, Musk retweeted it with 14 American flag emojis. These guys aren’t subtle because they don’t have to be; they know any American media that calls them out will either be attacked as paranoid or they’ll simply say it was a joke or misunderstanding.

But their followers know exactly what they’re saying, and why. Just like they understood that Trump’s birther crap was really his way of saying, “Hey, white people, have you noticed that guy in the White House is Black? We can’t tolerate that!” 

And they also clearly heard the dog whistle when he came down the escalator and attacked brown-skinned immigrants. Or when he claimed the Potomac crash was because the helicopter pilot was a woman hired “because of DEI.”

Or when Trump offered refugee status to white South Africans, but not to Black or Indian South Africans.

There’s so much evidence of Trump’s and Musk’s apartheid leanings, it’s pretty much impossible to deny any longer. Which raises the question: Is our media in with the Nazis, or just committed to Not-Seeing them?

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Immigration, Lies, Media, Musk, Elon, Republicans, Trump

Jeff Bezos Tells Opinion Writers What to Write

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2025 //
18

It’s dizzying to watch the changing views of Jeff Bezos since he bought the Washington Post. First, he pledged not to interfere in the editorial content of his prize bauble. Last fall, he yanked an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. Now he has new instructions for editorialists and opinion writers: we support personal liberties and free markets.

Joshua Benton of The Nieman Lab has the story. Open the link to read more reactions.

Benton writes:

The thing about American newspaper opinion sections is this: Their owners get final say. If the man who signs the checks — it’s almost always a man — really really really wants to see his cocker spaniel run City Hall, you’ll probably see “Our Choice: Fluffernutter for Mayor” stripped atop the editorial page. For generations — from Murdoch to Loeb, Hearstto Pulitzer, Daniels to Greeley — this has been one of the overriding perks of media ownership. If Jeff Bezos wanted to turn The Washington Post’s opinion section over to an AI-powered version of Alexa, he’d be within his rights to. So his announcement this morning — that Post Opinions would henceforth reorient “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets” — is, in a sense, merely restating the traditional droit du seigneur given over to capital.

But the scale of the hypocrisy on display here is eye-watering.

Let’s get the motivation out of the way. This is the same Jeff Bezos who decided to cancel the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election — a move that led to more than 250,000 paying Post readers cancelling their subscriptions within days. The same Bezos who flew to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to Donald Trump after the election. The same Bezos whose Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary — the most it had ever paid for a doc, nearly three times what any other studio offered, and more than 70% of which will go directly into Trump’s pockets. All that cash seems to have served as a sort of personal seat license for Bezos, earning him a spot right behind the president at the inaugural. The tech aristocracy’s rightward turn is by now a familiar theme of the post-election period, and it doesn’t take much brain power to see today’s announcement as part of the same shift. 

But Bezos’s assertion of power is downright laughable compared to the rhetoric he was using just four months ago when trying to justify his killing of the Harris endorsement. Remember his muddled, oligarch-splaining op-ed? His core argument back then was that the worst thing a newspaper’s opinion section could do is appear to be taking one side politically.

Bezos, October 28, 2024: We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

Endorsing a candidate for president is bad because it can create the perception of bias — that the newspaper is institutionally tilted to one side or another. 

So the solution is…to have the owner spend months shipping millions off to Trump HQ and then declare that certain opinions not in favor on the political right will now be verboten in the Post’s pages?

Bezos, February 26, 2025: We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

Back in October, Bezos was saddened by even the concept that his personal interests might influence the Post’s content.

Bezos, October 28, 2024: When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post.Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.

You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.

But of course — when one of the wealthiest humans in the history of the species decides to block critiques of “free markets” from one of the nation’s most important news outlets, it has nothing to do with any of his interests. Completely unrelated.

Bezos, February 26, 2025: I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity…

I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

A few months ago, Bezos was confident that the Post had to differentiate itself from the swarm of misleading online content by being staunchly independent of any ideological agenda:

Bezos, October 28, 2024: Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions…

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world?

But today, the existence of all that internet muck is positioned as a perfect excuse to abandon all desire for a broad-based opinion section.

Bezos, February 26, 2025: There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.

So, to recap: A newspaper can’t be seen as taking a side. Until it’s essential that it be seen as taking a side. Bezos would never use his own ideological beliefs to restrict the Post’s work. Until he decides he must use his own ideological beliefs to restrict the Post’s work. 

As was the case in the fall, the problem with these swings is less their content than their naked service to one man’s agenda. A newspaper is free to endorse or not endorse whoever it wants. An owner is free to shape his opinion section to his will. But the realpolitik context of those decisions clashes wildly with Bezos’s lecturing tone and freshman-level political analysis. I doubt today’s announcement will generate another 250,000 subscription cancellations, if only because there are so many fewer subscribers left to cancel. But the impact will be felt. Only three months ago, the Post was prepping a plan to “win back” wayward subscribers by focusing on the paper’s star reporters and columnists — people like Ashley Parker, Eugene Robinson, and Dana Milbank. Parker’s already jumped ship; how are opinion voices like Milbank and Robinson supposed to fit into the new no-critiquing-the-genius-of-unrestrained-markets regime?

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Freedom of the Press, Media

U.S. Votes with Russia, Iran, and North Korea at UN, PLUS Judge Refuses to Restore AP to White House Press Events

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2025 //
18

Something astonishing happened at the United Nations today. Ukraine sponsored a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago. The General Assembly overwhelmingly voted for the resolution.

The resolution was opposed, however, by Russia, North Korea, Iran, the United States, and 24 other Russian allies.

The Washington Post wrote:

The United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Iran and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries Monday against a U.N. resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. The resolution, sponsored by representatives from Kyiv, passed overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly.

The U.S. delegation also abstained from voting on its own competing resolution that simply called for an end to the war, after European-sponsored amendments inserting new anti-Russian language in the resolution were approved in the 193-member body by a wide margin. The amended U.S. resolution also passed.

Did the American people vote last November to abandon our allies and to create a new partnership with Russia, North Korea, and Iran?

In other news:

Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico. He says it is henceforward “the Gulf of America.” Frankly, this is the sort of meaningless BS that he manufactures to please his base. It doesn’t lower the price of eggs. It’s pointless. when Trump is gone, the Gulf of Mexico will be the undisputed Gulf of Mexico.

The Associated Press has continued to call the Gulf of Mexico by its rightful name.

So Trump had to punish the AP. Its reporters have been barred from White House press conferences and from flying with Trump on Air Force 1 with the press pool.

The AP sued to regain access, citing the First Amendment. The judge did not grant their request. He expressed doubt that they would prevail. He will hold another hearing on March 20.

Judge Trevor McFadden told the court there were several reasons he denied the temporary restraining order. He noted there was a difference in the issues of this case and case law presented by both parties. 

He also questioned the amount of irreparable harm the AP would suffer as the news outlet can get access to the same information whether or not they’re in the room where it happened, he argued.

Right. They can always watch the press conference on television. They just can’t ask questions or ride with the press pool on Air Force 1.

Judge McFadden was appointed by President Trump in 2017.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump

AP Sues Trump for Punishing It for Refusing to Use “Gulf of America”

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2025 //
18

The Associated Press is an international news organization. it has refused to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” as ordered by Trump.

In retaliation for refusing to adopt Trump’s name change, the AP reporters have been excluded from White House press conferences and barred from riding with other members of the press on Trump’s Air Force One.

Today, the AP sued the Trump administration.

The New York Times reported:

The Associated Press filed a lawsuit on Friday against top White House officials, accusing them of violating the First and Fifth Amendments by denying A.P. reporters access to press events in retaliation for references to the Gulf of Mexico in its articles.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It named as defendants Taylor Budowich, the White House deputy chief of staff; Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary; and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.

In the complaint, The A.P. said that the White House had ordered it to use certain words in its reporting and that it was suing “to vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the United States Constitution and to prevent the executive branch from coercing journalists to report the news using only government-approved language.”

The lawsuit centers on The A.P.’s decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its articles, rather than the Gulf of America, as the body of water was decreed by President Trump in an executive order on Jan. 20

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump

Washington Post Kills Ad Calling on Trump to Fire Musk

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2025 //
7

Julie Creswell of The New York Times reported that The Washington Post killed an ad calling on Trump to fire his best buddy Elon Musk. The story was first reported in The Hill. Who could have given such an order?

Creswell writes:

An advertisement that was set to run in some editions of The Washington Post on Tuesday calling for Elon Musk to be fired from his role in government was abruptly canceled, according to one of the advocacy groups that had ordered the ad.

Common Cause said it was told by the newspaper on Friday that the ad was being pulled. The full-page ad, known as a wraparound, would have covered the front and back pages of editions delivered to the White House, the Pentagon and Congress, and was planned in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.

A separate, full-page ad with the same themes would have been allowed to run inside the newspaper, but the two groups chose to cancel the internal ad as well. Both ads would have cost the groups $115,000.

“We asked why they wouldn’t run the wrap when we clearly met the guidelines if they were allowing the internal ad,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and chief executive of Common Cause. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason.”

News of The Washington Post canceling the ad was earlier reported by The Hill.

Although it is unclear who made the decision to pull the ad or why, the move comes amid growing concern about the changing mission of the Washington Post newsroom under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. The newspaper’s decision last fall to end its longstanding tradition of presidential endorsements and Mr. Bezos’ front-row seat at Mr. Trump’s inauguration have led some to wonder whether the news organization has been accommodating a Trump administration.

Last month, more than 400 employees sent a letter to Mr. Bezos requesting a meeting to discuss leadership decisions that they said “led readers to question the integrity of this institution.”

Mrs. Kase Solomón said that all the content for the ad — art and text — had been sent to The Post’s advertisement department last Tuesday and that “no alarm bells were rung” by anyone from the newspaper at that time. She said she did not know who inside the organization made the decision to pull the wrap.

The ad featured an image of Mr. Musk laughing over a picture of the White House with text that reads: “Who’s Running This Country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?” The ad called for readers to contact their senators and tell them it’s time for Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Musk…

Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man who controls six companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has been given far-reaching power by the president, who has allowed Mr. Musk to dismantle federal agencies and freeze funding for various grants and programs.

Margaret Huang, president and chief executive of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the disappearance of critical programs and grants would have a direct and negative effect mostly on lower-income individuals and people of color.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Media, Musk, Elon, Trump
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