Today is the perfect day to become a media activist: -Ellison capture of CBS -Carr weaponizing the FCC -More voices needed to advocate for local and independent journalism. Join us. Help us fight for more pro-democracy media acting in the public interest. www.mobilize.us/mediademocra...

With the Ellisons and their emissary Bari Weiss in the news re:CBS, it’s worth highlighting the concerns about Substack leadership’s judgement / relationship w/Weiss.

Powerful words from @agomezfcc.bsky.social She is also the only FCC commissioner who thinks the FCC is an independent agency.

A free press cannot function if the government is able to exercise veto power over critical reporting simply by refusing to engage. The public has the right to question how CBS will ensure the independence and integrity of its journalism going forward.

Today is the perfect day to become a media activist: -Ellison capture of CBS -Carr weaponizing the FCC -More voices needed to advocate for local and independent journalism. Join us. Help us fight for more pro-democracy media acting in the public interest. www.mobilize.us/mediademocra...

While I normally focus on AI deepfake pornography, there's an under-discussed AI-gen harm that's particularly prevalent during the holidays: AI product scams. We counted down the top 10 holiday scams to look out for this year (check out the video), but here are some extra highlights below

Clueless US media understand Trump's shut down of Atlantic coast wind farms as just some vague national security thing about radar or as Trump's weird ideas about alternative energy. But in Denmark, this is immediately understood for what it is: a shakedown against two large Danish companies,

We continue to stand in solidarity with Denmark and Greenland. Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. Any changes to that status are for Greenlanders and Danes alone to decide. (1/2)

It’s essential to center the *Ellisons* with Bari Weiss as their emissary. The demolition of CBS News & 60 Minutes is intentional-and being done to serve the Ellisons’s agenda. Media Capture. All efforts must be taken to make sure they don’t also get control of WB/CNN LAST Sunday Face-the-Nation 👇

Current issue of @theonion.com nails it again.

This email from Sharyn Alfonsi to her colleagues after Bari Weiss killed their @60minutes.bsky.social piece on CECOT is powerful and worth a full read. (h/t @yasharali.bsky.social)

There is a tremendous opportunity for a brand new generation of media outlets to rise up right now because many news outlets that spent decades painstakingly building their credibility are seeing it torched by bootlickers with incredible speed.

To express his disdain for balancing both sides of a one-sided issue, Edward R. Murrow often quoted something Winston Churchill said to him, about how that would be like giving “equal time to Jesus and to Judas Iscariot.”

With the Ellisons and their emissary Bari Weiss in the news re:CBS, it’s worth highlighting the concerns about Substack leadership’s judgement / relationship w/Weiss.

We’re old enough to remember #EllisonsCBS employees LAST week doing partisan work.

For the launch of Kronika, a digital platform that aims to preserve independent media, four journalists — Pethő, M. Gessen, Ramón Zamora, and Sevgi Akarçeşme — discussed their experiences witnessing the rise of authoritarian regimes. Read more here: pen.org/lessons-for-...

Media Capture. The demolition of CBS News and 60 Minutes is intentional- and being done to serve the Ellisons’s agenda. It’s useful to center the Ellisons with Bari Weiss as their emissary. All efforts must be taken to make sure they don’t also get control of Warner Bros / CNN.

We're about $1000 away from the halfway mark! (I know I'm supposed to be signed off for the weekend but that's good news I wanted to share.)

Thank you @60minutes.bsky.social staff we appreciate your work and sympathize with your current circumstances.

Oh.

Like, follow, share to help support libraries!

An NFL-on-Fox reminder that #tubi is a key and growing profit-engine of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s media empire. #TubiFundsFox “free” is in the mind of the beholder 👇 bsky.app/profile/medi...

Every month, The Media and Democracy Project honors exemplary individuals & publications for their commitment to journalism, democracy, & press freedom. January 2025 @anntelnaes.bsky.social Her epic editorial cartoon depicted media oligarchs fealty and corruption. bsky.app/profile/medi...

By now any news outlet that directly quotes trump or trump officials in headlines without fact checks & context is intentionally spreading propaganda.

Impressive student journalism by Harvard Crimson reporters about some of their absolutely vile classmates.

Public interest journalism! Bravo @propublica.org

As the US faces unheard of threats to our democracy from a sitting US president, fearless journalists & news outlets have never been more important. @mediaanddemocracy.bsky.social celebrates some of the standouts from this past year:

i do it too! so i'll start — with this great story by Cal Matters last week on how indigent defense works as a for-profit industry in rural California: calmatters.org/investigatio...

#Brazil 🇧🇷 @indexoncensorship.org covers how Meta removed multiple Brazilian left-wing influencers from Instagram, with politicians calling the bans a “direct attack on freedom of speech” and on voices denouncing corruption and police violence.

Excellent piece by @sulliview.bsky.social in @theguardian.com. Grateful that she references our recent @rooseveltinstitute.org report on the media crises facing US democracy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Sure @washingtonpost.com Let’s give free press to a bad faith guy who interviews Nazis If you ever wondered why fascism has been rising in the United States Look no further than stories like these

those who predicted authoritarianism were both dismissed, & deeply misunderstood, by the media my latest for @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/2042...

A🧵 Who inspired you in 2025? Every month, The Media and Democracy Project honors exemplary individuals & publications for their commitment to journalism, democracy, & press freedom. We are grateful to and inspired by our 2025 heroes! We hope you are too. Who are they? Why are they heroes?👇

Interestingly, when Dhillon was the editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review her paper was accused of trafficking in antisemitism when it published an article comparing conservatives on campus to Holocaust victims, and equating Dartmouth's Jewish president with Hitler. NYTimes, 6 November 1988.

If you’re wondering why I started an old fashioned blog rather than a substack…this is why.

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

Have you ever wondered about experiences Black elders in your family have had but never shared? Now is your opportunity to make sure those stories don’t get lost. https://capitalbnews.org/oralhistoryproject/

#Belarus 🇧🇾 Several PEN members were among the 123 prisoners released and forced to leave Belarus earlier in the month. @peninternational.bsky.social calls on their European host countries to provide full support to these victims of Lukashenka's regime. buff.ly/xSYMlz2

Babies are going to die. This is what Donald Trump, Russ Vought, RFK Jr., Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, Tracy Beth Hoeg, Jay Bhattacharya and Matthew Memoli have brought us. Avoidable child deaths from preventable infectious diseases. www.statnews.com/2025/12/19/d...

(1/2) China’s troll army: From teachers to riders, all fake www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in... via @rappler.com.web.brid.gy

A must read—the editorial and this thread.

Editorial Boards … bsky.app/profile/medi...

It is utterly catastrophic that RFK Jr. plans to end CDC recommendations for most childhood vaccines. It’s a betrayal of science, ethics, compassion, and the people of the United States. And it was also a specific goal of Project 2025 (page 254).

Brilliant editorial cartoonist @lelievre.bsky.social has deciphered the illegally broad redactions of the illegally incomplete release of Epstein files.

HR.4405 = *law* mandating the DOJ release “in a searchable database … all unclassified” Epstein files. Reporting a partial release as anything other than a violation of the law is journalistic malpractice. Elected officials being flat-footed on partial file release is malpractice. @jonkeegan.com

Threads is effectively shelving their fediverse integration, after it saw marginally little use Zuck has played the game well, harming both open protocol movements while growing his platform, getting good PR and distracting regulators connectedplaces.online/reports/fedi...

There is a special place in hell for those who write such headlines

"May have to be approved by Congress" May? Don't. Print. Lies. In. The. Newspapers. 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

That’s quite a peppy headline for yet another outrageous dictator move.