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Fox News remains the No. 1 propaganda outlet for the American right, but there are growing fissures in its relationship with Donald Trump.

Last week, Fox dumped host Maria Bartiromo for tipping off the White House that Fox brass had ordered its staff not to amplify a Trump prime-time speech about election fraud.

“Basically she was calling daddy to tell on mommy,” CNN’s S.E. Cupp said. “She was basically saying, ‘Mommy won’t let me do this, dad. What are you going to do about it?’”

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You can be sure Fox didn’t ignore Trump’s speech out of journalistic integrity, because that’s not Fox’s brand. Instead, the network wanted to avoid another defamation lawsuit like the one that cost it $787 million for spreading Team Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

There are other signs of conflict between Trump and Fox, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan. Some Fox personalities have complained about Trump’s disastrous conduct of the war in Iran. When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tried to restrict journalists covering the Pentagon, Fox joined other media in pushing back. Hegseth, a former Fox host, hasn’t been on the network in almost a year. And Trump frequently denounces Fox News’ polls, one of the network’s few products that can actually be believed.

Trump is at odds with another Murdoch outlet, too, suing the Wall Street Journal for reporting – apparently accurately – that Trump sent a birthday note to his sex trafficker friend Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

While Trump has provided the personality for the fascist movement Fox supports, it’s obvious that the Murdochs view him as a liability to the cause. He’s too overtly corrupt, too focused on gilded statues, too damn crazy. He revs up the resistance. Remember that Fox clearly backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president after Trump seemed too toxic to win in the post-Jan. 6 period. Murdoch supposedly told a friend he wanted to make Trump a “non-person.” It was only after Trump proved his staying power and DeSantis showed his lack of charisma that Fox re-boarded the Trump train.

I can’t read the Murdochs’ minds, so I don’t know whether they’re guided more by their right-wing views or their desire to capture an audience and make money off of it. There’s plenty of evidence that both are significant factors.

In the legal battle over who would control Rupert Murdoch’s empire after his death, the patriarch was vitally concerned with securing it in the hands of Lachlan because he most closely mirrors his father’s politics. If it were all about money, Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t care about that.

But if it were all about politics, the old man wouldn’t let the Wall Street Journal’s news side undercut Trump the way it does – not just on the birthday note to Epstein but also on Trump’s push for the Justice Department to launch investigations, his efforts to grab Venezuela’s oil, and his rupturing of relations with European allies. The Murdochs know their lucrative WSJ subscriber base is upscale and sophisticated. The customers would leave if WSJ started pulling Fox News-style stunts.

Even Fox’s amplification of 2020 election fraud lies seems to have had more to do with money than a desire to help keep Trump in office. Internal communications released in lawsuits against Fox show that its top people knew Trump had lost, but they panicked over losing market share to even more extreme-right competitors.

Tucker Carlson wrote: “We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”

Jesse Watters put it in a more upbeat but equally dishonest way: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL.”

Since its $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, the network has learned how to have it both ways – spreading right-wing lies without getting sued over them, as I wrote a couple years ago.

At this point, Fox seems determined to promote Trumpism while maintaining some distance from Trump. In essence, they’re working toward the same thing – a less kind, less fair, less free country.

What looks like a Murdoch-Trump feud may be more personal than professional – two corrupt old warhorses locked in a battle of egos. After Trump sued over the Epstein story, Rupert Murdoch told associates, “I’m 94 years old and I will not be intimidated,” according to the Washington Post.

But as Jon Allsop put it in the New Yorker last year: “Their relationship, ultimately, deserves to be remembered not as one of occasional antagonism but one of persistent mutual benefit.”

That will end some day, and I suspect Fox will last longer than Trump. When Fox no longer finds Trump useful and stops fearing his wrath, it will turn on him completely. And long after Rupert Murdoch goes to that tabloid newsroom in the sky, his son’s version of Fox will be polluting journalism to prop up other fascist liars.

This week’s media atrocity

Longtime readers know I’ve speculated that the New York Times has a Euphemism Desk where they find ways to soften hard truths. In an impressive new example, they avoided saying Maria Bartiromo allowed her guests to lie, instead writing that she was “permitting guest commentators to free-associate.”

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Nine months ago, the Trump regime assembled a military force off the coast of Venezuela that included the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. Then it sent in Delta Force and about 150 aircraft to snatch up the country’s leader and jail him in the United States.

Last week, the Trump regime announced an “agreement” with the Trump-approved Venezuelan government to grab 65 billion barrels of oil.

Axios called it “taking an ownership stake.”

Semafor described it as “custodianship” of the country’s oil industry.

The New York Times called it “a significant win for the Trump administration.”

To me, it seems reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde taking an “ownership stake” in banks and serving as “custodians” for the money in a “significant win” for their criminal gang.

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Dictators steal things. That’s not a news flash. But when some journalists enthusiastically focus on how much money the thieves will make, it shows a news industry that has been laundered of a basic sense of right and wrong. Shockingly few people in the media are asking: Do we really want to be a country that blows people up and steals from them?

From a military perspective, the Jan. 3 raid was well executed. No U.S. soldiers were killed, but an estimated 80 to 100 Venezuelans and Cubans died, some of them civilians. From an international-rule-of-law perspective, the attack was shameful. The regime dishonestly cast the abduction of Nicolás Maduro as a law enforcement operation rather than a blatant act of aggression.

Instead of freeing Venezuelans from a dictatorship, Trump left Maduro’s underlings in place, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is effectively running the country’s finances. No elections have been scheduled, and opposition leader Maríia Coarina Machado has not returned from exile.

Trump quickly declared that the country’s oil money “will be controlled by me” to benefit both Venezuela and the United States. Early this month, he said, “We’re making hundreds of billions of dollars, and so are they.” But fact-checkers say that’s impossible, since Venezuela’s gross domestic product is only $111 billion. The exact oil revenue collected since the attack – and who’s getting what – remains opaque.

One thing is crystal clear, though: The raid on Venezuela was an armed robbery.

Some news outlets want us to think the regime is doing Venezuela a favor. Axios, a frequent channel for Trump regime spin, cited the disrepair of the country’s oil industry before the U.S. attack and offered this supposedly exonerating paragraph to justify the theft:

The administration is sensitive to accusations that Rodriguez would be giving away Venezuela’s natural resources to the U.S., one official said, so ‘we’re going out of our way to show how this will benefit the people of Venezuela, because it will.’

The Associated Press buys into Trump’s spin, too. In early August, the AP said talks between the Rodríguez government and the opposition “will focus on strengthening democracy and restoring rights after nearly three decades of socialist rule.” But the problem with Venezuela’s previous government wasn’t socialism – it was authoritarianism. They’re not the same thing!

The story carried the subhead: “US wants to facilitate process, not dictate.” Yeah, sure, AP. Because Trump is a famously hands-off person, especially when he’s the one with the guns.

Business media seem especially excited by the oil grab. CNBC said Trump was “trying to solve this three-dimensional oil puzzle that’s gripping the world right now.” But the outlet did note that “the sitting Venezuelan administration that the United States is negotiating with was installed by the U.S. government earlier this year, so presumably the thumb is on the scale.”

The Washington Post, whose opinion section is in the tank for Trump but whose news section often performs well, was an exception to the cheerleading. WaPo cast doubt on Trump’s claim that the oil deal would be cost-free for U.S. taxpayers and noted that a key Venezuelan partner, Alejandro Betancourt López, is “the subject of investigations in multiple countries into alleged money laundering and faces a Swiss warrant for his arrest.”

Of course, defiance of the law is an asset to Trump, not a disqualification.

Trump called the Venezuelan operation the “perfect scenario” for what he hoped to do to Iran. But while the Iran war has been a strategic failure so far, Trump is still thinking about plunder. In April, he posted: “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.” More recently, he insanely called the Strait of Hormuz a “new U.S. territory.”

The more the media cast the Venezuela operation as a “success,” the more they encourage Trump to menace the Middle East and move on to Greenland and Cuba.

Some might say it’s not the job of straight-news reporters to determine whether Trump’s smash-and-grab policies are right or wrong. But journalists make value judgments all the time, and an obvious one in today’s world is to believe in human rights and national sovereignty, where the powerful don’t run roughshod over the weak. Too often, the American news industry mistakes normalizing theft and murder for “objectivity.”

If major media are too timid to challenge American banditry themselves, they could at least quote people who do. Initial coverage was full of oil-deal boosterism from Trump, Rubio, and Rodríguez, and short on skepticism.

A “might is right” mentality has consumed the U.S. government. If it fully consumes the news media, we’re doomed.

This week’s media atrocity

In its six-month assessment of the war with Iran, the New York Times ran the headline: “U.S. Goals Remain Unmet.” That’s quite an understatement. Even things that weren’t stated goals are unmet, such as keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, protecting Gulf countries from attacks, and maintaining decent relations with European allies.

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Back in March, the Trump regime claimed it had defeated Iran “in the first hour.”

Now, with the war about to enter its seventh month, the regime is launching a new economic squeeze campaign and appears in no particular hurry to wrap things up.

The United States is “low-keying it” and “only semi-negotiating” with Iran, Donald Trump says.

“The president is playing the long game,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright says.

“We’re in a new phase … this is a delicate dance,” Vice President JD Vance says.

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So, please, media, let’s not make a big deal over an ongoing war that has put 50,000 U.S. troops in harm’s way, killed 18 of them, wounded more than 750 others, jacked up gas prices, and cost taxpayers an estimated $100 billion. Trump would rather focus on new topsoil on the White House grounds and note that “if you’re grass, you’re very happy.”

Members of the military, not being grass, are unhappy. Sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln were so distressed over a lack of supplies and their long deployment in the Middle East that some of them tried to jump overboard. Yet when a reporter told Trump that military families were concerned about conditions on the Lincoln, he said: “No, they’re not.”

Trump is dangerously detached from reality, and his comments work against any resolution of the fiasco. He keeps saying, ridiculously, that he wants to make the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States.” And he has threatened to “bomb the shit out of” Oman – our ally – if it “gets in the way.”

Trump obviously wishes mainstream media would put coverage of the war on the back-burner. But responsible outlets are not complying, even though the Pentagon is playing games with the casualty toll and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been ducking reporters as if they were Iranian drones.

The regime’s desire to suppress the facts was evident with its assault on Stars & Stripes, the news outlet tasked with informing members of the military and their families. Stars & Stripes is under the Pentagon’s authority but has a long tradition of editorial independence in order to maintain credibility with its audience. Last week, the Trump regime blew that up, firing key journalists after they reported on the USS Abraham Lincoln and other problems with the conduct of the war.

Trump’s media suck-ups have fallen in line. Fox News host Sean Hannity had only one extensive discussion of the war between July 23 and last Wednesday, according to Media Matters for America. Hannity broke that drought by absurdly claiming that Trump should get more “credit” for the triumphant outcome in Iran.

While mainstream media’s coverage of the war has been fairly strong, Trump isn’t entirely irrational in hoping news outlets will eventually lose interest.

In his first term as president, the war in Afghanistan was a minor issue, overshadowed by other MAGA-fueled chaos and controversy. Trump managed to successfully shirk responsibility for the war even though it continued through all four years of his term and his dealings with the Taliban further destabilized the situation. He left the withdrawal to his successor, Joe Biden, and denounced him after a suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. service members during the pullout. But more than three times that number died during Trump’s first term while he was failing to end the war.

When we have a relatively cold war instead of a hot one, it can start to feel like the status quo – and therefore not particularly newsworthy. Economic warfare like that announced by the Trump regime on Monday is less flashy and immediate than cruise missile strikes. Some might even say “boring.”

But as in Afghanistan, the day-to-day situation in the Iran war is terrible, and it’s likely to keep deteriorating. Plus, Trump is using the current military disaster to get more taxpayer money for future military disasters.

As ProPublica reported last week: “President Donald Trump wants to spend $1.5 trillion on defense next year. Adjusted for inflation, that would be more than the U.S. spent annually on defense during the height of World War II.”

Let that sink in.

The news media often have a short attention span, but they need to stay focused this time.

This week’s media atrocity

Darline Graham was appointed to the Senate last month after her brother Lindsey’s death, and she’s seeking a full six-year term, with Trump’s endorsement. At a debate last week, Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren asked her: “Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? If so, why?”

Graham replied: “I’m not that informed on national security … National security is not my thing.”

This caused an uproar, understandably. But Van Susteren and her Trump-toady network must have worried about upsetting the king, because Van Susteren denounced other media for focusing on the gaffe instead of “the other 19 questions.” And she added: “I wish I hadn’t asked that question.”

Pitiful.

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Your paid subscription to Stop the Presses entitles you to this weekly list of recommended articles and newsletters. This one’s tardy and didn’t go out Friday as planned, but the suggestions are all still worthy.

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Is it possible that large segments of mainstream media will continue normalizing fascism right up to the very minute a dictatorship takes hold?

Is it possible that they will never warn us?

If that happens, it will mark the culmination of the most shameful episode of journalism neglect in the nation’s history.

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The news industry’s mission is to inform the public about matters that affect their lives and warn them of threats to their health and safety. That’s why weather reports are such a big part of local news. So allow me to use a weather analogy to explain what’s happening in political media right now.

Imagine a hurricane approaching the coast. News organizations report that winds are increasing, heavy rain is starting to fall, barometric pressure is dropping, people are being urged to evacuate and shop owners are boarding up their windows. But the news outlets carefully avoid using the word “hurricane.”

They might tell themselves, “We said there was a big storm coming and people were urged to leave. Everyone should have figured out it was a hurricane.”

But that’s not human nature. It’s human nature to think, “We can ride this out. It’s a big storm – but it’s not a hurricane.”

What’s bearing down on us is a political hurricane – a dictatorship in which a despot controls the news media, justice becomes a mirage, oligarchs buy off the government, white supremacy reigns, and dissent is crushed by masked thugs who execute people in the street and use electrified gloves to torture people.

A lot of this is happening already. So the news media need to say plainly, in big headlines: Trump is building a dictatorship. Use the D word. Say that this is the most corrupt presidency in American history, which it obviously is. Say that the president is mentally unstable, which he obviously is.

State painful truths directly and loudly before it’s too late.

I don’t think dictatorship is inevitable. There’s a chance we can survive this. There’s the potential for people power – millions of demonstrators refusing to submit. There is the court system, which is the only branch of government putting up meaningful resistance right now. And there are the midterms, in which Democrats could win one or both houses of Congress and start holding the regime to account and obstructing its crimes.

But none of those things can be relied upon. There’s not a long tradition of mass anti-government demonstrations bearing fruit in this country. Would people even know how to attempt a general strike? And the highest court, the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court is in a position to nullify much of the good work being done by the lower courts.

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As for the midterms, Trump and his Republican co-conspirators are plotting at this very minute to rig the elections or nullify the results. They’ve already stolen Black political power through a mid-decade gerrymandering of congressional districts. The question isn’t whether Trump will rig the midterms – it’s whether he’ll rig them more.

Again, I think we can survive this. But the American people need to send a strong signal to the MAGA movement that we won’t tolerate another coup attempt. And fewer people will send that signal if the news media keep acting like everything is normal.

This is the biggest story of our lifetimes – and of political journalists’ careers – but many of them aren’t treating it that way.

The recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with Trump as guest of honor, was one of the worst examples of American tone deafness ever, earning a dishonorable place in history alongside the picnicking spectators at the First Battle of Bull Run.

I’ve written frequently about how major media use lame euphemisms to minimize what’s happening, such as describing Trump’s blatant corruption as “testing norms.” Another form of media malpractice was on display last weekend when Trump said he’d make the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States” and U.S. news outlets barely covered it, apparently deciding that the commander of the most powerful military on Earth doesn’t need to be taken seriously.

Mainstream media are generally casting the midterms as just another red-vs.-blue contest when they ought to be telling their readers and viewers that this year’s elections may be the last chance to save American democracy. This year may also be the last chance for the news profession to save itself.

A Category 5 hurricane is bearing down on us right now. Too many journalists are still debating whether to call it one.

This week’s media atrocity

After Trump announced that professional liar Karoline Leavitt was leaving her White House job, New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton wrote an embarrassing Bluesky post: “White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt & members of her team have been extremely helpful in responding to questions I raise. Regardless of public facing commentary, privately they are willing to engage and address questions. And I have appreciated that. Thank you.”

A classic case of celebrating private access over public honesty.

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When Al Smith ran for president in 1928, opponents used his Roman Catholic faith against him. His enemies distributed a photo of Smith at the opening of the Holland Tunnel between New York City and New Jersey and claimed he was building a tunnel to the Vatican. After Smith lost, a joke went around that he reacted to the defeat by sending a one-word telegram to the pope: “Unpack.”

But religious bigotry is not at all funny.

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Hatred toward Catholics was still so widespread in 1960 that John F. Kennedy feared it would ruin his chances of becoming president. His pollster went so far as to ask West Virginia voters: “Is there a tunnel being dug from Rome so that the pope can have a secret entrance to the White House if Kennedy wins?” The results were never announced, and Kennedy was alarmed that the pollster had even asked the question, fearing it would spread a damaging rumor.

Today, Muslims occupy a similar place in our politics. The Republican Party is stoking anti-Muslim hatred as it embraces Christian nationalism, conducts an illegal war against a Muslim country, and reacts to a few election victories by Muslim Democrats, including Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

Among the slimy statements:

• Donald Trump: “We have jihadists being elected all over the place.”

• Rep. Nancy Mace: “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic.”

• Rep. Andy Ogles: “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”

• Sen. Tommy Tuberville: “Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult. Islamists aren’t here to assimilate. They’re here to conquer ... We’ve got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we’ll become the United Caliphate of America.”

• Rep. Brandon Gill: “No more Muslims immigrating to America.”

• Rep. Randy Fine: “We need more Islamophobia, not less.”

Trump and his fascist party have been particularly vicious toward the 260,000 people of Somali ethnicity in the United States, the vast majority of whom are both Muslim and American citizens. He says they’re “not smart, they have no aptitude, they have nothing going,” and they’re “garbage.” History tells us this kind of rhetoric can lead to a wave of atrocities.

Obviously, every American of good will needs to denounce it.

But the news media have a particular responsibility. What should they do?

Here are five action points:

1. Do not let anti-Muslim smears by prominent people go unreported. Do not normalize them. The New York Times published a strong overview of the problem this week, “With El-Sayed’s Victory Comes a Wave of Islamophobia” (gift link). NPR’s “All Things Considered” broadcast a sharp segment in March on Republican leaders’ shoulder-shrugging response to their party’s religious intolerance. News outlets need to treat this with the importance it deserves.

2. Use words like “bigotry” and “hatred” to describe what’s happening. It’s not slanted or unprofessional to describe hate speech against Muslims in starkly negative terms. It’s just being a good human being.

3. Note that right-wing terrorist attacks and plots have far outnumbered those by Islamic jihadists in the United States in recent years. Republicans keep talking as if it’s Sept. 11, 2001, but that was a quarter of a century ago.

4. Tell the real stories of Minnesota’s Somali community – the success stories – as the right wing exploits a fraud scandal to claim that “they’re all crooks,” as Trump put it.

5. Run fact-filled stories about how Muslims have made America great, featuring people like boxing champ Muhammad Ali and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, whose genius helped create Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). Remind people that President Barack Obama’s 2016 speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore quoted Thomas Jefferson as saying specifically that religious freedom applied to everyone, including Muslims.

To anyone who might think that writing Muslim-positive stories is ”not news,” I must push back. The central goal of journalism is to equip the public with the facts that will inspire them to be good citizens in a just society. This means combatting smears and disinformation.

When the people in power conduct a holy war against a religious group, the news media need to put themselves squarely on the side of tolerance and decency.

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Negativity is a trap we can fall into during times like these. But we need to stay optimistic and motivated if we’re going to defeat the criminals who are trying to steal our country.

Here’s my subjective list of 25 bright stars of pro-democracy media, in no particular order, plus honorable mentions at the end.

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1. Greg Sargent

   No political commentator finds sharper news angles than Sargent, who writes for The New Republic and hosts its Daily Blast podcast.

2. Heather Cox Richardson

   The Boston College history professor has nearly 3 million subscribers to her Letters from an American newsletter. She’s earned that attention with incisive analysis of today’s politics, often with a historical perspective.

3. Jamelle Bouie

   The best political columnist, bar none, at the New York Times. He’s also excellent on Bluesky.

4. Margaret Sullivan

   The former Buffalo News editor, New York Times public editor, and Washington Post media columnist is one of the most sensible people doing journalism criticism today. She writes the American Crisis newsletter and also is a columnist for The Guardian. Check out her most recent piece. It’s excellent.

5. Allison Gill

   A savvy commenter on Donald Trump’s governmental scams who gained social media fame as “Mueller, She Wrote” but now goes by her name, Gill founded the MSW Media podcasting network.

6. Aaron Rupar

   I don’t know how Rupar monitors so much video and posts it so quickly. It’s amazing he hasn’t burned out from listening to wall-to-wall right-wing disinformation. He and his team also write terrific essays for his Public Notice newsletter.

7. Judd Legum

   His well-researched Popular Information newsletter is billed as “news for people who give a damn.”

8. Nicolle Wallace

   No MS NOW host is better focused on the authoritarian threat to our country.

9. Jim Acosta

   CNN tried to shove him into an overnight shift. He left instead. Now he’s doing a podcast with straight talk about Trump’s abuses of power.

10. Marc Elias

    Elias is the nation’s No. 1 fighter in court against the Republicans assaulting our elections. His Democracy Docket keeps the public focused on the battlegrounds.

11. Katie Phang

    The former MSNBC host is an activist journalist. She does videos with the Meidas Touch Network and she has sued the Justice Department over its mishandling of the Epstein files.

12. Parker Molloy

    I hate that Molloy is so good at her job because she often writes about the same subject as me – journalists’ failure to confront bigotry and fascism. Her Present Age newsletter is a must read.

13. Marcy Wheeler

    Known as “Empty Wheel” on social media and her blog, Wheeler smartly explains developments in national security and civil liberties.

14. Angelo Carusone

    He’s the president and chief executive officer of Media Matters for America, which monitors extremism in right-wing media despite harassment from Elon Musk and Trump’s Federal Trade Commission.

15. 16. Amy Goodman and Juan González

    The hosts of the daily news hour “Democracy Now!” will make you smarter. I guarantee it.

17. Karen Attiah

    She edited the work of Jamal Khashoggi at the Washington Post before the Saudis murdered him. WaPo later fired her “for talking about race,” as she put it. She’s not shutting up.

18. Steven Beschloss

    I’ve done video segments with Beschloss in the past, and I know he’s a passionate fighter against MAGA fascism. He writes the America, America newsletter and does “Six Questions With Steven Beschloss” videos with Lincoln Square.

19. Oliver Darcy

    The former CNN reporter now runs the Status newsletter, which regularly breaks news about the news industry. It’s subscription-only, but worth it.

20. Nina Burleigh

    If you like a side dish of snark with your political commentary, Burleigh’s American Freakshow newsletter is right for you. She has one of the deepest and most sophisticated understandings of the Epstein scandal.

21. Radley Balko

    A leading voice exposing abuses in law enforcement, Balko writes The Watch newsletter and recently penned a New York Times op-ed headlined “ICE Is Out of Control. Here’s What to Do About It” (gift link).

22. Catherine Rampell

    MS NOW is on an upward track because of the addition of journalists like Rampell, who cuts through spin and delivers facts, however painful they may be. She’s also economics editor for The Bulwark.

23. Stephanie Miller

    Talk radio is dominated by the right, and progressive voices can sometimes seem sincere but sleepy. “The Stephanie Miller Show” is an exception. It’s freewheeling, funny, and aggressively anti-MAGA.

24. Rex Huppke

    Like Miller, Huppke uses humor to get his point across. I used to edit him at the Chicago Tribune. Now he’s fighting the good fight at USA Today.

25. Jen Rubin

    She was a conservative columnist for the Washington Post who realized that support for the American right was incompatible with support for decency and democracy. Rubin left WaPo and helped found The Contrarian.

Some honorable mentions: Brian Beutler, Kai Ryssdal, Aaron Parnas, Lawrence O’Donnell, Jay Rosen, Nancy Levine Stearns, Jennifer Schulze, Dan Froomkin, Edwin Eisendrath, Molly Jong-Fast, Jack Cocchiarella, Denny Carter, Susan J. Demas, Kyle Tharp, Jamison Foser, Ron Filipkowski, Jeff Jarvis, Josh Marshall, Ben Collins, John Fugelsang, Tara McGowan, Marisa Kabas, Jacob Soboroff, Asawin Suebsaeng, and Kevin M. Kruse.

If your favorite people are not listed here, please make your recommendations in the comments.

This week’s media atrocity

Why don’t major media realize that when they start a headline with “Trump says …” they’re telling us to ignore the story? An Associated Press report last Wednesday was headlined, “Trump says deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could come as early as Wednesday.” It didn’t. As of Sunday, “We are only semi-negotiating with them” … Trump says.

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Last week, Trump bizarrely told Michigan auto workers: “I’ve done more for you than your parents, OK? Your parents are good. I’m not going to knock your parents, but I have been better to you than your parents.”

The Associated Press ran it this way:

“‘I’ve done more for you than your parents, OK?’ he joked.”

“He joked”? Really? I don’t think Trump was joking. He is, after all, the most narcissistic and megalomaniacal person in American public life.

Here’s why the news media must stop reflexively treating Trump’s comments as “jokes”:

• In 2016, Trump urged Russia to hunt for Hillary Clinton’s emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Trump later claimed the remark was “in jest,” but the Mueller Report stated that “within five hours of Trump’s remark, a Russian intelligence service began targeting email accounts associated with Hillary Clinton for possible hacks.”

• In 2017, Trump encouraged police brutality, telling officers, “Please don’t be too nice” when making arrests. His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, “I believe he was making a joke at the time.” What have we seen since? A series of street executions carried out by Trump’s immigration agents.

• In late 2019, while running for re-election, Trump mused about staying in office beyond his allotted time: “5 years, 9 years, 13 years, 17 years, 21 years, 25 years, 29 years.” Pointing to the press, he said, “I’m only doing that to drive them totally crazy. That drives them crazy. Even joking about it.” It wasn’t funny a year later when Trump launched a deadly coup attempt to try to stay in power.

• In 2023, Trump said if he was returned to the White House, he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for Day 1.” He later posted that “it was said in a joking manner.” Now, after all the authoritarian moves of his second term, it’s obvious he wasn’t kidding, except when he said he’d stop after Day 1.

• A CNN headline last December read: “Trump jokes about ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’ in remarks during Honors ceremony.” Trump, serving as host, played it off as a slip of the tongue. A few days later, the “joke” became reality: Trump arranged for his name to be officially added to the building – an outrageous action that was later reversed by a federal judge.

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There are more examples of “jokes” that could become serious in the coming months and years:

• In January, Trump said his administration was doing so well that “we shouldn’t even have an election.” Asked whether Trump was serious about the idea of canceling the midterms, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The president was simply joking.” Meanwhile, as polls look bad for Republicans, Trump keeps pushing voter suppression measures. He’s reckless and desperate. Who knows what he may do?

• An AP headline in May read: “Trump jokes that US Navy will take on Cuba on the way home from Iran.” I’m not so sure that’s a joke.

• At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and other events, Trump has talked about running for another term in 2028, even though the Constitution forbids it. Several news outlets – including NBC, C-SPAN, USA Today, Newsweek, The Independent, and The Hill – have said Trump is “joking” about that, but in March 2025, Trump himself said he was not. I think he’s testing the waters.

Trump can also be deeply unfunny and inappropriate when he tries to be a quipster. In March, while hosting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the Oval Office, he explained why the United States did not give Japan a heads-up that it was planning to attack Iran.

“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” he said. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan, OK? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK? Right?”

Not only are his “jokes” unfunny, they’re hamhanded. If he ever had comedic timing, he’s lost it. That’s why he bombed so badly at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Jon Stewart delivered a brilliant takedown on “The Daily Show” last week of just how incompetently Trump told jokes at the dinner.

Trump’s stand-up comedy act suffers when we don’t know if he’s kidding. But Trump’s political act benefits from that uncertainty. Some people are tempted to think, “He must be joking.” But those of us who remember the outrages of the last decade know enough to get alarmed.

The news media need to get alarmed, too. His regime is a sick joke, but he isn’t kidding.

This week’s media atrocity

CBS News continued to bulldoze its credibility by naming New York Times columnist Ross Douthat a “60 Minutes” correspondent. You may remember Douthat from his column in late 2020 headlined, “There Will Be No Trump Coup.”

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It matters who owns news organizations. It matters who runs them.

Corporate media have similar profit motives that may affect their willingness to tell the whole truth, but they’re not all the same. Some news executives let journalists do their jobs with little or no interference. Others, like CBS News, owned by the pro-Trump Ellison family, are in the tank for the fascist regime.

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Last week, former “60 Minutes” correspondent Cecilia Vega provided new insight into how CBS management pressured its staff to twist reporting after federal agents murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January.

According to Vega, CBS management asked her to include video of protesters attacking people they erroneously believed were undercover ICE agents. But Vega said her team found “no credible examples” of that.

She said she was urged to include a comment by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey supposedly calling on city police officers to fight ICE agents. But Vega said she and her colleagues watched “every frame” of a Frey news conference and “that never happened. We could not find any instance of the mayor saying something like that.”

Vega’s account bolstered the claims made by her former colleague Scott Pelley, who accused CBS executives of pressuring him “to inject falsehoods and bias” into his reporting. Pelley said CBS News boss Bari Weiss ordered his team to make protesters look more violent and to describe Good as driving toward an ICE agent when video clearly showed her steering away.

Let’s take stock of what happened here: CBS News executives tried to help the Trump regime whitewash public executions carried out by federal agents.

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Both Vega and Pelley refused to insert falsehoods into their reporting. They were later fired. But they’re not disgruntled employees settling scores. They’re seasoned journalists appalled by what they saw.

“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” Vega said. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”

It appears likely that CBS executives were passing on disinformation they received from the Trump regime, which had falsely labeled both Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists.

Corporate media are especially susceptible to political influence because their owners often operate businesses that have nothing to do with journalism but stand to be rewarded or punished by the people in power. The Ellisons’ friendliness toward Trump earned them the support of Trump’s Justice Department in their bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

A key test of a news outlet’s culture and ethics is whether its money people can keep their thumbs off the newsgathering process. Many don’t respect any boundaries. Another threat to journalists’ honest reporting is the desire of some news executives to avoid being confrontational toward politicians, either because they fear being seen as biased or because they’re addicted to access. But journalists have a duty to apply truth to power, even if some executives flinch at that.

I experienced this flinching firsthand when I was an editor at the Chicago Tribune.

In the early days of Trump’s first term, a top editor ordered me and my staff not to say in stories that Trump was lying, or even that he was wrong. We were instructed to convey what Trump said and then say what the facts were, hoping that readers would reach the correct conclusion all by themselves.

That timidity has been common throughout legacy media, and it’s part of the reason Trump is in a position now to destroy our democracy.

Of course, soft treatment toward politicians happens in both big and little ways. Sometimes it’s a slanted headline or corruption being downplayed as “a break from norms.”

But in the case of the Good and Pretti murders, CBS executives crossed a far darker line. They took the side of lying politicians trying to justify shooting Americans. And since then, ICE has killed more people.

This wasn’t “politics.” It was a test of whether a news outlet would prioritize basic human decency. CBS News failed that test.

This week’s media atrocity

It was disgusting to see the White House Correspondents’ Association hosting Trump as its guest of honor at its dinner Friday. NBC’s Kristen Welker was caught on video yukking it up with Stephen Miller, architect of ICE’s reign of terror against immigrants and the people who defend them. Members of the Washington press are supposed to be watchdogs, but too often they’re lapdogs. The dinner sent the message that they’re all in the same club, and you aren’t.

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Trump and prediction markets are building a society of suckers

Prediction markets are perfect examples of how Donald Trump and the oligarchs who conspire with him are building a nation of chumps, a society of suckers.

These markets are online betting parlors by another name. They allow people to wager on a wide variety of questions, from“Next prime minister of Ethiopia?“ to “Where will ‘Janice STFU’ by Drake rank on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated Aug 1, 2026?”

Prediction markets are sometimes described as a testament to “the wisdom of crowds,” but such wisdom has its limits. The markets are notoriously vulnerable to insider trading, which means people who control events or have private knowledge of what will happen can make a killing.

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Trump, who loves gray-area, funny-money opportunities like cryptocurrency and prediction markets, has made his position clear. He wants his Commodity Futures Trading Commission to have “exclusive authority” over prediction markets, with no regulation by the states. “We cannot have SCUM like Chris Christie, Letitia James, Tim Walz, and JB Pritzker setting the rules!” Trump wrote in May.

Trump’s CFTC chairman, Michael Selig, doesn’t look like much of a watchdog. This month, he praised prediction markets as “an interesting hedging tool” that helps companies “manage risk.” And the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is a booster, too. He has financial ties to the top two prediction markets – serving as an investor and unpaid adviser for Polymarket and a paid adviser for Kalshi.

Major news media are also in cahoots. CNBC and CNN treat Kalshi’s numbers as if they’re news – and both have financial deals to promote the company. CNBC sometimes fails to disclose that relationship when reporting on Kalshi, according to an excellent report by Aaron Rupar and Judd Legum. CNBC says it discloses its financial link only when it is “directly relevant to the story.”

CNN’s deal with Kalshi is exclusive, which means CNN can’t cite other prediction markets in its coverage, a network source told The New Yorker. If the coverage of Kalshi’s wagers were actually news instead of just sneaky product placement, why wouldn’t CNN occasionally cite other prediction markets, too?

While CNBC and CNN continue this gross perversion of their journalistic mission, other news outlets are doing fine jobs of exposing the ways these markets make our country more dishonest and exploitative. Among the most damning reports:

• About 0.1% of accounts on Polymarket collect about two-thirds of the profits, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

• In a stunningly dodgy tactic, Polymarket created “clone” sites on which social media influencers made fake bets before posting videos with messages like, “I just turned $500 into $100K.”

• The Associated Press reported: “A group of new accounts on the prediction market Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the U.S. and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits … At least 50 accounts, or wallets, placed substantial ‘Yes’ bets Tuesday before Trump announced the ceasefire in a Truth Social post at around 6:30 pm ET. These were the first bets made by these particular wallets.”

• Some prediction markets let people to bet on wildfires. “Experts are sounding the alarm,” says CNN. “They fear it risks incentivizing arson.”

• Kalshi will soon begin taking bets on the outcomes of clinical drug trials. Nothing bad could come from that, right?

• Trump’s teleprompter operator is suspected of using his inside knowledge to win more than $100,000 betting on Kalshi about what the president would say in his major speeches.

• Spotify removed about 500,000 streams from Malcolm Todd’s song “Earrings” after its strong performance on the charts was linked to manipulation tied to Kalshi bets.

• Polymarket pays “influencers” to insert its product into social media conversations. Among them: former Politico reporter Rachael Bade, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, leftist commentator Brian Krassenstein, and right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson (who was also funded by Russia, supposedly without his knowledge).

• Billionaire Peter Thiel, the money man behind JD Vance’s political career, is a major investor in Polymarket.

The greed of Team Trump and the mainstream media have empowered prediction markets to separate many people from their money while allowing a few to quietly profit from dodgy schemes.

CNBC and CNN aren’t the only media companies with prediction market ties. Polymarket has a partnership with Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, though it must be said that some of the most negative stories about prediction markets have appeared in the WSJ.

Polymarket also has a cooperation agreement with Substack, the publishing platform for this newsletter, which is sponsored by COURIER Newsroom. I have had no dealings with any prediction market and pledge to never take their money.

If you see a journalist or influencer posting positively about a prediction market on social media, ask them in the comments whether they have any financial ties. I have done that myself and aim to do it more often.

Prediction markets, as currently operated, stink to high heaven.

This week’s media atrocity

Reacting to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s campaign to boost testosterone levels in the military, Fox host Jesse Watters declared: “Women on base, you guys better be careful. Port calls, women in Asia, you better be careful. Because these guys are going to be wild animals and you better watch out.”

Yep, rape is hilarious if you’re an idiot like Jesse Watters.

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Federal agents went to New York Times reporters’ homes last week to deliver subpoenas in their investigation of news coverage that displeased the Trump regime.

This is bad news for both journalism and democracy. But it’s entirely predictable. News outlets that minimize and normalize Republican authoritarianism will eventually find it at their doorstep.

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The NYT has been simultaneously great and terrible in its coverage of MAGA. Its investigative reporters have often exposed individual abuses, but its news editors have failed to shape a coherent warning about the broader threat to our freedom. Too often, they’ve been clueless or trivializing.

When Donald Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution, the NYT put the story on Page 13. When he lied about immigration and the economy in an address to Congress, the NYT praised his “game show flair.” When he vowed to take back the Panama Canal by force, the NYT called it a desire ”to expand America’s footprint.” When he showed that his brain was broken by bizarrely swaying to music at a campaign rally for 39 minutes, it was merely an “improvisational departure.”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, NYT Executive Editor Joe Kahn said the survival of democracy was not a top priority in the Times’ coverage:

It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second.

The NYT seemed to take civil liberties more seriously last week after receiving subpoenas over its coverage of problems with Qatar’s “gift” of a new Air Force One to Trump. The regime’s investigation is “a brazen act” that “should shock the conscience of any American,” the NYT said.

Of course, the NYT isn’t the only mainstream outlet that once thought it could ride out the fascist movement without getting confrontational with the fascists. Some journalists at legacy news organizations act as if they live in a very safe space. They’re part of the power structure. They have lawyers and researchers and expense accounts and multiple layers of editors to keep them out of trouble. Nothing bad could happen to them, right?

ABC News may have thought it was protecting itself by settling a Trump lawsuit for $15 million over host George Stephanopoulos’ comments that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll case. Technically, under New York law, it was sexual abuse, not rape, even though a judge in the case said it would be considered rape in “common modern parlance.” ABC had a good chance of winning the lawsuit because Trump is a public figure and would have had to prove Stephanopoulos knowingly made a false statement.

Instead, ABC surrendered, which encouraged Trump to sue other media outlets. Stephanopoulos signed a new contract and the network moved on.

But for tyrants, there’s never enough acquiescence.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel often mocks Trump on his late-night show, and Trump’s hatchet man at the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, went after Kimmel last September. Carr’s FCC can’t shut down networks, but it does have the power to launch investigations and pull the licenses of network-owned local affiliate stations.

Seizing on Kimmel’s comments after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Carr made his threat:

We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Nexstar and Sinclair, two major local TV chains, pulled Kimmel’s show, and then ABC suspended him. But the regime’s heavy hand caused a major stink – and inspired calls for a boycott of Disney, ABC’s parent company. The bid to silence Kimmel fell apart, and he went back on the air.

Now Trump and Carr are going after ABC’s “The View,” whose hosts have long irritated the regime. Carr’s FCC is questioning the show’s claim that it qualifies as a news show exempt from “equal time” rules. As ABC puts it, “the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show.”

This time, ABC is fighting back, launching an ad campaign urging viewers to submit comments to the FCC. Tens of thousands have done so.

Better late than never, ABC. It’s well past time for other legacy outlets to defend the 1st Amendment and themselves. But so many of them continue to betray their duty to a free society.

We’ll soon see another demonstration of that subservience with the redo of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24, featuring Trump. You’ll recall that a gunman interrupted the event in April, and the White House Correspondents’ Association vowed to reschedule the dinner in cooperation with the nation’s most prominent enemy of the free press.

The dinner – which should be abolished – will carry some suspense about what Trump decides to say. Back in April, some of us anticipated that journalists would sit there and take it as Trump ripped the “fake news.” But he is unpredictable. To its credit, the NYT does not participate in the WHCD, though it does cover it. Maybe it will once again praise Trump’s “game show flair.”

Trump, who can turn anything into a cheap carny act, is coy.

“I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people,” he wrote in June. “But we will soon find out.”

This week’s media atrocity

The Hill, anticipating an announcement of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s death, prematurely published a story headlined, “DO NOT USE: A lookback at Mitch McConnell’s time in the Senate.”

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