The Media and Democracy Project 📺 📰

Fighting for a pro-democracy media. Reach out/sign up: tiny.cc/OurNewsletter Monthly meetings & special events: tiny.cc/mad_mtgs Follow us on Blυeʂkу mediaanddemocracy.bsky.social Subscribe to our blog mediaanddemocracyproject.substack.com #PressFreedom

The press deserves the criticism sometimes, but the decades-long, right-wing portrayal of it as a villain has had major political consequences in the U.S. My latest blog post, including some embarrassing history of Birmingham newspapers (3 min): tomarenberg.net/blog/2026/4/6/…

In this News Brief, we talk w/ @ajbauer about his new book, "Making the Liberal Media," and the corporate and ideological forces that shaped the popular idea mainstream media was crawling with fifth columnist agitators hostile to the values of Real America soundcloud.com/citationsneede…

You will not see @CNN or @MSNOWNews covering this. The @BBC is doing their job. This should be a lead story on all US networks.

TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, CBS, and CNN all have Trump-aligned owners. Here’s why US media has a liberal bias problem.

Remember: The election was not rigged, and Fox News had to pay a $787.5 million settlement for lying and saying it was.

The Supreme Court gave Trump immunity to commit almost any crime, and now Trump is going to give his staff immunity to help him commit those crimes

This is a nuanced but remarkable and important headline choice for the leading newsroom in DC. Red line is mine.

A coalition that includes @ReinventAlbany and @MAD_Democracy is calling for the state's $30 million journalism subsidy program to include non-profit oulets. reinventalbany.org/wp-content/upl…

Imagine a newspaper publisher refusing to let libraries keep copies of its paper. That’s effectively what’s starting online, as big publishers block the Internet Archive from preserving news sites. eff.org/deeplinks/2026…

The NY Times continues to erroneously call the SAVE Act a "voter I.D. bill." I did a deep dive into its history and explain that ID was only added this year and is nots it core. Stop spreading GOP talking points and focus on the facts. democracydocket.com/opinion/the-sa…

Please read this important work. I tried to get at the larger issue in an essay called "Oligarchical Corridor." snyder.substack.com/p/the-oligarch…

It wa not an "anonymous call." It was a series of four interviews between the victim and the FBI, at the conclusion of which her story was found credible and she was asked to continue her cooperation with the FBI investigation. Comer is dissembling to protect a child rapist.

Today @npr is reporting what we reported last week about the missing serial numbers that prove doj yanked the interviews with a Trump accuser. Glad it’s going mainstream. open.substack.com/pub/americanpo…

Exactly. Strong and important from NYT Editorial Board: “The investigation becomes the punishment, forcing media companies to spend millions on legal defenses and deterring them from publishing material that the Trump administration does not like.” 1/2

MS Now also confirmed NPR’s report. And that stemmed from another independent journalist doing forensics. A free and plural press is likely all over this now.

Cool thing about American dystopia is that an action that should trigger weeks of media outrage like surreptitiously sending a nuclear submarine off the coast of an ally's territory and then lying about the ally rescuing one of our service members won't even crack the news cycle

This is a ploy by WH and DHS to disrupt air travel in order to blame Democrats. Think about it rather than just repeat their headlines. Why would the more efficient system which uses fewer agents and gets more people through be shut down? It makes no sense.

Now it’s official. To enter the United States with an ESTA, travellers must hand over all their social media from the last five years. Not a rumour. An official rule. This matters even more as the US prepares to host the next Football World Cup, welcoming athletes, supporters and families from across the globe. Security and safety are essential — but so are serenity, trust and individual freedoms. And this comes from the same political voices lecturing Europe on free speech. JD Vance warned us about censorship here, while endorsing indiscriminate digital scrutiny there. When the “Land of the Free” starts vetting opinions, hypocrisy is clear — and liberties long admired worldwide are put at risk.

Between Nexstar and Sinclair, Trump’s allies will control local news across 458 stations in up to 200 of the 210 U.S. markets. Trump’s billionaire buddies control X, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Fox News, CBS News, Washington Post, WSJ and NY Post. They designed it so their lies are served up to you as truth.

Somebody should tell Peggy Noonan the problem is not that "something bad, something terrible on a national scale" might happen and the press won't be here to cover it, it's that those things are happening EVERY DAY and the press is indifferent to all of it.