Happy Tuesday! Here's the latest on Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, the Wayback Machine, Katherine Stewart, "Odyssey," John Oliver, and so much more.
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"To protect the free press in America, we need to agree that 'an attack on one is an attack on all,'" Jim Friedlich says, invoking the famous phrase in the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949.
Friedlich is the CEO and executive director of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the nonprofit that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer. In a new opinion piece, he proposes a "commitment to collective action," akin to a "NATO for news," in response to President Trump's "assaults."
He cites the Trump White House's action against The Associated Press and shares concern about the lack of a collective response from The AP's peers. (As I reported last week, there have been behind the scenes conservations and some statements expressing solidarity, but there hasn't been a mass boycott.)
"News organizations have several powerful assets with which to come to one another's defense," Friedlich wrote. Read on...
>> For a different view, check out Paul Farhi's column for CJR. Farhi wrote that "Trump's ban on the AP is awful, but a mass walkout by the press corps is unworkable and unwise."
>> Related: Committee to Protect Journalists president Jodie Ginsberg last week: "If vital media institutions are to survive this administration, it will be because essential media, on all sides, stand up clearly and unequivocally for the right to report the news. After all, challenging the bullies is part of the job."
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Musk's 'free speech' hypocrisy |
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images |
Elon Musk has no power to put anyone in jail, but his fantasy about a “long prison sentence” for “60 Minutes” reporters is dangerous nonetheless. If you want to know why, just ask... Elon Musk.
He has repeatedly (and correctly) posted that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.” He has described himself as a “free speech absolutist.” He has decried speech restrictions in other countries. Yet his recent statements about the American media contradict his self-image.
In a few short weeks, Musk has become the most vicious media-basher of the Trump administration, sometimes going even further than the president has. He has the attention and affection of millions, so when he makes statements that are antithetical to American values, some of his fans feel emboldened to do the same.
Notably, when he assailed “60 Minutes” in that anti-democratic tirade Sunday night, scores of usually Musk-friendly followers replied to him with criticism, pointing out his past promotion of “free speech” and accusing him of hypocrisy.
CBS declined to comment on his "prison" fantasy. It's far from the first time Musk has encouraged prosecutions of critics. (NBC wrote an article full of examples last fall.) So here's the point of my new column for CNN.com: By positioning himself as Mr. Free Speech, but then proclaiming that disfavored journalists “deserve” to be jailed, Musk is lending credence to those who say he doesn’t truly care about democracy, he values only oligarchy...
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There's so much speaking. Musk arguably gets a pass, much of the time, because he posts so darn much. I counted it up; on Monday he tweeted more than 94 times and retweeted others at least another 36 times.
>> David Gilbert corrected Musk's baseless claim that 150 year olds are picking up social security benefits en masse. (WIRED)
>> Pranshu Verma showed how Musk's ridicule of a Project on Government Oversight staffer "illustrates how Musk's unparalleled online reach has given him a powerful tool to attack individuals who criticize DOGE, with one post able to spark hundreds of blistering responses from his followers." (Wash Post)
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Wash Post declines anti-Musk ad |
The Washington Post is facing criticism for choosing not to run a "wrap" ad atop its print edition with an anti-Musk message. The advocacy groups that wanted to buy the ad say the Post was initially open to the ad, then reversed course.
The Post doesn't have to sell the ad space, of course, and management might have been right to worry about the optics of such an ad. But Common Cause is using the back-and-forth to garner support.
"At a time when the free press is already under attack, we cannot allow political or corporate influences to dictate what stories get told,” the group's president Virginia Kase Solomón told Liam Reilly. Read on...
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>> In a new interview with James Billot, Steve Bannon calls Musk a "parasitic illegal immigrant" who "wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, values, or traditions." (UnHerd)
>> House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox last weekend that Musk is working out of the Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. During a recent visit, "we laughed about how appropriate that is," Johnson said, "because he's declared war on the deep state and the bureaucracy."
>> Disinformation researcher Kate Starbird: "In 2020 they used the Big Lie (100s of misleading claims) of 'voter fraud' to try to overturn an election. In 2024 they're using similar tactics to create/amplify misleading claims of 'government waste and fraud' to justify dismantling huge sections of the U.S. government." (Bluesky)
>> "Through the first month of his administration, Mr. Trump and his allies have carried out a campaign of revenge and retribution that has little analogue in American history," Luke Broadwater writes. (NYT)
>> Coming up tonight: Sean Hannity's sit-down with Trump and Musk airs on Fox...
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Today's new nonfiction releases |
Katherine Stewart, who has been covering the Christian nationalist movement for years, is out today with "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy," a deep look at the Americans who "who want to tear it all down." In this Rolling Stone excerpt, she says "I am sorry to report that electoral victory has not made them gracious toward their many perceived enemies. Nor has it diminished their appetite for conspiracy theories, violent fantasy, and strongman politics."
>> Also new today: "Seven Things You Can't Say About China" by Sen. Tom Cotton; "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity" by Yoni Appelbaum; "Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live" by
Susan Morrison; "Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend" by Rebecca Romney; and "Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want" by
Courtney Carver.
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>> An inspiring story: "As more local movie houses close, residents in smaller towns are forming nonprofits to buy and operate them," Jim Zarroli reports. (NYT)
>> The Wayback Machine, one of the most valuable websites on the internet, is busy preserving the sites the Trump administration took down, Matthew Kaufman writes. (CNN)
>> New apps like 5 Calls are helping people "express their views to elected representatives — and they're jamming Congress's phone lines," Shira Ovide writes. (Wash Post)
>> Thomas Germain shares "how a computer that 'drunk dials' videos is exposing YouTube's secrets." (BBC)
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>> Musk's xAI "unveiled Grok-3 on Tuesday, announcing that the new artificial intelligence model has 'more than 10 times' the compute power of its predecessor." (The Verge)
>> Related: "X has significantly hiked the price for its top Premium+ subscription plan, which gives users access to the latest model, to almost $50 per month." (TechCrunch)
>> Meta "has announced plans to build the world's longest underwater cable project, which aims to connect the US, India, South Africa, Brazil and other regions." (The Guardian)
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Boffo ratings for 'SNL50' |
"Sunday's live SNL50: The Anniversary Special drew 14.8 million viewers on NBC and Peacock," totaling "NBC's biggest primetime entertainment telecast in five years," THR's Rick Porter writes. The Sunday night event tripled the usual late-night audience for "SNL..." |
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>> Last season HBO kept the main segment from Sunday's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" off YouTube until Thursday. But this season the show has returned to "next-day YouTube posting." Here is Sunday's "Trump 2.0" dissection. (THR)
>> Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show "sparked big gains for the rapper's catalog of albums, as three of his releases dot the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart" this week. (Billboard)
>> Yesterday Universal released a first look of Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Homer's "Odyssey," releasing a photo of Matt Damon playing the lead. The post "reiterated the movie's July 17, 2026 release date." (Deadline)
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