Breaking the News

The media landscape and the last resort.

I’m sure by now everyone has viewed the Gaza-as-Mar-a-Lago promo video posted on President Trump’s instagram account. Yes, it’s real and yes, it’s disturbing and yes, it should be enough to impeach him. If you haven’t watched it, I suggest you don’t, because my eyes haven’t blinked since. It’s like I’m Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange.”

It goes from really sad kids in a war zone to really happy kids in a flashy resort with a towering gold statue of Trump, shots of an Elon Musk lookalike, bearded male belly dancers, money falling from the sky, and Trump hanging out shirtless with Netyanhu poolside. It’s pretty much a Sandals resort but instead of being in St. Lucia, it’s in hell. Luckily it’s still all-inclusive.

Actual photo.

We will keep seeing more shirtless dictators, probably in a 2026 calendar, if the flailing media doesn’t stop flailing.

When I was at Northwestern getting my master’s in journalism (yes, it served me quite well), I chose to study print media as opposed to broadcast because everyone knew that “online journalism” was a fad and print would last forever. A visionary, even then. Also, none of the girls in broadcast news wore overalls so I knew I would never fit in.

Sure, sometimes I still buy the print edition of the Sunday New York Times out of pure nostalgia. My tween daughter, who spends entire afternoons playing Roblox on her iPad, watches me with abject pity. I promise her newspapers still have a future, which elicits one of her endearing eye rolls.

But now independent media outlets are crumbling in the face of authoritarianism, abandoning their First Amendment right guaranteeing a free press. Of course, it’s not the reporters themselves, it’s the owners and the global media conglomerates and the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Jeff Bezoses and the other mob bosses.

This week the opinions editor at the The Washington Post resigned after Bezos decided to instill a more “libertarian” vision for the op-ed page, removing opinions and editorials to make more room for Family Circus cartoons.

Oh, Not Me, that little rascal!

Also this week the White House announced that the administration, not the White House Correspondents Association, will be in charge of selecting which news outlets have access to Trump. They’ve already replaced HuffPost and Reuters with Newsmax and The Blaze. (No, I’m not being satirical.)

The White House had already banned the AP from press conferences for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. (No, I’m not being satirical.)

Meanwhile ABC settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $15 million to his presidential library because George Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump had been found “liable for rape” instead of “liable for sexual abuse” in the Jean Carroll trial. Clearly that damaged the president’s impeccable moral reputation.

(Incidentally do you know how hard it is for a public official to win a defamation lawsuit? It’s really, really hard. I wrote my thesis on this, “The Unholy Trinity: Defamation, Libel and Slander.” Print edition. Perhaps you read it.)

Let’s not forget Paramount’s swift abandonment of 60 Minutes and its likely $20 billion settlement with the Trump administration over what he claimed was a manipulated interview with Kamala Harris.

Shari Redstone, Paramount’s chairwoman and resident villainess, had complained about CBS becoming “too left.” And if she wants the mega-merger with National Amusements and her multimillion dollar payout to happen, she needs things to go smoothly. Dalmation puppy fur coats don’t just make themselves.

As you can see, the media has been reduced to Substack newsletters, Morse code and town criers. Fingers crossed that Aaron Sorkin comes out with another ingratiating TV series about a pretentious, insufferable newsroom to keep us entertained.