Margaret Sullivan

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Margaret Sullivan

With a new book out about Joe Biden’s failed re-election campaign, a media reckoning is in full swing. It goes something like this: mainstream journalism failed the voters. Reporters were complicit; they didn’t tell us how much the elderly president had declined. They didn’t dig beneath the surface of what Biden aides were doing as they covered up the physical and cognitive decline of the leader of the free world. And some of that is valid, no doubt.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Margaret Sullivan

The revolving door between the Trump administration and rightwing Fox News took another wild spin this week, as America’s TV-obsessed president tapped Jeanine Pirro for a prominent legal post: top federal prosecutor for Washington DC. Pirro is unqualified, perhaps even more so than was her former Fox colleague Pete Hegseth when he was named Trump’s defense secretary a few months ago.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Margaret Sullivan

There have been so many red alerts for press freedom in the United States over the past few months that it can be hard to know which ones really matter. The one at CBS’s 60 Minutes really matters. It came as a one-two punch. First, Bill Owens, the highly respected executive producer of the venerable news show stepped down, writing in a letter to employees that he no longer felt he had crucial editorial independence.

1 month ago | msn.com | Margaret Sullivan

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1 month ago | theguardian.com | Margaret Sullivan

It was entirely predictable that President Trump would go after public media in America. Harming the reality-based press – in every form, whether public or private – is a central part of his playbook for controlling the political narrative as he moves the country toward an authoritarian model of government. For Trump, the message is all, and anything that gets in the way should be portrayed as an evil to society and stamped out. Like every would-be autocrat, Trump has an anti-media playbook.