by Maximillian Alvarez | May 13, 2026 | Article, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Media, Opinion, Politics and Movements: US
An earlier version of this speech was delivered at the 2026 Izzy Awards ceremony at the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, NY, on April 21, 2026.
Friends, colleagues, fellow human beings,
You don’t need to read Project Censored’s latest State of the Free Press report to know that the state of the free press in America is not good (but, obviously, you should still read the report).
And it’s not just President Trump, his administration, and the MAGA faithful repeatedly, publicly expressing their hatred and verbalizing threats towards journalists and media organizations that don’t tow the Supreme Leader’s line. It’s not just Trump and his cabinet bullying and berating journalists at press briefings, restricting their access, and trying to make them sign loyalty pledges.
It’s also Trump’s absurd and gangsterish lawsuits targeted at ABC News, which is owned by Disney, and CBS News, which is owned by Paramount, and the morally spineless, financially self-serving capitulation of these corporate cowards to Trump by settling, rather than fighting, those lawsuits—setting the precedent for more shakedowns.
It’s the multi-pronged attempt by the Trump administration and the ruling-class-serving authors and executors of Project 2025 to destroy the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which they succeeded in doing, and to defund and destroy PBS and NPR, which they are still trying to do now.
It’s the federal harassment, capture, imprisonment, and even deportation of journalists like Estefany Rodríguez, Mario Guevara, Sami Hamdi, and Georgia Fort. Even Don Lemon. Even Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was snatched off the street last year by plainclothes federal thugs for co-authoring an op-ed in her campus newspaper.
It’s the professional journalists, student journalists,
by Steve Benen | Apr 27, 2026 | Maddowblog, Media, News, Politics
Under the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has tried more than once to impose restrictions on the free press, and so far, those efforts have failed in court. There’s one news outlet, however, where the Defense Department has had more success. The New York Times reported:
In a blow to independent coverage of the military, the Pentagon has fired the ombudsman for Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that covers the U.S. armed forces and is partly funded by the Defense Department.
‘Apparently the Pentagon also doesn’t want you to hear from me anymore about threats to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes,’ the ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, wrote in a Stars and Stripes column published on Thursday.
As has been the case with many recent Pentagon firings, Smith added that she was given no reason for her dismissal.
It’s important to emphasize that the role of ombudsman at Stars and Stripes was created by Congress for a reason: The person in this job is specifically tasked with ensuring the newspaper’s editorial independence.
Hegseth’s Pentagon fired her anyway, not because Smith failed to do her job, but because she did her job in ways the Republican administration found inconvenient.
As many service members and veterans likely know, Stars and Stripes is a military newspaper with a generations-old pedigree. It has long described itself as the “U.S. military’s independent news source.”
The word “independent” was — and remains — key. As it covers the military, Stars and Stripes has long enjoyed the same kind of editorial freedom that civilian newspapers have, even if that means publishing reports the Pentagon doesn’t always like.
To ensure it publishes only
by Chris Walker | Apr 25, 2026 | Brendan Carr, censorship, FCC, Federal Communications Commission, LGBTQ, LGBTQ Rights, Media, News, Trans Rights, Transgender
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a request for public comment on Wednesday, asking parents to weigh in on changes to the current ratings system and whether updates are needed to inform viewers about content related to transgender people — a demand that could result in widespread censorship of LGBTQ voices and representation in media, critics have warned. The request from the…
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by Steve Benen | Apr 23, 2026 | Maddowblog, Media, News, Politics
The FBI doesn’t investigate journalists often, but when it does, it tends to be because a reporter has a confidential source who’s been accused of leaking sensitive information to a news organization. Earlier this year, for example, the FBI searched the home of Hannah Natanson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Washington Post, whose devices it seized as part of a criminal case involving an alleged leak of classified information.
The bureau does not, however, have a record of investigating journalists for writing an article the FBI director didn’t like. Nevertheless, The New York Times reported:
The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said.
The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that the investigatory steps “prompted concerns among some Justice Department officials who saw the inquiry as retaliation for an article that Mr. Patel and his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, did not like, and who determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation.”
The bureau made no effort to deny the accuracy of the latest reporting, telling the Times on the record that investigators “were concerned” about the “aggressive reporting techniques,” though the FBI also confirmed that it is not pursuing a case against the reporter.
That this matter apparently will not proceed further is good but
by Omar Zahzah | Apr 19, 2026 | big tech, Book Excerpt, censorship, Excerpt, Internet, Israel, Media, Palestine, Social Media, Surveillance
An outgrowth of the counter-revolutionary Oslo Accords, the Palestinian internet digitally encapsulates the contradictions of anti-colonial resistance in the neoliberal era. As such, the internet today is both an instrument for collective interconnection to Palestinian revolutionary history and struggle as well as a site of suppression and surveillance. As Miriyam Aouragh writes in Palestine…
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by James Kilgore | Apr 19, 2026 | Abolition, Art, culture, Mass Incarceration, Media, Photo Essay, Prison Industrial Complex, Prisons
During my incarceration in the U.S., since I had little else to do, I focused on reading, on becoming an expert on the prison-industrial complex in which I lived. People sent me books and articles on this topic, but when I tried to share them with the other men in the prison, they ran up against a wall of accessibility. I vowed that when I got out, I would write materials that would be about them…
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