CNBC Helps SpaceX Pull Off Trillion-Dollar Pump-and-Dump
SpaceX’s public offering has all of the hallmarks of a pump-and-dump scheme, using a “staggered lock-up” schedule that allows insiders to sell off shares much earlier than most other publicly traded firms—enabling them to cash out while the stock is still grossly overvalued. This gambit is also called a “bagholder” scheme, as retail investors are left holding a rapidly depreciating asset.
Wilson Korik, FAIR, July 3, 2026
Elon Musk became—at least temporarily—the world’s first trillionaire on June 12 after his space, telecommunications and AI company SpaceX had the largest initial public offering in history. Initially priced at $135 per share for a valuation around $1.77 trillion, shares opened at $150 and peaked on June 16 at $225.64 (a valuation of nearly $3 trillion). The price spiked after Musk announced, before markets reopened on June 15, that he believes “SpaceX might be able to reach approximately $1T revenue in 2030” (CNBC, 6/15/26).
Since its June 16 peak, however, SpaceX’s share price has fallen, steadily declining until June 22 and settling around $160 since. Markets closed on Thursday, July 2, with a share price of $162.00.
SpaceX’s big slump coincided with a mass tech sell-off last week, prompted by mounting concerns that tech firms cannot generate the returns necessary to pay off the colossal debts financing massive AI infrastructure buildouts, especially as companies are beginning to rein in their spending on AI (404 Media, 6/24/26; TechCrunch, 6/24/26).
That was likely a surprise to viewers of CNBC, whose full-day IPO coverage pumped the stock by inviting sources with vested interests to celebrate Musk’s cult of personality and obfuscate the magical thinking behind the company’s projections.
All in on business-facing Grok
According to its own S-1 filing with the SEC, SpaceX anticipates that its greatest earnings potential does not come from the rocket business for which it is famous, but from selling AI to other businesses. The breathless CNBC discussions entirely omitted the dubious origins of SpaceX’s gargantuan estimate of its maximum potential revenue—a key investor metric known as total addressable market (TAM).
In its S-1 prospectus, SpaceX claims a TAM of $28.5 trillion, larger than the entire GDP of China.
The document separates this figure into SpaceX’s three sectors: space, connectivity and AI. Although the filing argues that space “represents the largest economic frontier in human history,” space makes up just $370 billion, or 1.3%, of SpaceX’s supposed TAM. Meanwhile, AI makes up $26.5 trillion, or 93%, the vast majority of which is for “enterprise applications.”
Enterprise AI is a broad category of business-oriented applications for firms looking to simplify and accelerate workflows, like converting text files into presentation formats, writing and debugging string code, and automating some sales, marketing, HR and IT functions. The most popular AI assistant by far is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, followed by Google’s Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude (TechCrunch, 6/16/26).
A closer reading of SpaceX’s S-1 filing reveals that its $22.7 trillion estimate for enterprise AI applications does not actually represent the TAM of the company’s enterprise AI, but is instead an estimate of the size of the entire digital economy—posing a hypothetical wherein xAI’s Grok Business and Grok Enterprise monopolize all digital commerce. It’s worth noting that xAI currently has extremely limited enterprise AI market share, with a March Enterprise Technology Research survey finding that just 7% of respondents use Grok (Wall Street Journal, 5/11/26).
Note also that subscriptions to xAI‘s consumer AI, SuperGrok, on X (labeled “consumer subscriptions” in the chart) alone make up $760 billion, or 2.7% of SpaceX’s TAM. That’s calculated
based on the global population of individuals aged 10 and over in 2025 … multiplied by the weighted average monthly subscription revenue of $12, resulting in an annualized market opportunity of approximately $760 billion.
So if every person on the planet over the age of 9 sends SpaceX $12 every month to use Grok, the X chatbot that spent four days last year calling itself MechaHitler and promoting the Great Replacement Theory, SpaceX will take in $760 billion per year. Sounds like a business plan!
SpaceX’s public offering has all of the hallmarks of a pump-and-dump scheme, using a “staggered lock-up” schedule that allows insiders to sell off shares much earlier than most other publicly traded firms—enabling them to cash out while the stock is still grossly overvalued. This gambit is also called a “bagholder” scheme, as retail investors are left holding a rapidly depreciating asset.
While most IPOs prevent insiders from selling shares for the first 180 days of public trading, SpaceX uses an expedited schedule that allows most insiders to sell much sooner—selling off overvalued shares to retail customers.
While this pump-and-dump began with retail consumers who bought shares on the first day of public trading, these massive wealth transfers are being thrust upon working people whether they like them or not, as Musk successfully negotiated new rules that fast-track SpaceX’s inclusion in major index funds, including the Russell 1000 and NASDAQ funds—transferring rapidly devaluing stock from SpaceX insiders to working people’s retirement accounts.
But none of this was explored on CNBC the day of the SpaceX IPO launch. FAIR could find not a single guest or anchor that mentioned that “Elon Musk’s rocket company” valued the potential for SuperGrok X subscriptions at more than twice the total projected TAM for the space industry, nor that SpaceX’s TAM is based on a scenario in which business-facing Grok controls all e-commerce—and certainly not that the IPO would essentially serve as a massive wealth transfer from retail investors to SpaceX insiders.
‘You should have bought as much as you could’
Instead, in the hours leading up to SpaceX’s first trade, CNBC viewers were primed by Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen (6/12/26) lamenting that orders were being snatched up by large institutional investors, and hoping that trades would begin at under $300 per share. He assured viewers that, although he’s nervous, “whenever we’ve worried about any of these great tech companies…wherever it was on opening day, you should have bought them as much as you could.”
The rest of the influential three-hour morning program was as much of a commercial for SpaceX as this opening scene. Squawk Box‘s guests included SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell (interviewed by Morning Call host Morgan Brennan), Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, long-time Musk investor David George, head of financial technology research at Citizens Bank Devin Ryan, and venture capitalist and investor Ben Narasin.
All but one of these guests have vested interests or are members of Musk’s inner circle, and used their airtime to generate excitement around the stock by focusing on Musk as a visionary key man. Kernen, co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin and guest host Melissa Lee offered no pushback………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
‘A number so large it destroys your credibility’
This isn’t to say that CNBC’s coverage of SpaceX’s IPO was completely without critical perspectives: Squawk on the Street’s David Faber (6/12/26) spent much of his onscreen time grilling insider guests on whether they’ll sell early, and pushing back on vague, aspirational framing around the AI and space industries.
Faber repeatedly reminded his audience that the S-1 prospectus specifically sees most of SpaceX’s potential in enterprise AI. He skeptically took the projected $22.7 trillion TAM for enterprise AI as given, but pointed out that “it’s not clear” how SpaceX’s Grok could compete with other enterprise AI products:
It’s interesting, as much as we talk about SpaceX, as much as we hear Musk talking about space and then Starlink, the real opportunity in terms of addressing this enormous number is actually still the same opportunity that’s being sought after by Anthropic, and OpenAI, and Alphabet and others.
Squawk on the Street also featured the most critical guest by far, NYU business school professor Aswath Damodaran, who came closest to questioning the origin of the TAM of any host or guest on any of the programs:
When I read [the S-1], I thought Grok had written the prospectus, because we know AI is subject to hallucinations…. I don’t know if it’s a banker who wrote it, I would be embarrassed to even put that number out. I mean, it’s a big market. Why do you need to make up a number, a number so large it destroys your credibility?
But even in scrutinizing SpaceX’s prospects, or the true size of the enterprise AI market, Squawk on the Street’s criticism missed the bigger picture: SpaceX’s record-setting IPO is a pump-and-dump, and retail investments provide the exit liquidity for insiders looking to get out of a failing AI company.
Every day, dozens of guests representing various companies advertise their stock on CNBC for retail consumers, who trust the judgment of their favorite program hosts to give completely uncontentious interviews, essentially constituting a series of infomercials, rather than actual financial journalism. FAIR (3/18/09, 2/3/20) has criticized CNBC on this basis for decades.
So when CNBC invites SpaceX insiders with vested interests to pump the valuation of their stock on the air shortly before dumping it on retail consumers, it seems obvious why even the most critical host cannot alert his viewers to what is really going on: because CNBC’s reporting exists to boost stock, rather than protect consumers. https://fair.org/home/cnbc-helps-spacex-pull-off-trillion-dollar-pump-and-dump/
New York Times Reported Iran Deal From Pro-Israel, Pro-War Perspective
Uncritically parroting Israeli government talking points that frame Israel as the victim is journalistic obfuscation at best
Drew Favakeh, July 1, 2026, https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-pentagons-budget-redirected-would-exceed-our-wildest-dreams/
The New York Times, the US’s most powerful establishment news outlet, has reported on President Donald Trump’s “memorandum of understanding” with Iran from a pro-war and/or pro-Israel perspective. Why did Trump end the war without limiting Iran’s “nuclear program” and its support for “proxy forces,” or without conducting “regime” change? These are the questions that have preoccupied the paper of record’s news reporting.
As I’ve noted before (FAIR.org, 3/30/26), multiple Times employees are reporting from and currently living in Israel, despite Israel’s blanket censorship policies, not to mention its killing hundreds of journalists. Meanwhile, the paper has no reporters in Iran, a situation it blames on Iran’s press restrictions.
This editorial decision has no doubt contributed to the paper covering the memorandum from an Israeli perspective, which is not aligned with the 59% of the US adult population who say the US using military force in Iran was the wrong decision.
‘Frightening new reality’
Over its first article (6/14/26) published about the memorandum, the New York Times headline read, “In Israel, Broad Discontent Even Before Deal’s Details Are Known.” The subhead noted that “Israelis across the political spectrum have said the agreement appears to leave fundamental security threats posed by Iran unaddressed.”
The piece, by Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner, uncritically granted anonymity to an “Israeli who had been briefed on the deal with Iran” to “discuss diplomacy.” They listed their “main problems” with the proposal: “no clear answers regarding the treatment of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, and not enough curbs on Iran’s nuclear program,” no “conditions for the collapse of the Iranian government” and “no clear mechanism for forcing Iran to halt its support for its proxy forces.”
One day later, the Times (6/15/26) published an article headlined “Israel Counts the Ways That Netanyahu’s Iran Strategy Failed.” Times Jerusalem bureau chief David M. Halbfinger and Tel Aviv staff writer Ronen Bergman noted that the agreement “omits some of the most important things Israel wanted.”
These “important things” included “to curb Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal” and “its funding of regional proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, who have attacked Israel with their own arsenals.” The deal “could help Iran bolster those proxies by easing sanctions, which would allow billions of dollars to flow into its bank accounts,” Halbfinger and Bergman added.
‘Catastrophic capitulation’
Three days later, Halbfinger published an article (6/18/26) headlined “Israel, Stunned by Trump’s Iran Deal, Sees It as a ‘Catastrophic Capitulation.’”
This time, Halbfinger wrote that:
Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s preliminary agreement to end the war with Iran.
Halbfinger noted that “it accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.” Among those aims? “Regime change,” “ballistic missiles and proxy militias” and “Iran’s nuclear program,” listed Halbfinger.
Uncritically parroting Israeli government talking points that frame Israel as the victim is journalistic obfuscation at best: Israel privately lobbied to assassinate Iran’s lead negotiator and to “restart the war with a new round of strikes targeting the country’s oil infrastructure” (Capital and Empire, 5/28/26), and it insists it has the right to continue ethnically cleansing Lebanon.
One of the biggest challenges of his career’
One week after her first article about the memorandum was published, the Times’ Kershner wrote another article (6/21/26) headlined “Netanyahu Faces One of the Biggest Challenges of His Career.”
Her thesis was that Netanyahu “is fighting for his political survival” due to “the emergence of a peace deal that Israel is not a party to.” Kershner wrote that Netanyahu “has staked his career on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which Israel views as an existential threat.”
Kershner, like Halbfinger and Bergman, ignored the fact that Iran has upheld its promise not to build a nuclear weapon (Arms Control Association, 2/25). By contrast, Israel—not Iran—is the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, and the US remains the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in war.
Kershner wrote:
The agreement seeks to curtail Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon, where the Israeli military has been fighting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed proxy militia on its doorstep. The deal makes no mention of curbing Iran’s ballistic missiles, which Iran has used to attack Israel and US Gulf allies during the wars. And it leaves the nuclear issue to be addressed in further negotiations.
Framing Israel’s killing of more than 4,100 people in Lebanon and displacement of 1.2 million since March (Drop Site News, 6/22/26), as “Israel’s freedom of action” insinuates that Israel is entitled to occupation and ethnic cleansing. And by noting that Iran has used its ballistic missiles “to attack Israel and US Gulf allies during the wars,” Kershner ignored which two countries attacked the other first, and which country used its ballistic missile arsenal to defend itself against further attacks (PBS, 6/18/26; Middle East Eye, 6/23/26).
‘A let down and reality check’
As for the Iranian perspective, the Times published an article (6/15/26) headlined “Many Iranians Express Relief Over Agreement to End the War.” The subhead read, “After enduring months of conflict, ordinary people in Iran were relieved to hear about the deal. Opposition groups were disappointed.”
The Times’ Farnaz Fassihi noted that:
Iranians expressed a range of emotions over the agreement to end a war that killed thousands across the region and brought enormous loss with no gain for millions of others.
Fassihi quoted just two sources based in Tehran, one of whom she interviewed by telephone, the other by text message. One asked, “What was the point of this war? What did it bring us exactly?” The other asked: “Is this REAL? Are they serious?”
Fassihi added that
for Iranian opposition groups and some members of the diaspora who had hoped the war would topple the Islamic Republic, the agreement was both a let down and a reality check.
Fassihi cited a social media post by Behnam Amini, a “monarchist political activist in Washington who has supported the war against Iran.”
Fassihi also noted:
In Iran, a minority within the hard-line political faction—those who ideologically favor destruction of Israel and war with the US by any means—unleashed fury at Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead negotiator and speaker of parliament.
The piece was unable to quote a source that expressed explicit opposition to the US/Israel’s attacks on Iran—which suggests the limitations of the Times’ long-distance approach to covering Iranian opinion.
Edge of Armageddon: why does one of the world’s top thinkers believe we’re nearing nuclear apocalypse?
Putin is so terrified of Ukraine becoming a member of Nato: that would enable the west to place nukes in the country
“With Nato weapons, Ukrainians bombed St Petersburg and they tried to bomb Moscow. So a country with nuclear weapons is being ‘bombed’ by the British. Not the British pushing the button, but the bombs come from Britain, as well as from Germany and France, with less from the US.”
In a chilling new book, theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says we’re back on the brink – and this time, leaders chronically lack the nous of Kennedy and Khrushchev. So why is he against rearming?
Stuart Jeffries, Thu 25 Jun 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/25/armageddon-physicist-carlo-rovelli-nuclear-apocalypse
Should European members of Nato be rearming in the face of the Russian threat? And if not, I ask Carlo Rovelli, why not? The Italian theoretical physicist seems a good person to answer these questions since his timely new book, 85 Seconds to Midnight, is subtitled A Physicist’s Argument against Rearmament.
Rovelli, 70, brown eyed, genial, with enviably luxuriant grey locks, removes his glasses before answering. “The idea of the Russian military being a threat to Europe is ridiculous. Russia can’t even get to Kyiv! A few years ago, Russia had 4% of the world’s military spending and Nato had 40%.”
At the same time, though, Russia has more than 4,000 nuclear warheads, making it the planet’s biggest stockpiler. “So we cannot take Russia down,” says Rovelli, “because it would react.” Of the three nuclear superpowers – Russia, US and China – only China has resolved not to be a first-use nuclear state. Russia, like the US, reserves the right to respond to conventional attacks with nuclear strikes.
The real problem, Rovelli suggests, is mutual fear. “We are trapped in a lack of reciprocal trust. We sleepwalk through these patterns of everybody becoming more armed, more aggressive.” He cites what happened a few weeks ago in St Petersburg. “With Nato weapons, Ukrainians bombed St Petersburg and they tried to bomb Moscow. So a country with nuclear weapons is being ‘bombed’ by the British. Not the British pushing the button, but the bombs come from Britain, as well as from Germany and France, with less from the US.”
Why was this so frightening for Rovelli? “It’s the first time a [superpower] with nuclear weapons has been actually bombed. There was a situation in which if you have nuclear weapons, you don’t get invaded. You don’t get bombed. No more.”
Rovelli invites me to consider what that bombing looks like from the Kremlin’s perspective. Moscow has long feared western aggression, he argues. A key moment came in 1962 when Americans placed nuclear missiles in Turkey. That, he argues, prompted then Soviet premier Khrushchev to put nuclear weapons in Cuba, the US’s back yard.
True, the Cuban missile crisis was de-escalated by Khrushchev and US president Kennedy, but Russian fear of western invasion persists. That’s why, Rovelli suggests, Putin is so terrified of Ukraine becoming a member of Nato: that would enable the west to place nukes in the country. Hence, Rovelli argues, Putin embarking on his full-blown invasion four years ago.
Rovelli believes this Russian aggression has caused a whirlwind of fears and clamours for rearmament in western Europe. “You have the French government saying French people should be ready again to sacrifice their children; the British government saying we should be ready for war because it might happen; the German government saying all this anti-war sentiment in schools is not good and we should change education, make war more acceptable. This is motivated by the idea that Russia is invading Europe. It’s nonsense.”
But isn’t it sometimes right to be fearful? Indeed, isn’t the lesson of the second world war that western European countries should have rearmed sooner to counter a demagogue bent on expansion? “I think everybody should read Mein Kampf,” he replies, referring to Adolf Hitler’s 1925 autobiography and manifesto. “Mein Kampf does not say, ‘We are German, we are the strongest, we are going to run the world, we are great, we are white, we are Aryans, whatever.’ It says, ‘We are weak. And the only way we have to survive is to become stronger and overcome the others.’ So what fuelled the violence of nazism was fear.”
Today’s Middle Eastern conflict has a similar basis, Rovelli contends. “What fuels the aggressiveness of Israel is fear. What fuels the aggressiveness of Hamas is fear. They are going to destroy us in Gaza unless we are aggressive. To answer fear with fear, to escalate, seems to me disgusting.”
But isn’t this naive? Putin isn’t just acting out of fear, surely, but is prompted by some warped sense of historical destiny to claim Ukraine. “That’s obviously nonsense. You create these narratives that fuel tribal ideology. And that’s exactly what we don’t want. I don’t think anybody has any natural historical right to anything.”
Why should we listen to what theoretical physicists have to say about rearmament? Yes, Rovelli is the go-to guy to explain loop gravity, the theoretical framework that merges quantum mechanics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He is also a great populariser of difficult ideas in such books as Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time. But when it comes to war and realpolitik, theoretical physicists have often proved themselves utter boobs.
“We physicists,” Rovelli concedes, “did create this thing [nuclear weapons]. It is our poisoned gift to humankind. But historically, the voices of scientists – raising awareness about the nuclear risk – have been effective.” It was thanks to the wisdom of scientists and other intellectuals, he argues, that Gorbachev and Reagan were convinced to sign the now defunct 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start).
Equally true, though, is that theoretical physicists have been disastrous for humanity. Rovelli cites his countryman Enrico Fermi who in 1934 found a way to shatter atomic nuclei – giving humanity a new source of energy. “But the gift is too great,” writes Rovelli. “A small bit of uranium can release energy to demolish cities, burn alive millions of human beings and destroy civilisation itself.”
Consider too what happened in Copenhagen in 1941 when two great theoretical physicists, the Dane Niels Bohr and the German Werner Heisenberg, met. Bohr, who soon after the meeting was spirited to the US, came away from the meeting convinced that Nazi Germany was making a nuclear bomb to win the war.
Rovelli takes up the story: “Once in the US, Bohr said, ‘Look, this is a sketch given to me by Heisenberg of an atomic bomb.’ And it was definitely not. It was a sketch of a peaceful nuclear reactor. One of the outcomes of that was that the Manhattan Project was motivated by a belief that Nazi Germany was close to having nuclear bombs, which was completely unfounded.”
The unintended consequence, as Rovelli puts it in his book, was “the burning alive of 200,000 men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki”. Not, as some have argued, to end the war more quickly but as an immense demonstration of US power – or as he puts it: “The scream of the gorilla beating its chest and telling the forest that it is the strongest.”
Surely there were other and possibly better rationales to dropping nuclear weapons on Japan than that? I remind Rovelli of a conversation at Princeton he had with his friend and mentor, the late relativity theorist John Wheeler, who worked on the Manhattan Project. Wheeler believed bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified to spare the enormous number of American lives that would be lost in a mainland invasion.
“John was one of the people I admire most, and half of my thinking is based on what he did,” recalls Rovelli with a sad chuckle. “He was the one who first recognised my work.” But when Wheeler invited the young Rovelli to Princeton, the pair fell to talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I found the argument he used – it’s OK to kill many hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to save the lives of a few American boys – disgusting. Not a few American boys in America living a life – but sent there to conquer an island which is not American. Japan had already lost the war.”
Rovelli’s early years help explain his revulsion for rearmament. He was jailed as a student for refusing the draft in Italy. “I’m Italian and we remember fascism grew with the idea that war is beautiful. War is what makes us great. War is fantastic.”
Let’s talk about Iran, I suggest. Isn’t it entitled to have nuclear weapons if Israel and the US do? “I don’t think we should think in terms of absolute right,” says Rovelli. “We have to live together, so we have to find compromises. If Iran did not feel under threat, it probably wouldn’t feel the need to go nuclear.”
The title of Rovelli’s book comes from the 2026 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that set the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest we’ve ever been to nuclear catastrophe. For Rovelli, the stupidity of our leaders has increased that risk. He thinks that everybody – from Trump, Putin and Netanyahu to the leaders of Nato and Iran – lacks the good sense shown by Khrushchev, Kennedy, Gorbachev and Reagan each of whom, he believes, helped pull humanity back from Armageddon.
As we finish, Rovelli asks me: “What politician has the courage to say, ‘Rather than making my own country stronger, I want to make humankind better’?’” Perhaps it’s not just my shortcomings but the nature of humanity’s plight in 2026 that no one comes to mind.
85 Seconds to Midnight by Carlo Rovelli is published by Penguin (£9.99). To order your copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Google’s New AI-Fueled Search Bar Threatens to Further Upend Journalism Industry
publishers are being sold the idea that they can cut costs by replacing staff with AI
The irony is that the misinformation and deepfakes created by AI make the need for journalists more urgent than ever.
Independent journalism needs a lifeline to survive as Google urges readers toward AI summaries instead of article links.
Who can a reader hold accountable if a Google AI summary is incorrect?
By Negin Owliaei , Maya Schenwar , Ziggy West Jeffery , Truthout, June 9, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/googles-new-ai-fueled-search-bar-threatens-to-further-upend-journalism-industry/?utm_source=campaign_email&utm_campaign=061826pm
Google made an announcement last month that could turn the journalism world upside down, accelerating the internet’s shift toward an overwhelmingly AI-driven landscape and serving the Trump agenda of media suppression.
At its developer conference in May, the company announced the most disruptive changes to Google Search in over 25 years. Google Search will further demote its index of the web — a list of links that information-seekers can explore as they choose. Instead of prominently displaying links, it will increasingly become a destination that answers questions directly through AI, linking only to the sources it decides to reference in its overview.
On the majority of our tests, the AI overview was followed by a heavy block of sponsored results and a combination of videos, short clips, trending posts, and discussions. Index links — for example, to articles on news sites and research studies — were given only a small fraction of real estate. Additionally, Google is aggressively pushing readers to use AI Mode, which completely removes the index links.
In practical terms, this means users of the world’s largest search engine will see, in response to their queries, a summary generated by an AI bot developed by a corporate behemoth with close ties to the Trump White House.
This seismic move builds upon the launches of AI Overview in 2024 and AI Mode in 2025, shifting toward nearly eliminating the user’s ability to search autonomously, and toward an overwhelmingly AI-driven experience of the internet (and therefore, for many people, of life).
We must take into account the political context in which this shift transpires. Alphabet (Google’s parent company), along with Facebook’s parent company (Meta), as well as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, were among major tech companies that donated to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. They have also consistently capitulated to Trump’s recent manipulations.
Last fall, Alphabet’s subsidiary YouTube agreed to a $24.5 million settlement in a lawsuit stemming from the platform’s suspension of Trump’s YouTube channel. The majority of the settlement will go toward Trump’s now-infamous White House ballroom. Meta, similarly, agreed to a $25 million settlement in 2025. $22 million of that sum was designated to go to Trump’s presidential library.
Meta, like Google, has long been making moves that have severely destabilized the news industry. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided in 2018 that the platform would prioritize showing Facebook users posts made by their friends and dramatically reduce their ability to see posts made by news organizations that they had chosen to follow. In other words, due to a single algorithm change, the more than 758,000 people who had at the time eagerly signed up to receive links to all of Truthout’s articles in their Facebook feeds suddenly stopped seeing the majority of our posts.
This caused a major drop in traffic across the board to news sites, many of which had been persistently encouraged by Facebook to grow their brands on the platform. At Truthout, over 90 percent of our traffic from Facebook disappeared, which decreased our overall traffic by 40 percent and, consequently, the donations we rely on to survive.
Chaotic changes at Twitter also played a role in destabilizing the journalism ecosystem. In 2022, when Elon Musk finalized his takeover of that platform, the move quickly turned the social media site into a cesspool of far right trolls, disinformation, and bot-generated content. This toxicity and disinformation spiral forced many people on the left to leave X, which decreased traffic to progressive websites from the platform.
Over the course of these changes, news organizations like ours have struggled to respond to corresponding significant declines in readership and revenue, along with our readers’ understandable loss of trust in the social media platforms and search engines that initially allowed us to grow. Sudden algorithmic changes, news deprioritization, and increased implementation of AI summaries are shaking the economic foundation of journalism itself. Meanwhile, publishers are being sold the idea that they can cut costs by replacing staff with AI.
The connections to the Trump agenda aren’t hard to see. Trump has been an outspoken critic of news organizations, particularly those that are left-leaning and critical of his administration. Facebook and Google are suppressing journalism on their platforms and weakening news organizations’ ability to hold Trump to account, while also donating to Trump and settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits in his favor.
Whether Facebook and Google are capitulating to Trump due to fear of economic retribution, shared politics, or a desire to increase their stock prices or keep up with technology, the impact is devastating for journalism and democracy.
AI Is Eroding Journalism — and Obscuring Truth
We’ve already seen some corporate publishers try to jump on the AI bandwagon, arguing that AI will come for our costly but necessary industry one way or another. They frame AI as a way to solve journalism’s most intractable problem: the cost of reporting. But in reality, they’re proposing a vision of journalism resembling content without the journalists — just regurgitated slop of varying accuracy.
Take one high-profile example from last year: Just two months after the Chicago Sun-Times laid off 20 percent of its staff, the paper issued an AI-generated summer reading list sourced from a third-party company. One key problem: Several of the books on the list didn’t actually exist. Some outlets are going so far as to create AI-generated “writers,” complete with fake names and photos, to author their AI-generated articles. And in one notable case, an AI news initiative meant to provide more information in areas with limited access to local news was scrapped after it repeatedly plagiarized the local journalists actually doing that work.
The irony is that the misinformation and deepfakes created by AI make the need for journalists more urgent than ever. For example, during the height of the war on Iran, we watched AI-generated fakery wreak havoc on the sphere of public information. And it should come as no surprise that Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot most known for spewing racist hate and distributing child sexual abuse material, further spread inaccuracies when users called upon it for help with fact checking. Right now, those of us who are real human journalists are still able to act as a bulwark against AI-introduced errors. What happens when we’re taken out of the mix?
These inaccuracies are perhaps one of the reasons why people are reluctant to get their news from AI chatbots in the first place. Make no mistake — these changes are being forced upon an unwilling public. Fewer than 1 percent of Americans say they prefer getting their news from chatbots, compared to other news sources, a recent Pew Research survey found. For people who do use chatbots for news, roughly a third of them say they have a hard time determining what’s actually true, and about half say they see news from chatbots that they think is inaccurate.
They are right to be skeptical. A recent study from the AI research company Forum AI found that the answers that top AI chatbots provided on questions about elections were riddled with errors; more than one-third of responses included fact errors of some type. Oftentimes those errors sounded incredibly precise, the research found, giving an undeserved air of confidence to factual inaccuracies. Those chatbots also regularly pulled from commercial sources in their summaries — even using websites like firearm retailer Ammo.com to answer questions about gun control, the researchers discovered.
Trusted news outlets have policies for issuing corrections and clarifications. Publications like ours maintain policies and avenues for offering such corrections and feedback. Who can a reader hold accountable if a Google AI summary is incorrect? Matched with the likelihood of factual errors, the lack of accountability has terrifying implications.
On a deeper level, the hyperindividualization of chatbots also poses some bleak questions about the escalating fragmentation of our shared sense of reality. For years, we’ve heard media critics sound the alarm about how social media has helped false information travel far further at much quicker speeds. Additionally, Big Tech companies, understanding that their bottom line requires eyeballs to stay on their platforms as long as possible, designed the algorithms that feed us information to be as addictive as possible by sticking us in echo chambers.
Now AI could atomize us all even further. Study after study has shown that AI chatbots are sycophantic, offering users excessive praise and telling them what they want to hear. And the timing — ahead of a high-stakes election, at a moment when trust in media is at new lows, and in a period where the future of journalism itself is at risk — could not be worse.
An Existential Threat to Journalism
As the Google Search changes take their toll, we will very likely see a new round of cost-saving measures at longstanding newsrooms. These steps will likely include massive layoffs and downsizing, more aggressively invasive revenue generation tactics, mergers, consolidation and closures. It will be harder for existing news sites to continue publishing and nearly impossible for new newsrooms to reach a large enough audience to become financially viable.
Read more: Google’s New AI-Fueled Search Bar Threatens to Further Upend Journalism IndustryOrganizations like Truthout — ones that depend on community-building and audience growth to sustain their work — will be among the most impacted.
For 25 years, Truthout has survived by publishing impactful investigative journalism and analysis; distributing full editions 365 days a year; and building a community of readers who support us with small, hard-earned donations.
Eighty percent of our $3 million yearly budget comes from small donors alone. Of those, 8,000 readers support us with monthly donations. Back in 2018, when Facebook decided to suppress the circulation of posts made by organizations, thereby cutting readers off from seeing many articles shared by the news organizations they had intentionally decided to follow, Truthout’s total traffic declined by 40 percent, as nearly all of our traffic from that platform disappeared.
The consequences of the impending changes to Google’s search engine promise to be even more explosive. Google Search is our single largest source of traffic; it’s the route by which 27 percent of our readers find us. And visitors who find us via Google Search are more likely to stay for longer, engage with our work, and donate than those who find us through social media.
If even half of that 27 percent disappears, it will have a devastating impact on our journalism.
Truthout is just one example; journalism organizations across the field will be devastatingly affected by Google’s new move, just as they were impacted by Meta’s abrupt algorithmic shift. The entire journalism ecosystem will shoulder this blow, particularly independent publishers and news sites that depend on traffic and aren’t bankrolled by large corporations.
How Do We Resist?
The sudden shift in Google Search presents us with a pointed question, not only about journalism, but about the future of humanity: How much of our autonomy will we cede to AI? To what extent will we adopt an “oh well!” mentality? Or will we seek creative ways to resist, even when it may feel impossible to confront the largest corporations on the planet?
We cannot allow ourselves to become mired in the trap of inevitability-based thinking.
When grappling with questions around the future of AI, it’s helpful to remind ourselves of how the people — yes, actual humans — are relating to all this. The truth is, most people in the United States are concerned about AI. In fact, in a deeply divided country, AI is something of a uniting cause. A significant majority of Americans rate the “societal risks” of AI as high, with majorities worried that AI will disrupt human connection and inhibit creativity. People in this country are overwhelmingly more worried than excited about how AI has become enmeshed in everyday life. Meanwhile, across political lines, most people in the U.S. oppose the building of data centers in their communities. This is a mobilizable base.
Why should an entirely AI-driven future be inevitable, when most people don’t really want one? Instead of assuming the die is cast, let’s imagine a world in which the onslaught of AI threats is fuel for a broad-based movement.
This movement isn’t just aspirational: It’s already begun. Some of the most hopeful organizing in recent years can be seen in local fights against data centers. Communities are pushing back against corporate giants like Blackstone, BlackRock, and xAI. And from Arizona to New York to Wisconsin and beyond, they’re often winning. According to Data Center Watch, in 2025, local opposition efforts prevented or stalled dozens of data centers, totaling around $156 billion in investment funds.
Meanwhile, we can all respond to Google’s shift toward AI with concrete steps to support independent media and reject the “inevitability” assumption.
Instead of jumping to social media or a search engine for our news, let’s return to visiting news websites directly. Each of us can maintain a list of trusted publications to visit each day. Bookmark your favorites, and return to them. Sign up for email newsletters from your trusted publications, and create filters so that those newsletters arrive in your primary inbox instead of in spam or “promotions.” Subscribe to print publications. Commit to simply reading the news.
Double down on media literacy, practicing discernment and critical thinking as you read and watch the news. In a time when mammoth corporations are attempting to literally tell us what to believe, these commitments are acts of rebellion.
Additionally, since Google Search’s overwhelming prioritization of AI will severely impact revenue for many publications, it’s time to support independent journalism with your money as well as your readership. If you can afford to give, do so, at any level. Without material support from readers and viewers, many independent journalism organizations will fall by the wayside amid the AI onslaught.
For foundations and major donors, there’s a clear mandate here: It’s time to fund our journalism organizations while we experiment and determine new ways of expanding our audiences and driving traffic. We need room to try things — to test out strategies to map an online world beyond Google.
Funding these experiments doesn’t just help one organization or even one sector: As journalism organizations figure out new methods to reach readers, we can share those strategies with other groups, expanding the potential for grassroots groups, unions, and more to connect with human beings in a manner not dictated by the whims of giant corporations’ platforms.
Truthful journalism is an essential public good, and as Google and Meta wage algorithmic warfare against it, it’s essential to protect it. Foundations, donors, and folks connected with money should prioritize journalism alongside other urgent issues, recognizing that trustworthy information is a bulwark against rising fascism.
Finally, we must all adopt a resistance mindset in relation to AI’s slippery slope. Each day, we have an opportunity to choose another way. Resist inevitability. Resist inertia.
Our ability to access facts — and to discern truth from disinformation — is at stake. How will we fight back?
Western Media Normalize Ethnic Cleansing of Lebanon by Viewing It Through Israel’s Eyes
Belén Fernández, FAIR, 11 June 26
In October 2024, one year into Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and attendant assault on Lebanon, the Israeli army did a thing. It invited journalists from major Western corporate media outlets on an incursion into Lebanon’s ravaged south, accompanied by Israeli military personnel who would interpret the wreckage in Israel’s favor—not that the Western media have ever required much assistance in this regard.
Reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, Fox News and a handful of other special guests signed up for the cross-border sortie. It was, as Habib Battah and Christina Cavalcanti note in an investigation for the Public Source (8/27/25), an “awkward hybrid between a traditional embed and the kind of all-expense-paid publicity trip that journalists refer to as junkets, freebies and dog-and-pony shows.”
Never mind that it is entirely illegal for journalists or anyone else to enter Lebanon from Israel—what’s one more illegal invasion from a country that has been invading Lebanon pretty much since its founding? As Battah and Cavalcanti emphasize, these media professionals were also embedding themselves “within a national project of extraordinary transnational violence,” hosted by an “extrajudicial occupying military power—a critical point that all of them would fail to mention in their coverage.”
The Israelis certainly hit the jackpot with the coverage, as reporters excitedly discovered boots and helmets allegedly belonging to Hezbollah—clear proof that the group had been plotting a nefarious attack on Israel. New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner, an old pro at conducting preemptive journalistic strikes on Lebanon, did not disappoint with her dispatch (10/13/24), “Just Over the Border From Israel, a Hezbollah Cache of Explosives and Mines.”
And in report after embedded report, Israel’s chosen journalists faithfully transmitted the tiresome and counter-logical notion that Hezbollah was somehow the aggressor in the arrangement—as opposed to the army that was busily slaughtering thousands of people in Lebanon while implementing a scorched-earth strategy.
‘Urgent evacuation warnings’
While the October 2024 embed was one of the more preposterous embodiments of Western corporate media’s special relationship with Israel, outlets continue to do a fine job of sanitizing Israeli brutality even when their reporters are not physically viewing the region from inside an Israeli armored vehicle. Since March of this year, Israel has killed at least 3,613 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million, obliterating entire villages and otherwise expanding the ecocidal policy honed in the Gaza Strip.
There has been no remotely comparable destruction on the Israeli side, and a recent Reuters article (5/31/26) that had attempted to suggest some symmetry now comes with the preface: “This May 31 story has been corrected to remove a reference to tens of thousands of Israelis being displaced by Hezbollah fire, in paragraph 3.”
Like in Gaza, where genocide proceeds apace in spite of a declared ceasefire (FAIR.org, 10/21/25), the media tend to report “ceasefires” in Lebanon without caring to highlight the fact that it’s not a ceasefire when Israel is still pummeling the country and massacring people, all the while setting the stage for a massive land grab with its creeping so-called “evacuation orders.” These “evacuations” have been focused on the Shiite demographic, with Israel warning Christian and Druze communities not to allow Shiite neighbors to take refuge in their towns (New York Times, 4/1/26).
Lebanese journalist Habib Battah, co-author of the aforementioned Public Source investigation, suggested to me that such orders might be more accurately termed “ethnic cleansing directives.” But that, of course, would be way too much for corporate media outlets to handle—and so it is that we learn about Israel’s “urgent evacuation warnings” and “large-scale evacuation orders,” as though it’s some sort of public service announcement, fire drill or other fundamentally legitimate Israeli undertaking, rather than entirely illegal in addition to downright psychopathic. From a legal and moral perspective, after all, you can’t just go around ordering people in other countries out of their homes, oftentimes only to bomb them when they comply.
Then there’s the matter of the “Yellow Line” or “security zone”—more terminology borrowed from Gaza (FAIR.org, 5/19/26)—which denotes the portion of south Lebanon that Israel is currently illegally occupying. But Israel has never been very good at staying within the lines, and its latest “evacuation orders” spanned no less than one-fifth of the entire country, far beyond its own unilaterally appointed Yellow Line.
As Battah remarked to me, the media’s acceptance and deployment of such arbitrary vocabulary creates “artificial structures” and a sense of orderliness, when in reality “there’s no yellow lines, there’s no yellow, there’s no colors—these are just illegal invasions.” And because media are committed to sanitizing Israel’s behavior rather than questioning it, “colonization becomes normalized.”
‘A warning to residents’
The eagerness of journalists to do Israel’s bidding is all the more confounding given that Israel is currently the No. 1 killer of journalists in the world. A recent Associated Press article (5/29/26), for example, reduced the pulverization of Lebanon to simply “ongoing fighting in southern Lebanon between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.”
A June 4 Reuters writeup blamed Hezbollah for having “rejected” the latest US-mediated “ceasefire” plan—which, mind you, would basically have given Israel the green light to seize south Lebanon outright. Reuters refrained from referencing the thousands of Lebanese casualties since March, but did allow Israel the usual space to defend its depredations: “The Israeli military, in a warning to residents of the south, said it was continuing to target Hezbollah facilities.”
This is not to say that corporate media do not report on the destruction, displacement and killing in Lebanon; they do—and sometimes even sympathetically. But the refusal to paint a consistent and properly contextualized picture of what is actually going on in the country means that they mostly just end up legitimizing Israel’s war crimes…………………………………………………………………………………….. https://fair.org/home/western-media-normalize-ethnic-cleansing-of-lebanon-by-viewing-it-through-israels-eyes/
How Pete Hegseth turned the Pentagon into a Black Box
Australia’s security commitments are structurally bound to US military decision-making through ANZUS. When the Pentagon conducts a forty-day air campaign against a nation with nuclear ambitions, Australian governments are implicated – through intelligence sharing, basing arrangements, consultation and alliance obligations – whether they say so publicly or not.
And they’re making those commitments based on whatever Washington chooses to share. The same information architecture that’s been deliberately degraded for the American press is the one feeding into allied capitals.
10 June 2026 AIMN Editorial, https://theaimn.net/how-pete-hegseth-turned-the-pentagon-into-a-black-box/
Pete Hegseth has a word for journalists who ask inconvenient questions about America’s war with Iran. Pharisees. He said it in a speech. Out loud. Seemingly proud of it.
That tells you almost everything you need to know about how Operation Epic Fury has been covered – or rather, hasn’t been.
What a wartime press blackout actually looks like
The United States is at war. But the Pentagon has forced journalists out of the building, making it harder than ever for the press to report on what’s happening. Press conferences are rare. Hegseth takes questions only from friendly outlets. No mainstream news organisations have reporters embedded with US military units in the Middle East. Pentagon sources are increasingly reluctant to talk to journalists for fear of retaliation from the administration.
That’s not conjecture. That’s the Columbia Journalism Review, published June 2026, describing conditions during an active military campaign that has killed at least thirteen American service members and reshaped the security architecture of the entire Middle East.
“The United States public hasn’t experienced this lack of official wartime information since World War II.”
Think about that for a second. Not since before television. Not since before the satellite phone. Not since before the internet existed. This is where we are.
The Iraq comparison should embarrass everyone
Critics of embedded journalism in 2003 had a point. Reporters living with military units, dependent on them for food, transport and protection, were never going to produce the most sceptical coverage. Fair enough. In 2003, the Pentagon embedded more than 500 journalists with US and coalition forces in Iraq, with several contemporary and later accounts putting the number around 600.
Six hundred. During Epic Fury: zero.
Here’s what’s genuinely perverse about that comparison. The embedded programme in Iraq was criticised at the time as sophisticated Pentagon propaganda – reporters co-opted by proximity, producing coverage that soft-pedalled civilian casualties and framed the invasion as clean. And that criticism had merit.
But even that – even the propaganda model – was more transparent than what Hegseth has imposed. When the thing that was once attacked as government spin looks like press freedom by comparison, you’ve reached a new floor. You’ve gone somewhere underneath the floor.
The playbook, step by step
Hegseth has taken a series of escalating steps to curtail the work of the press inside the Pentagon: booting legacy press outlets from their workspaces inside the building, closing the press briefing room to reporters, and restricting reporters from going into wide swaths of the building without a government escort.
The Pentagon then demanded that journalists pledge not to use any unauthorised material – including unclassified information. Hegseth put it plainly: “The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon – the people do.”
The people. Filtered exclusively through Pete Hegseth’s pre-approved briefings and Sean Parnell’s press releases.
When the New York Times sued – and won – the response was almost comedic in its brazenness. On March 20, 2026, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that portions of the new guidelines violated the First and Fifth Amendments and mandated that the Pentagon restore press credentials to seven Times journalists. Three days after the ruling, Parnell announced that the Defence Department would move journalists from their designated offices into a separate annex and mandate escorts – framing the changes as necessary security measures.
Court says you broke the Constitution. You wait seventy-two hours. Then you just do a version of the same thing with different language.
What you’re actually being told instead
Hegseth declared an “overwhelming victory” in the war against Iran, claiming the regime had “begged” for a ceasefire after Tehran’s missile programme was completely obliterated. “By any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat-ineffective for years to come,” he said.
He also urged reporters to “get it right”: “You wouldn’t know it if you listened to the dishonest, anti-Trump media. These cameras – they have a choice. You’re either informing the American people of the truth or you’re not.”
The truth. As determined by the man who banned reporters from the building where the truth lives.
Maybe those strike figures are accurate. Maybe 80% of Iran’s air defences really were destroyed. Maybe the ceasefire really did represent a total Iranian capitulation. I genuinely don’t know – and that’s the point. Nobody outside the administration does either, because the people whose job is to verify those claims have been systematically removed from any position where verification is possible.
Why this matters beyond America’s borders
Here’s something that rarely gets said in coverage of Hegseth’s media crackdown. This isn’t only an American problem.
Australia’s security commitments are structurally bound to US military decision-making through ANZUS. When the Pentagon conducts a forty-day air campaign against a nation with nuclear ambitions, Australian governments are implicated – through intelligence sharing, basing arrangements, consultation and alliance obligations – whether they say so publicly or not.
And they’re making those commitments based on whatever Washington chooses to share. The same information architecture that’s been deliberately degraded for the American press is the one feeding into allied capitals.
When the Pentagon operates as a black box, it isn’t just American voters flying blind. It’s everyone tied to American military power – which, in the Indo-Pacific, is most of us.
The real scandal
The most disturbing thing about Hegseth’s press suppression isn’t the suppression itself. It’s that it worked. No mass public revolt. No serious congressional investigation. A court ruling that was circumvented within three days and barely registered in the news cycle.
History will eventually produce an account of what actually happened during Operation Epic Fury – what was hit, what was missed, what the real casualty numbers were, what the strategic consequences turn out to be.
When it does, the question worth asking won’t just be what Hegseth hid. It’ll be why so few people demanded to know in real time.
Hassan El Biali is a political analyst and writer specialising in US foreign policy, international security, and Middle East geopolitics. Published in Independent Australia and Counterfire. Substack: megam226.substack.com
Media’s Ceasefire Fiction Masks Continuing War
SCHEERPOST, June 7, 2026, Joshua Scheer
One of the most revealing aspects of this war has not only been the violence itself, but the language used to explain, justify, or obscure it. As the death toll has climbed and entire communities have been erased, many journalists have struggled to confront a disturbing reality: narratives that would be unthinkable in other conflicts have become routine when discussing Gaza.
Veteran journalist Kathy Gannon reflects on how certain assumptions and talking points have seeped into media coverage, often shifting attention away from those carrying out the destruction and onto those enduring it. Her observation is less about a single comment than a broader pattern—one that raises uncomfortable questions about how suffering is framed, whose voices are amplified, and how language can become a tool for sanitizing mass violence.
“A media colleague described devastated Gazans as “under the boot of Hamas,” not under the horrific bombing of Israel, or the devastating attacks that have wiped out entire families, denied food and medical supplies, subjected to enforced starvation, all by Israel. I wondered at what it could mean. It was as if it was offered, as the reason or to somehow soften Israel’s killing of Gazans by the tens of thousands, 20,000 children killed, journalists targeted, hospitals destroyed, schools devastated. Of course there are still those in the media who say Israel isn’t targeting journalists, but rather it is just not paying enough attention, just not being careful enough. Really? Israel has killed more journalists than any other country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 300 have been killed, scores listed as targeted.”
Kathy Gannon Substack
What Kathy Gannon lays out is what far too many newsrooms still refuse to say plainly: there is no cease-fire when Israel continues killing civilians, journalists, and entire families in Gaza and Lebanon with total impunity. Calling this a “fragile cease-fire” is not reporting — it’s participating in a lie.
Since the so‑called Gaza cease-fire was announced, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them children. It has expanded the “yellow line”, shot civilians near it — including children — and continued bombing neighborhoods where displaced families were told to shelter. These are not “violations.” This is policy.
In Lebanon, Israel has bulldozed villages, bombed civilian areas, and assassinated three senior Lebanese military officers in a targeted strike. That alone shatters any pretense of a cease-fire. And yet Western media still repeats the script.
Meanwhile, the death toll of journalists is staggering: nearly 300 journalists killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists — the highest number ever recorded in a single conflict. Many were targeted, not caught in crossfire. To pretend otherwise is to launder the killing of the very people documenting the war.
Israel’s own officials flaunt this brutality. National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir — a man who has openly advocated genocide — posted video of himself abusing flotilla activists protesting the slaughter in Gaza. This is the level of impunity we’re dealing with.
International law is not ambiguous. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits transferring settlers into occupied territory. UN Security Council Resolution 2334 declares Israeli settlements a “flagrant violation.” Yet media outlets still describe illegal settlers as merely “seen by many as illegal,” as if the law were a matter of opinion.
Hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been bombed in Gaza — and now in Lebanon. Israel claimed Gaza’s hospitals were targeted because of tunnels. What’s the excuse for the hospitals in Lebanon?
This is why Gannon’s warning matters: the more the world normalizes Israel’s actions, the more it signals to Palestinians and Lebanese that their lives do not matter. And the more Western governments expose their own hypocrisy — preaching human rights while enabling mass killing.
If journalism means anything, it must start with refusing to repeat government talking points. Stop calling this a cease-fire. Stop sanitizing the killing of children. Stop pretending journalists aren’t being targeted. Stop turning victims into perpetrators.
We have watched journalists be killed in staggering numbers, and the refusal of empire’s defenders to even acknowledge their deaths is not only unacceptable — it is the predictable rot of a country drifting toward tyranny, where legacy media long ago bartered away its soul.
This is not fragile. This is not complicated. This is not a cease-fire. It is a war on civilians — and the world is watching, even if CBS pretends not to.
Read more here about press freedom and Israel — though it omits the daily, mounting murders of women and children under the ongoing genocide……………………………………………………………….https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/07/medias-ceasefire-fiction-masks-continuing-war/
Honorable Mention to HIBAKUSHA – WANDERING SOUL
Brazilian-Japanese film director Joel Yamaji received an Honorable Mention at the 15th Uranium International Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro for his documentary “Hibakusha – Wondering Soul.” The award ceremony took place on Saturday, May 30, 2026, at the Cinematheque of the renowned Museum of Modern Art (MAM Rio).
JURY STATEMENT
Hibakusha – Wandering Soul is a very artistic film. The music combining modern and old (for instance The Song of the Apple of 1945) and sound-effects using the Shakuhachi flute, drums, the gong and sometimes total silence were wonderful. Also typical usages of the Japanese symbols of the Samurai (for resilience), the Origami Crane (for peace) and of the Noh-Theater (in this case for madness and devilishness and impermanence) gave the film a very distinctive Japanese character, especially for those who are not familiar with Japanese culture. What I found especially successful was the use of the shadow. In the tradition of Tanizaki Junichiro´s `In Praise of Shadows´, the black and white film successfully depicted the fleeting light of mankind and time, I thought. History, the past, passes away like a whirling lantern of memories and life is mysterious, sweet, and happy. One can have hope for the future.“ Makiko Hamaguchi-Klenner, Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr University Bochum and Member of the IUFF Jury
AWARD ACCEPTANCE STATEMENT
“We are very happy and grateful for the Honorable Mention awarded to our film. It is a special gift for us, because it comes from a Festival grounded in humanist ideas and purposes at a time when interests in immediate technocratic power are prioritized. A Festival that, for 15 years, has dedicated itself to disseminating and promoting the exchange of cultural experiences in a world still based on the consequences of a war that, in the words of the Japanese people, was not just World War II, the War of the Atomic Bomb: it was the War of us all, it belongs to us all. This Honorable Mention is quite significant for us who made the film about atomic bomb surviver Mr. Morita Takashi, who passed away at 100 years old, lucid, professing a world for Peace, in truth. For that it also belongs to him and to all the hibakusha, victims of an act of violence imposed by men. `I learned that I should never again think of anyone as an enemy. The logic of war leaves no room for human dignity.´ The Festival, made with the vibrant joy of a team whose youthful spirit is contagious, will remain in my memory. Long live the International Uranium Film Festival!” Joel Yamaji, Screenwriter and director of “Alma Errante (Hibakusha – Wondering Soul”
“It is with immense pride and deep emotion that we celebrate the achievement of the film Hibakusha – Wandering Soul, awarded a well-deserved honorable mention at the prestigious International Uranium Film Festival. This award represents not only recognition of the technical and artistic excellence of the work, but also the validation of an urgent and vital message that documentary cinema carries with it. The award ceremony gained an even more special shine with the presence of director Joel Yamaji, who was there in person to receive the honor and masterfully represent all the dedication, talent and heart of the team that made this project a reality. The event, which has established itself as one of the main global showcases for raising awareness about nuclear issues, reflects the tireless work and vision of its organizers, Marcia Gomes de Oliveira, Founder and Executive Director of the festival, and Norbert Suchanek, Founder and General Director, who continue to open fundamental spaces for stories of such human and social impact to reach the world. Seeing `Hibakusha – Wandering Soul´be revered on a stage of such international relevance is a testament to the power of independent cinema and an unforgettable milestone for everyone involved in this transformative cinematic journey!” Producer of “Alma Errante (Hibakusha – Wondering Soul”
HIBAKUSHA – WANDERING SOUL (ALMA ERRANTE – HIBAKUSHA)
Brazil, 2025, Director: Joel Yamaji, Producer: Joel Pizzini and Juliana Domingos, Grão Filme, Documentary, 20 min. / The film merges poetically reconstructed documentary fragments recreated as traces of the past with dreamlike images to express the imaginary of Hiroshima survivor Takashi Morita, who emigrated to Brazil and became a peace activist, turning his life itself into a message to future generations about the horror and senselessness of war.
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
For 15 years the International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) raises awareness about the risks of atomic power and promotes nuclear disarmament with independent films and panels of experts around the globe. In October 2024, Hollywood’s MovieMaker Magazine named it one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World 2024”. And in 2025, the festival’s founders, Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and Norbert Suchanek, received the prestigious “Nuclear-Free Future Award” in New York City in the category education. The Uranium Film Festival especially in Rio focuses very much on the young generation.
„You’ve never seen two people get more done than the life and project-partner duo Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and Norbert G. Suchanek, who run the International Uranium Film Festival in deep collaboration with activists around the world. The festival has its grand event in Rio, but also does an extensive U.S. tour in regions impacted by uranium-related industry. Inevitably, folks wonder whether there are enough films on the subject to warrant a festival. The answer is yes. This, of course, is because the issue is expansive, impacting all 50 U.S. states and many more corners of the world than most folks realize. From the Navajo Nation to Las Vegas to Chicago and many places between, this spirited DIY art, advocacy, and activism project brings folks together in a space of support, education, shared outrage, and a good time. The Uranium Film Festival is a refreshing example of what activism and advocacy can be: inclusive, expansive, and celebratory.“ Hadley Austin, MovieMaker Magazine
Think globally, act locally.
We thank our local supporters in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro: Armazém de São Thiago, Esquina de Santa, Bar do Mineiro, and Cachaça Magnífica de Faria for providing delicious local meals and drinks for filmmakers, audiences, and festival staff. And we thank our international supporter from California, the Samuel Lawrence Foundation.
Festival Team
Márcia Gomes de Oliveira
Founder & Director
Email: uraniofestival@ gmail.com
Norbert G. Suchanek
Founder & Director
Email: norbert.suchanek@ uraniumfilmfestival.org
Libbe HaLevy
Ambassador of the International
Uranium Film Festival to the USA
Los Angeles
www.nuclearhotseat.com
Website– https://uraniumfilmfestival.org
Revealed: USAID, National Endowment for Democracy & Open Society Quietly Bankroll Cuba’s “Independent” Media In Push for Regime Change
All this, however, pales in comparison to the resources the U.S. has dedicated to Radio and TV Martí. Founded in 1985 by the Reagan administration, the Miami-based network boasts dozens of full-time employees and receives tens of millions of dollars from Washington annually.
Anti-government media are only a small portion of the huge array of groups Washington secretly funds and supports. From musicians and academics, to civil society, educational, and religious groups, to think tanks, charities and NGOs, there exists a vast nexus of organizations receiving vast sums of money from the U.S. government.
Alan Macleod, 6 June 26, https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-usaid-ned-open-society-quietly-bankroll-cubas-independent-media-in-push-for-regime-change/290942/
Amid escalating U.S. aggression towards the Cuban island through a maximum pressure campaign and the threat of military intervention, the United States government has been covertly funding a huge network of Cuban media outlets that claim to be independent in a push for regime change against the independent socialist government.
These outlets present themselves as unbiased investigative journalism, but are quietly being financed by Washington through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Foundation in order to sow discontent across the Caribbean nation, softening it up for a potentially “imminent” invasion by the Trump administration.
Cuba faces some of its worst energy blackouts in its history, thanks to the U.S. blockade, which is attempting to strange the island into submission. As a Communist state defying U.S. orders, Cuba has, since 1959, been in the crosshairs of Washington, who are attempting to overthrow the government. MintPress sheds light on this shady regime change nexus.
CubaNet is one of the most influential and well-established news outlets covering affairs on the Caribbean island. Founded by anti-government activists in 1994, the site has become the go-to source of information for corporate media, who regularly cite it, and present it as an objective and unbiased independent media (e.g., The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and The Los Angeles Times). CubaNet reporters have written op-eds in major U.S. newspapers such as USA Today, calling for an immediate change in government on the island.
‘Independent Journalism,’ Brought To You By The U.S. State Department
But CubaNet is not as independent as it seems. The outlet is bankrolled by the U.S. national security state. CubaNet has received millions of dollars in funding from USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as the Open Society Foundation.
One currently active $500,000 USAID grant, for instance, was awarded to CubaNet to “engage on-island young Cubans through objective and uncensored multimedia journalism.” While ostensibly a laudable goal, even the grant’s own one-sentence description hints that its purpose is to undermine and attack the Cuban government. It states that it will (emphasis added) “increase the free flow of information to and from Cuba in order to offset the regime’s disinformation campaigns.”
Another news organization receiving huge sums of money from Washington is ADN Cuba. Literally meaning “Cuba’s DNA,” the outlet has amassed a significant following online, boasting over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, over 200,000 on Instagram, and over 1.3 million on Facebook. It describes itself as “an independent media outlet committed to freedom and democracy in Cuba.” Yet it is actually based in Spain. And it does not seem particularly committed to transparency about its funding.
What is clear, however, is that ADN Cuba has received millions of dollars from the U.S. national security state. In September 2024, USAID approved a $1.1 million grant to ADN Cuba – a gigantic amount of money for an organization that publishes barely one story per day on its website. This was on top of a $1.5 million allocation for the 2022-2024 period. Indeed, since 2020, ADN Cuba has received in excess of $3 million from USAID alone. This relationship is not disclosed to readers– even in stories directly covering USAID funding Cuban media– and is relegated to the footnotes of obscure U.S. government funding databases.
Diario de Cuba is another Spanish-based news outlet that publishes a wide variety of stories, all with one thing in common: a deep aversion to the Cuban government. The BBC describes it and CubaNet as key sources for impartial news, run by journalists who “report without censorship and to paint a broader picture on the country’s reality.”
And just like CubaNet, Diario de Cuba has received seven-figure funding from Washington. Between 2016 and 2020, Diario de Cuba received $1.3 million in USAID cash – almost as much as CubaNet over the same period. This generous funding has allowed it to reach a global audience, with over 600,000 followers on Facebook alone.
Regime Change Networks
Read more: Revealed: USAID, National Endowment for Democracy & Open Society Quietly Bankroll Cuba’s “Independent” Media In Push for Regime ChangeThe Central Intelligence Agency used to directly (and secretly) sponsor hundreds of media outlets across the world. However, after a series of scandals and more information about its nefarious activities came to public attention, Washington decided to outsource many of its most controversial foreign operations to organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Carl Gershman, the NED’s longtime president, said, explaining the 1983 decision to create his organization. NED co-founder Allen Weinstein agreed: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.
Under the guise of democracy promotion and human rights, the U.S. government channels money to political and social groups across the world in order to maximize its strategic goals, including regime change.
In recent years, the U.S. has used the twin organizations of the NED and USAID to bankroll anti-government protests in Hong Kong, to attempt a color revolution in Belarus, to overthrow the government of Ukraine in 2014, and to organize riots across Iran earlier this year.
In Cuba, the NED and USAID played a critical role in organizing a (failed) uprising against the government in 2021. USAID in particular spent millions of dollars funding, organizing and promoting the San Isidro Movement – a collective of musicians, artists, and journalists– to lead a counter-revolution on the island.
San Isidro members were at the forefront of a wave of nationwide protests that July. The demonstrations were immediately signal boosted by Western corporate media, top celebrities, and U.S. politicians, including President Biden. Neitzens were flooded with the astroturfed “SOS Cuba” campaign, that trended across the Internet for days.
In the end, however, the coordinated efforts of the U.S. failed to convince ordinary Cubans to take to the streets, and the movement quickly petered out.
Esteban Rodríguez, a key member of the San Isidro movement, is a producer at ADN Cuba.
When U.S. Money Is Paused, “Independent” Media Immediately Collapse
The importance of U.S. government money to the survival and operations of these outlets was underlined early last year when the Trump administration chose to freeze funding to USAID and the NED. Announcing the decision, Elon Musk, then head of the Department of Government Efficiency, described USAID in particular as a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
The effect on Cuban media was immediate. As soon as the money stopped flowing, dozens of organizations faced immediate liquidation. CubaNet published an emergency editorial asking readers to make up the shortfall. “We are facing an unexpected challenge: the suspension of key funding that sustained part of our work.” they wrote; “If you value our work and believe in keeping the truth alive, we ask for your support.” “Without [USAID] funds, it will be extremely difficult to continue,” CubaNet director Roberto Hechavarría Pilia added.
Diario de Cuba was in similarly dire straits. Its director, Pablo Díaz Espí, noted that “aid to independent journalism from the government of the United States has been suspended, which makes our work more difficult,” asking readers to donate.
Musk’s decision accidentally revealed a sprawling network of over 6,200 reporters and nearly 1,000 outlets worldwide that were quietly being trained, supported, and bankrolled by the CIA front, all under the banner of promoting “independent” media and freedom of information.
Another supposedly independent Cuban outlet plunged into crisis was El Toque (The Touch). Founded in 2014 and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NED, El Toque publishes in Spanish and English, and attempts to manipulate the exchange rates in Cuba.
The funding cut hit them badly, with editors announcing that they would immediately have to lay off half their staff (15 people) and stop working with dozens of freelancers, while looking for alternative funding sources.
El Estornudo (The Sneeze), is also generously financed by NED. In 2021 alone, the endowment awarded the investigative journalism outlet $180,000. It also receives copious support from the Open Society Foundation, although it insists that none of this U.S. money comes with any strings attached or affects its output.
While Western media often portray the Cuban media landscape as a David-and-Goliath fight between plucky independent media facing repression, and a sprawling state-sponsored propaganda apparatus, the gigantic sums handed out to these “underdogs” make them by far and away the best funded outlets on the island. A 2023 Guardian article, for instance, profiled 24-year-old photojournalist Pedro Sosa, who worked for both El Toque and El Estornudo. It presented the pair as “offer[ing] real reporting over stodgy state media” and journalists as poor and vulnerable truth tellers standing up for “freedom,” and facing a “crackdown” from the state.
But it also let slip that working for U.S.-backed media is not as bad a career move as portrayed, and is, in fact, an extremely lucrative profession. It casually mentions that salaries at tiny El Toque are ten times that of even the most senior journalists working in Cuban state media. In reality, then, these oppressed free speech warriors are actually some of the richest individuals on the entire island, thanks to the power of the U.S. dollar, which pays them handsomely to produce a constant stream of anti-government news.
In the end, the U.S.-backed outlets need not have worried, and NED and USAID funding resumed after some restructuring.
Jobs For the Boys
All this, however, pales in comparison to the resources the U.S. has dedicated to Radio and TV Martí. Founded in 1985 by the Reagan administration, the Miami-based network boasts dozens of full-time employees and receives tens of millions of dollars from Washington annually.
Unlike the rest of the journalism industry, workers at Radio and TV Martí enjoy strong job security and six-figure wages, despite the fact that the Cuban government is able to jam and block many of their broadcasts from reaching Cuba, meaning precious few people consume its content.
Since its creation, Washington has spent at least $800 million on Radio and TV Martí.
The outlets profiled make up only a small portion of the network of anti-government media being funded by the United States. Most of the recipients of American money remain anonymous – a decision taken in part to hide their identities and preserve their credibility inside Cuba.
The National Endowment for Democracy considers Cuba a “long-standing priority,” and is currently officially funding 32 separate projects on the island.
Media related grants include one $80,000 project titled “Strengthening Access to Information,” which promises to:
“[E]nhance access to information and promote critical thinking, the organization will produce daily reporting and analysis across various formats, providing independent perspectives on issues affecting citizens’ daily lives, including freedom of expression, public safety, human rights, and other pressing social concerns.”
Another $115,000 grant, titled “Expanding Access to Uncensored Media” notes that it will:
“[P]romote independent information, the organization will provide narrative journalism on censored topics, conduct investigations, and produce in-depth articles, photo essays, and opinion pieces while strengthening the media’s operational capacity.”
Thirty-one of the thirty-two projects hide the recipient’s name and identification, meaning that those groups working with the CIA cutout organization are generally only ever identified if they advertise this relationship, or, like when U.S. money was temporarily halted in 2025, they call for help.
Anti-government media are only a small portion of the huge array of groups Washington secretly funds and supports. From musicians and academics, to civil society, educational, and religious groups, to think tanks, charities and NGOs, there exists a vast nexus of organizations receiving vast sums of money from the U.S. government.
Two of these bodies include The Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos (Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, or OCDH) and lawyers’ group, Cubalex.
Both groups produce reports denouncing the Cuban government, and are regularly cited as impartial authorities on human rights on the island in Western outlets, such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. But what readers are not told is that both organizations are bankrolled by the U.S. national security state.
Records show that USAID has given almost $1.5 million to the OCDH. NED support, meanwhile, was crucial to Cubalex’s inception in 2010, and Washington continues to pay its staff wages to this day. As the company’s executive director, Laritza Diversent said last year,
“Without the support of National Endowment for Democracy, Cubalex would not have existed; to do the work we do requires resources. For 14 years, NED has been supporting us. Last October, after trying a lot of times, we [also] achieved a state Department grant.”
Thus, there is barely a corner of the anti-government Cuban opposition that has not been reached by U.S. money, either through government organizations such as the NED or USAID, or through institutions such as the Ford Foundation and Open Societies Foundation, which have historically performed a similar role in promoting American interests abroad.
Many of these groups are headquartered in South Florida, where U.S. government money is helping to subsidize thousands of jobs for the Cuban-American community. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that a significant part of Miami economy is propped by taxpayer money funding counter-revolutionary forces. Ironic, considering that conservative Cubans often vehemently object to government welfare programs in both the U.S. and Cuba.
Digital Bombardment
In 2010, a new social media and messaging app, Zunzuneo, took Cuba by storm. From nowhere, it went viral, picking up tens of thousands of users – a very large number for the time on such an internet-sparse island.
None of its users, however, were aware that the platform had been secretly created by USAID in order to promote regime change. Their plan was to first provide an excellent service that would capture the market, then to slowly drip feed Cubans anti-government messaging, and finally to direct them to join “smart mobs”, aimed at triggering a color revolution.
In an effort to hide its ownership of the project, the U.S. government held a secret meeting with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, aimed at getting him to invest in the project. It is unclear to what extent, if any, Dorsey helped, as he has declined to speak on the matter.
Zunzuneo was abruptly shut down in 2012, perhaps because the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (which oversees TV and Radio Marti) had already created a new program called Piramideo.
Piramideo marketed itself as an app that allowed Cubans to receive world news for free, and without censorship. Almost immediately, however, locals reported being deluged with fake news about anti-government protests that never happened. Piramideo was shut down in 2015, after reporting on U.S. government meddling in Cuba caused a scandal and diplomatic embarrassment.
Today, however, with Cubans increasingly using American social media apps, this kind of subterfuge is largely unnecessary, as it can be done out in the open. During the 2021 San Isidro protests, apps such as Instagram and Twitter were openly participating in the attempt to overthrow the government, taking no action against a massive boom of clearly fake bot accounts parroting the exact same messages (down to the typos) and using the same astroturfed hashtag. Twitter’s editorial team even placed the protests – which drew barely a few thousand people into the streets nationwide – at the top of its “What’s Happening” for over 24 hours, meaning that every user worldwide would be notified. The failed putsch has come to be known as the “Bay of Tweets.”
Unending War on Cuba
In October, for the 33rd consecutive year, the United Nations voted overwhelmingly (165-7) to call for an end to the American blockade against Cuba. This economic war was established by the Eisenhower administration, in response to the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista.
These illegal unilateral coercive measures, which an internal U.S. government memo states are designed to “decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government,” cost Cuba billions every year, and severely impede its development.
The U.S. attempted to invade Cuba in 1961, and brought the world to the brink of annihilation during the subsequent Cuban missile crisis. It reportedly attempted to kill its leader Fidel Castro hundreds of times, and carried out waves of terror attacks against the country, including using biological weapons on the island.
Successive administrations continued the economic war against Cuba, which was ramped up after the fall of the Soviet Union. But the Trump State Department, run by Cuban-American Marco Rubio, has taken it to a new level, declaring the island to be one of its top priorities.
Trump himself has declared that Cuba is “next” on the list of countries being targeted for regime change. “We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished” with Iran he said last month.
In response, Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel said his country was ready to repel any U.S. invasion, as it did during the Bay of Pigs, stating:
“The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on April 16, 1961, to be ready to confront serious threats, including military aggression. We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it and, if it becomes inevitable, to defeat it.”
It is in this context that the U.S. government’s funding of a vast array of media outlets targeting Cuba should be seen; the media attack is just one facet of Washington’s multipronged approach to regime change.
Many of the organizations profiled here publish in English, and nearly all are used as supposedly credible sources of information on Cuba for Western corporate media, meaning that U.S. State Department narratives are laundered into the public consciousness through this network.
Many Cubans and Americans are completely unaware that their news about the island comes largely through a matrix of shady outlets quietly funded by the U.S. national security state via the NED and USAID. Their purpose is to keep up the flow of negative stories in order to soften the public up into accepting regime change on the island. After all, in war, truth is always the first casualty.
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod.
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3 CommentsMay 15th, 2026
Alan Macleod
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CBS’s Purge of 60 Minutes Sends a Chilling Message to Legacy Journalists Everywhere
June 3, 2026 SCHEERPOST, Joshua Scheer
For decades, 60 Minutes stood as one of the last surviving institutions of broadcast journalism willing to challenge power, confront corruption and occasionally remind Americans what reporting looks like when it serves the public rather than corporate interests. Now, according to reports from both The New York Times and The Guardian, one of the program’s most recognizable faces has been shown the door after openly accusing CBS leadership of dismantling the very newsroom he spent decades helping build.
Scott Pelley’s firing is more than a personnel dispute. It is a warning flare over the future of corporate media.
The veteran correspondent reportedly blasted CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss during a tense staff meeting, accusing her of “murdering 60 Minutes” after the network abruptly removed key producers and correspondents from the program. Pelley’s criticism came amid growing turmoil at CBS News following a dramatic restructuring led by ownership and management figures who promised to modernize the network for the digital era.
But modernization is often the language institutions use when they are really talking about control.
The most striking allegation is not that Pelley lost his job after challenging management. It is Pelley’s claim that senior executives pressured him to inject bias into reporting and that “the collapse of values at the top has become untenable.” If true, the issue extends far beyond one journalist’s employment status. It becomes a question of whether one of America’s most influential news organizations is abandoning the editorial independence that made it relevant in the first place.
The irony is difficult to ignore.
Below [on original] is the termination letter CBS executives sent to Scott Pelley—a document that offers a revealing glimpse into the growing battle over editorial independence, newsroom dissent and the future of one of America’s most respected news programs…………………………………………………………..
For years, media executives have lectured the public about the importance of defending democratic norms, protecting institutions and standing up to political pressure. Yet when journalists inside their own organizations raise concerns about editorial interference, many of those same institutions suddenly discover the virtues of obedience.
Pelley is not some fringe figure. He reported from Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine. He spent decades in dangerous environments documenting war, power and political deception. Whether readers agree with every story he produced is beside the point. His reputation was built through reporting, not branding.
Meanwhile, CBS appears to be replacing newsroom veterans with a leadership structure increasingly shaped by media personalities, digital strategists and executives whose expertise lies less in investigative journalism than in managing narratives and audience engagement.
That may be good for quarterly earnings.
It may be good for shareholders.
But it is rarely good for journalism. https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/03/cbss-purge-of-60-minutes-sends-a-chilling-message-to-legacy-journalists-everywhere/
15TH INTERNATIONAL URANIUM FILM FESTIVAL RIO DE JANEIRO AWARDS
Uranium Film Festival, Jun 03, 2026
Films from Canada, Spain, Germany, Brazil and the USA won the top awards at the 15th International Uranium Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro. The awards ceremony took place on Saturday, May 30, 2026, at the Cinematheque of the renowned Museum of Modern Art (MAM Rio). Bye, Bye Rio, hello Las Vegas. For those who could not make it to the Rio de Janeiro International Uranium Film Festival in time this year, you may join us in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 3rd International Uranium Film Festival in Vegas will be held this fall at the University of Nevada Boyd School of Law in cooperation with Principal Man Ian Zabarte from the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians. The Shoshone are the most atomic bombed nation on earth. More than 900 atmospheric and underground nuclear explosions were conducted on their territory in Nevada by the US and 28 nuclear full-scale nuclear weapon detonations by the United Kingdom.
And these are the winners of the 15th International Uranium Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro, May 21 – 30, 2026.
EMERGING FILMMAKER AWARD
ALBRAUM
Germany, 2026, Directed by Maja Hohenberg, Poetic Documentary, 20 min. (Photo: Maja Hohenberg)
BEST INVESTIGATIVE DOCUMENTARY FILM
BOMBSHELL
USA, 2025, Directed by Ben Loeterman & Gaia De Simoni, Documentary Feature, 80 min.
BEST EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY
OUT OF CONTROL. REPORTS ON THE ATOMIC BOMB
Spain, 2023, Directed by Beatriz Caravaggio, Experimental Documentary, 50 min.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM
THE ATOMIC SCREEN
Canada, 2025, Directed by Alain Vézina, Documentary, 52 min.
NATIVE SPIRIT AWARD
THE MOTH
Canada, 2025, Directed by: Michelle Derosier and Zoe Gordon, Short Fiction, 20 min. (Photo: Zoe Gordon)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
HIBAKUSHA – WANDERING SOUL
Brazil, 2025, Director: Joel Yamaji, Short documentary, 20 min. (Photo: Joel Yamaji)
HOLLYWOOD BOMB – HOW PRESIDENT TRUMAN AND GENERAL GROVES DESTROYED THE FIRST NUCLEAR EPIC
USA, 2026, Director: Greg Mitchell, Short documentary, 15 min.
THE ALPACA CONNECTION
USA, 2025, Director: Tom Brown, Comedy thriller short, 18 min.
TOO LATE TO LEARN
USA, 2026, Director: Thomas Kanady, Documentary, 68 min.
Statements of the Award Winners…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.filmfestivals.us/blog/uranium_film_festival/15th_international_uranium_film_festival_rio_de_janeiro_awards
‘What’s happening is horrifying’: the rebel film-maker challenging AI’s march into Hollywood
While pro-Silicon Valley documentaries got major distribution deals, Valerie Veatch had to struggle to get her film, about Big Tech’s dark past and future, into the world. She talked to Charlotte O’Sullivan about what some attendees called ‘the scariest movie playing at Sundance’
Charlotte O’Sullivan, Jun 6, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/valerie-veatch-interview-ghost-in-the-machine-documentary-ai-sundance-tech-bros?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekend-edition-gagged-facebook-s-whistleblower-james-mcavoy-q-a-nilufer-yanya&_bhlid=9a5a1970bb01aaa89602f0fb01add0f7ae856b22
Valerie Veatch doesn’t want to come across as “a crazy, bitter film-maker”. But she admits it’s “triggering” to talk about the challenges she faced when making Ghost in the Machine, her blisteringly enjoyable documentary about the dark past and present of AI, which hits UK cinemas today.
From the start, Ghost in the Machine was a hard sell. As Veatch says: “I couldn’t get funding from the usual places. People weren’t interested in a film that was tech-critical.” She wanted to talk about the “father of Silicon Valley”, Dr William Shockley, and his abiding interest in eugenics, to explore the sexism and racism that underpins “breathless, gushy” discussions about “superintelligence” and the “singularity” (the hypothetical moment when AI surpasses human intelligence). “I was so full of rage. This stuff is not inevitable.”
Veatch, who was born in Seattle but is now based in Kent, has made three critically acclaimed and zeitgeisty documentaries (including 2014’s Love Child and Me at the Zoo in 2012). For the new film, she talked to more than 30 US experts about the power dynamics behind the much-hyped, eye-wateringly lucrative AI revolution. She did the Zooms, and edited the Zooms, “compulsively, in the middle of the night, for a year; I did urgent listening and, somehow, I got a cut ready for Sundance”. Once Sundance 2026 accepted the film, Veatch got a grant, which paid for all the archival footage. And her dad and aunt came in as investors, she says proudly. “So this is an almost entirely homegrown film. I don’t think we could carry the message that we’re carrying if we were at all beholden to any large studio or distribution company.”
‘What is the difference between being in the pocket of Big Tech and being an independent voice? Well, a lot!’
Irreverence is Veatch’s thing and she cites the British director Adam Curtis as the biggest influence on her work (“I wanted to utilise the archive, the way he does … I wanted it to be surreal and sardonic”). Ghost in the Machine is crammed with jolting images: we see William Shockley, on TV, spewing his racist poison with the gentle patience of a man hawking encyclopaedias. Elsewhere, phrases chime in quietly chilling ways: the Victorian originator of eugenics, Francis Galton, wants to create a “galaxy of genius”.
Also shown at Sundance this year, and distributed by the mainstream giant Focus Features in the US (and Universal Studios elsewhere), was The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. Made by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, this documentary, as its title suggests, manifests a cautious lack of pessimism on the subject of AI. Framed as a personal journey (Roher, about to become a father, wants to know if he’s bringing his baby into a safe world), it suggests this technology will always be with us. This film, which premieres at Sheffield DocFest next Friday, 12 June, and then goes on general release in the UK on 19 June, had the cooperation of the tech bros and includes on-camera interviews with Google Deepmind’s CEO, Demis Hassabis, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. In the words of Daniela Amodei, the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, “this train isn’t going to stop”.
Veatch draws my attention to the fact that Sundance now receives funding from Google, adding: “Last year, so I’m told, audiences clapped when film-makers said their movies didn’t contain AI … this year was so different.” Even before the festival began, she sensed unease about her project. As it happened, Ghost in the Machine connected with audiences. In fact, it was a huge success, with word of mouth suggesting it was “the scariest movie playing at Sundance”.
Still, Veatch gets infuriated when her film is compared to Roher’s. She says: “What is the difference, ultimately, between being in the pocket of Big Tech and being an independent voice? Well, a lot!”
Author and linguist Emily Bender (who appears in both Ghost in the Machine and The AI Doc) is on record as saying Veatch’s film is the better of the two. Bender says Roher “lets himself get buffeted by the imaginations of some of the most unhinged people in this space”, whereas Bender feels Veatch has “woven together an informed and engrossing essay”. Similarly, Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist and cofounder of Black in AI, who also shows up in both films, recently praised Ghost in the Machine while distancing herself from Roher’s movie. “She went on LinkedIn and said: “I reject [The AI Doc]. They used us like chocolate chips.’” Veatch nods grimly. “And they did. They sprinkled in diversity.”
‘This industry is rotten. I hate it! But this is why we need women film-makers’
Veatch insists this isn’t about individual movies getting it wrong. It’s about a trend to sideline or erase voices with a different point of view. A new British production called AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About, is showing at Tribeca this weekend. Veatch says she only heard about the movie through Bender, who was interviewed for it but didn’t make the final cut. The film-maker said something like: “Sorry we didn’t use your footage. In the end, we were just focusing on people who were in the room when big discoveries happened.” Veatch pulls a face. “In other words, ‘we focused on men’. This industry is rotten. I hate it! But this is why we need women film-makers.”
Veatch says repeatedly that she feels the need to be “aggressive” when talking about her film. That she’s willing to seem “negative”, because “what’s happening with AI is so urgent – the building of all these hyper-scale data centres is horrifying.” In the US, she says, “they’re trying to criminalise dissent”. (Wired recently reported that federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are targeting “anti-technology extremists”). Veatch jiggles in her seat. “The film’s going to get a release on PBS and YouTube in September. And we’re about to get a huge grant, to make data centres the theme of our summer push, in the US. I’ve invited Erin Brockovich [the environmental activist, who has started a database to track data centres around America] to one of our events. I’m like: “I really hope she says yes. She’s an icon. You can’t criminalise Erin Brockovich!”
Veatch says she’d “love to do something in the UK about data centres”, then pauses and, for the first and only time in the whole interview, sounds lost. She murmurs, “There are networks in the US. I don’t know anyone here …” Human contact means everything to Veatch. Concerned citizens of the UK, if you want to join forces with this formidable woman, drop her a line.
Ghost in the Machine is released in UK cinemas today, or can be rented through Kinema
The Nerve is a fearless, independent media title launched by five former Guardian / Observer journalists: investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, editors Sarah Donaldson, Jane Ferguson and Imogen Carter and creative director Lynsey Irvine. We cover culture, politics and tech,
Balancing Act at the New York Times: Nicholas Kristof Wrote About Israel’s Sexual Torture of Prisoners, the Next Day Isabel Kershner Penned More Unverified Rape Allegations Against Hamas
Robin Andersen, SCHEERPOST, May 30, 2026
The New York Times attempted to ‘balance’ Nicholas Kristof’s documentation of the systematic rape of Palestinians by Israeli forces with yet another unverified rape ‘investigation’ claiming that Hamas had weaponized sexual violence on October 7. It was written by the paper’s pro-Israel Jerusalem-based reporter, Isabel Kershner.
Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times Op-ed piece titled The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians, published on May 11, was based on documentation and grueling victim testimonies of rapes that Palestinians have experienced at the hands of Israeli security forces. Brutal and sadistic acts of sexual torture are described in a piece that triggered enormous attention even though human rights organizations have been documenting these same crimes for years now.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented Israel’s sexual torture of Palestinian men, women and children calling the “Israeli prison system a network of torture camps.” Save the Children reported in July 2024 that Palestinian children in Israeli detention were facing “disease, increasing starvation, [and] abuse including sexual violence.” A Palestinian women’s rights organization warned that their documented 75 cases of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women amounted to about 1% of what was actually happening in Israeli detention. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s extensive report published on April 13, 2026, emphasized that the sexual torture was so bad it amounted to “another genocide behind walls.” They identified its purpose as a “systematic destruction of the body and identity.” The report emphasized the scope of “criminal responsibility,” by the collusion of state institutions that were creating impunity.
In a discussion about Kristof’s piece, Francesca Albanese, who has also documented brutal Israeli torture sites, told Al Jazeera’s UpFront that she had given a long interview about sexual torture to the New York Times as early as February 2024, but nothing came of it. Albanese went on to say she didn’t understand why the Times piece should have been “more important” than the extensive documentation of human rights monitors. But when Kristof finally acknowledged that Palestinians were being tortured and raped by trained dogs, (corroborated by a soldier) in Israeli prisons, it made headlines in the US and sent shock waves through Israel’s hasbara apparatus.
The agenda setting New York Times is a “paper of record,” with a journalism staff of 3000, about 7 percent of all journalists working in the US. The paper has also been a reliable source of pro-Israel messaging for years, especially after October 7, so when a well-respected human rights journalist wrote such an op-ed in its pages it was a public relations disaster for Israel and its propaganda machine went into high gear to counter the bad press. Zionists and genocide supporters protested in front of the Times building. Netanyahu was so outraged that he threatened to bring a defamation lawsuit against the paper. The Israel Foreign Ministry called the piece “blood liable” and accused Nicholas Kristof of writing “an endless stream of baseless lies and propaganda” that turned the “victims into the accused.”
It should come then, as no surprise that the paper attempted to “balance” Kristof’s essay by publishing a piece the very next day, on May 12, about another “two-year investigation” by Israel, that “concluded” that sexual violence by Hamas was widespread on October 7. Isabel Kirshner’s piece attempted to breathe new life into the thoroughly discredited and debunked original Times’ front-page ‘investigation’ titled Screams Without Words. Screams was first published on December 28, 2023, just as the South African legal case against Israel’s genocide was being presented to the International Court of Justice, and it served as a significant denial and justification for Israel’s genocidal violence at the time. Screams without Words can be described accurately (and has been) with the same words used by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to falsely describe Kristof’s piece; “an endless stream of baseless lies and propaganda.”
The timing of the now infamous rape story of 2023, along with its extravagant claims to evidence not found in the front-page article, had much to do with why, almost immediately, the piece drew critical attention from media analysts, independent investigative reporters, and human rights organizations. Withering criticisms of the story included an essay in Medium, calling it “crappy journalism,” saying it offered a “lesson on selection, slanting, and charged language, and why using words in these ways constitutes a poor substitute for solid evidence and reasoning.” An Egyptian feminist non-governmental organization (NGO) Speak Up, called the article a “disgraceful investigation,” and shamed the Times for claiming to provide readers with definitive evidence, while actually offering no evidence at all. Independent US investigators such as Electronic Intifada, The Grayzone, The Intercept, Mondoweiss and others, roundly debunked the fictionesque inventions continued within it. Sixty journalism professors wrote to the New York Times calling on the paper to commission an independent review of the article. It was “troubling to professors of journalism to see such a shoddy article be published without a retraction or an investigation,” Professor Deepa Kumar told Democracy Now! ………………………………………………………………
The paper’s 2026 version of the Hamas rape story was penned by one of the Times’ most reliably pro-Israeli reporters, Isabel Kershner, and this new ‘investigation’ once again takes seriously, discredited Israeli sources that Kershner claims to be independent and reliable…………………………………………………………………..
Isabell Kershner at the New York Times
Kershner has been providing positive reporting for Israeli Security Force for years now. With Kirshner, polishing the image of the IDF is a family affair. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Balancing legitimate reporting that includes reliable witness testimony confirmed by multiple human rights investigations over a period of years cannot be not done by publishing unverified allegations from discredited sources. Alan MacLeod noted a recuring media pattern here that applies to the New York Times’ reporting on Israel; “whenever scrutiny intensifies around Israeli abuses against Palestinians, major Western outlets redirect attention toward unverified claims against Hamas to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Balancing Kristof’s rare acknowledgment of Israeli war crimes with reporting by a pro-Israel, biased journalist citing discredited sources repeating unverifiable allegations was a shameful, and failed, attempt to appease the state of Israeli as it expands its crimes of war and occupation into Lebanon for a Greater Isreal. The Times would do better to simply report the truth and stop catering to hasbara and the false narratives that facilitate Israel’s on-going genocidal violence.
Material from this piece was drawn from Chapter 4, “A Compromised Media Landscape,” and from Chapter 8, “The New York Times Rape Story: War Propaganda and Trauma Porn,” in The Complect Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, by Robin Andersen
Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others. https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/30/balancing-act-at-the-new-york-times-nicholas-kristofs-wrote-about-israels-sexual-torture-of-prisoners-the-next-day-isabel-kershner-penned-more-unverified-rape-allegations-against-h/
Blood Libels and Sexual Violence: Israel, Palestinian Prisoners and The New York Times
28 May 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/blood-libels-and-sexual-violence-israel-palestinian-prisoners-and-the-new-york-times/
When the establishment journalism of Nicholas Kristof of that most establishment of papers, The New York Times, draws the ire of a foreign regime, and an unnaturally allied foreign regime at that, a pulse might be detected in the moribund state that is the Fourth Estate. In his piece alleging a campaign of sexual violence against Palestinians by Israel’s security apparatus, he shines some blistering light on practices long suspected and discussed. It begins a proposition that, “Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemn rape.”
With that solemn theme declared, Kristof begins by remarking on the “brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct.7, 2023.” Members of the US administration and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had rightly condemned them. “And yet in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children – by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency, and, above all, prison guards.”
Brandishing his credentials as veteran war reporter, he makes it clear that, when writing about sexual violence, he knows what he’s talking about. Interest in the fate of Palestinian prisoners – especially in that way – was piqued during a visit to the activist and professor of non-violence Issa Amro. Amro had himself been sexually assaulted and suspected this to be a common practice “but underreported because of shame.” Interest then shifts to the conditions of incarceration, with something in the order of 9,000 Palestinians being held as of May. “Many have not been charged but were detained on ill-defined security grounds, and since 2023, most have been denied visits from the Red Cross and lawyers.”
Kristof then makes use of material gathered in 14 conversations with men and women who claim to have been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers and the security forces, supplemented by the accounts of family members, investigators, officials and other sources. Reports are cited – Euro-Med, Save the Children, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the United Nations. The views of Sari Bashi, an Israeli American human rights lawyer who heads the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel are documented: “Rampant sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners is a thing; it’s been normalized.” While he had seen no evidence such acts had been executed in accordance with a plan or program, “the authorities know it’s happening and are not stopping it.”
Kristof restates that point, finding “no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes.” But what had germinated in recent years was “a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel’s ‘standard operating procedures’ and ‘a major element in the ill-treatment of Palestinians’.”
And, as if we ever needed evidence to demonstrate that Israel’s prison system has become a foul stew of corruption, brutality and malice towards its Palestinian inmates, we only need witness the gloating joy of Israel’s Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who makes a ghoulish habit of posting videos glorying over their misfortune and suffering. (Sexual violence doesn’t tend to make the cut, but threats of execution do.) The fact that he thought such treatment appropriate for the activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla (his posted video sufficiently demonstrates this point) showed a consistent ecumenicism on cruelty: All who dare go against Israel’s interests or dare provide sympathy to the enemy (all Palestinians are, in Ben-Gvir-lese, the enemy) deserve what they get. For such a figure to boisterously thrive, the soil had to have been appropriately manured.
Reaction to the article in Israel was biliously swift and full of rage. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, worked himself up sufficiently to claim that Israel’s soldiers had been “defamed” by Kristof; a “blood libel about rape” had been perpetrated by an attempt to “create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers.”
In a media post, Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs announced what steps would be taken. “Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.”
Kristof’s critics have decided to layer the blood libel allegation with sinister suggestions that writing about Israeli sexual abuses against Palestinian prisoners and detainees should not take place because it seasons pre-existing antisemitic sentiments. Avoid the talk about plans, programs and systems gone to the bad: patterns suggest conspiracy, and conspiracy suggests hidden forces in clandestine boardrooms plotting predation and cruelty. Thus, we have David Frum rumbling in The Atlantic about the increasingly violent attacks on Jews in the broader Western world as attributable to “anti-Jewish sentiment that draws on the deepest foundations of anti-Jewish myth.” Presumably, Palestinian victims of rape have added their share to that myth.
To its credit, the paper has held the line. Spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander confirmed that the accounts of the 14 men and women interviewed for the article had been “corroborated with other witnesses, whenever possible, and with people the victims confided in – that includes family members and lawyers. Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys in one case, with UN testimony.” Independent experts were also called upon through the reporting and verification phase. In a separate statement, the paper noted that the legal threat was “part of a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative. Any such legal claim would be without merit.”
Lawyers in Israel specialising in defamation law speculate about the chances of such an action credibly taking place let alone credibly succeeding. Liat Bergman Ravid of the firm Klein & Co is of the view that such a civil claim had “a low likelihood of success” seeing as the country’s Defamation Law barred collectives from bringing civil actions to court. The Attorney General might, however “file an indictment against the person who made the statement, but this is a rare event, bordering on non-existent.” Rare or non-existent, Idan Seger of Simchony, Klein, Sananes & Co was open to the suggestion. Were the case to groan into court, the paper “would face a far more stringent burden of proof in Israel than under the US standard, as a mere lack of malice is insufficient to avoid liability.” Absolute truth would have to be proved. That would be most telling on the Israeli authorities, were that allowed to happen.
Trump’s government-wide NDA (non disclosure agreement) seeks to silence whistleblowers
May 26, 2026 / Freedom of the Press Foundation, https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/trumps-government-wide-nda-seeks-to-silence-whistleblowers/
Washington, D.C., May 26, 2026 — The Washington Post reported today that the Trump administration is planning a broad, government-wide nondisclosure agreement to combat leaks to the press.
The following can be attributed to Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper:
“The proposal by the ‘most transparent administration in history’ that millions of federal employees sign a blanket NDA is not just absurd, it’s unnecessary and dangerously secretive.
“This policy, from a president who has previously attempted to impose oppressive, corporate-style confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements on federal employees, would kneecap whistleblower protections, undermine the First Amendment, and wrongly inhibit the public’s right to know. It comes at a time when agency watchdogs are sidelined, FOIA officials are being fired, and leaks to the press — which are the sole reason the public knows about so much of this administration’s misconduct — are being demonized and prosecuted.
“We know exactly what kind of information the administration wants to bury. Look no further than the FOIA release to Freedom of the Press Foundation that showed the administration had no solid legal rationale for conducting mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, substantiating a leak the administration called ‘fake news’ and cited as false justification for loosening restrictions on subpoenas to reporters.
“Trying to force the entire federal government to adopt the Trump organization’s aggressive use of NDAs won’t make anybody safer and won’t improve agency processes. Its sole intent would be to protect the administration from the leak of embarrassing, politically damaging, or unlawful information.”
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