As more and more US cities face the prospect of federal police and military patrolling their streets, the New York Times (10/10/25) began a recent article on the fight over sending National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, with the following passage:
Democratic leaders in the city and state have pleaded with President Trump and the courts to trust law enforcement records, both local and federal, that describe the demonstrations as small and comparatively calm.
But in the bifurcated media world of 2025, one side’s comparative calm is the other’s “hellscape.”
By “both-sidesing” its description of the protests in Portland, the Times fails to inform its readers that one of these descriptions is true and the other is simply fabricated. Instead, it tells readers the situation reflects “dueling versions of reality.”
Compare this to Michael Tomasky’s reporting in the New Republic (10/13/25), which aptly notes in the kicker that “the disturbances in Portland are basically limited to a single block about two miles from the city center.”
Or the snarky factcheck website Is Portland Burning? which shows images of the serene city and video of a calm, small protest.
Elsewhere, the Times (10/11/25) has written about the funny animal costumes worn by protesters in Portland, reporting that could have been used to debunk MAGA claims that the city is a “hellscape.”
‘Both officials disagree’
Taking a “closer look” at Trump’s claim that “in Portland, Oregon, antifa thugs have repeatedly attacked our offices and laid siege to federal property in an attempt to violently stop the execution of federal law,” AP (via Washington Post, 10/9/25) began its response, “There have been nightly protests outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland for months, peaking in June when police declared one demonstration a riot.”
In an Associated Press factchecking piece (reprinted in the Washington Post, 10/9/25), promising to take “a closer look at the facts” about Portland, only one of Trump’s claims (that in Portland, “you don’t even have sewers anymore”) is met with a forthright “this is false.” Other times, the AP struggles to find a kernel of truth in the Trump administration’s bizarre claims:
TRUMP: “The amazing thing is, you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights, and I mean just violence. It’s just so crazy. And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal, there’s nothing wrong.”
THE FACTS: Fires outside the building have been seen on a handful of occasions.
Or, like the Times, it resorts to both-sidesing it:
KRISTI NOEM, Homeland Security Secretary: “I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon, and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”
THE FACTS: Noem did visit Portland on Tuesday and met with Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson. Both officials disagree with Noem’s narrative.
These failings by the media leave the reader or viewer at the mercy of what are posed as competing narratives, rather than with an understanding of what’s real and what’s fake. This is particularly important now, given that right-wing influencers and media are ginning up false claims for the administration to consume and rebroadcast, and even instigating real incidents (Oregon Public Broadcasting, 10/11/25).
When corporate media refuse to call a lie a lie, and to stand unequivocally on the side of reality, they enable the Trump administration’s growing authoritarianism. If Trump can claim that a major US city is “burning to the ground,” what’s to stop him from asserting that the Constitution allows him to run for a third term—or that, once again, he’s won an election that he actually lost?
Featured Image: Detail from New York Times photo (10/11/25) of Portland protests (photo: Jordan Gale).
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
In his last dispatch for Al Jazeera (8/10/25), journalist Anas al-Sharif reported, “For the past two hours, the Israeli aggression on Gaza City has intensified.”
Israel’s targeted assassination of six Palestinian media members in the Gaza Strip on August 10 sent shockwaves through the journalism community. Though the murder of journalists has been a common tool of the Israeli’s government’s suppression of information coming out of Gaza, the loss of Al Jazeera‘s Anas al-Sharif was particularly harrowing.
Many of us had been moved by al-Sharif’s heart-wrenching coverage, from watching him remove his press vest in relief when a ceasefire was announced (1/19/25), to seeing a languid al-Sharif reporting on the famine (7/21/25) as people fainted around him. “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop,” said a voice off-camera. “You are our voice.”
Three of the victims were al-Sharif’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets that was able to keep journalists reporting in Gaza despite Israel’s blockade. As millions around the world grieved not just for al-Sharif but for his colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, Mohammed Noufal and Ibrahim Zaher, and freelancers Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi, we were also gravely concerned about the vacuum their murders created of on-the-ground coverage of the genocide.
Establishment media, however, used these courageous journalists’ murders as an opportunity to continue parroting the same Zionist talking points that contributed to manufacturing consent for their killings. FAIR looked at 15 different news outlets’ initial coverage of the murders: the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, BBC, Politico, Newsweek, Associated Press and Reuters.
We found that they overwhelmingly centered Israel’s narrative, attempted to delegitimize pro-Palestinian sources, and failed to contextualize the killings within the larger context of the genocide.
Prioritizing Israel’s pretext
Fox News (8/11/25) went farthest in embracing Israel’s “terrorist” narrative.
Four of the 15 articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC,8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) mentioned the allegations in either the headline or subhead. “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Airstrike, Claiming One Worked for Hamas,” was NBC‘s headline, with Israel’s smear that al-Sharif “posed as a journalist” in the subhead. Fox offered “Israel Says Al Jazeera Journalist Killed in Airstrike Was Head of Hamas ‘Terrorist Cell.’”
Reuters’ original headline (8/11/25) was “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” only later changed to “Israel Strike Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza.”
Al-Sharif had been targeted and smeared by the Israeli Defense Forces for months prior to his murder, and had written a statement in anticipation of his killing. “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. He asked the world to continue fighting for justice in Palestine: “Do not forget Gaza.”
Six of the articles (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) completely omitted references to or quotes from al-Sharif’s final statement. Of those six articles, the New York Times, BBC, NBC and Fox did include quotes from Israeli government representatives—perplexingly choosing to prioritize the voices of al-Sharif’s killers over his own.
The New York Times (8/10/25) gave the Israeli government ample space to smear one of the journalists it had just killed, claiming he was “the head of a terrorist cell” who was “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.”
Coverage by the Wall Street Journal and New YorkTimes devoted the most space to advancing Israel’s pretext for the killings. The Journal’s Anat Peled dedicated the first three paragraphs of her article to detailing al-Sharif’s supposed Hamas affiliation. Ephrat Livni of the Times also spent three paragraphs on the bogus allegations, allowing only one paragraph for a rebuttal from Al Jazeera and CPJ.
Every article except the ones from the New York Times (8/10/25) and Fox (8/11/25) cited the historically high number of Palestinian journalists that have been killed since October 7, 2023. The death toll currently stands at 192, according to the CPJ. However, only four articles (ABC, 8/11/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Politico, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) listed Israel as the primary perpetrator of these murders. More typically, the AP (8/11/25) wrote that “at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began,” leaving the identities of both these journalists and their killers unmentioned.
Six (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; CBS, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) of the 15 articles failed to mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and none mentioned the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
Critically, only two articles (Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; Washington Post, 8/11/25) even noted the fact that the other five slain journalists had not been accused of belonging to Hamas. With this omission, the other outlets accepted and transmitted to audiences Israel’s premise that any number of bystanders can legitimately be killed in order to target a supposed Hamas member.
Unnecessary qualifiers
Including the October 7, 2023, breakout as background for the killing of journalists, NBC (8/10/25) specified that “many of the targets of those attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” Palestinians killed subsequently by Israel, by contrast, were just described as “people…in the Hamas-run enclave.”
A common practice for Western media has been the use of unnecessary qualifiers to delegitimize information that comes from Palestinian sources. The coverage of al-Sharif’s assassination was no exception.
The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities. They rarely note that a Lancet study (2/8/25) has found that the death toll could be up to 40% higher than what the GHM is reporting. The New York Times (8/10/25) and Reuters (8/11/25) also utilized “Hamas-run” to describe figures from the Gazan government.
These outlets also showed a clear bias as to how they characterize casualties. The New York Times (8/10/25), when reporting on the death toll in Gaza, wrote that the GHM doesn’t “distinguish between civilians and combatants.” Later on, the Times reported on Israeli deaths—and failed to distinguish between Israeli civilian and combatant deaths.
The implication is that some Palestinian deaths might be considered to be of lesser importance, or even justified, based on victims’ potential “combatant” status. Israeli deaths, meanwhile, are to be counted simply as human beings. The Washington Post (8/11/25) exhibited the same double standard in its reporting.
NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Many of the targets of [the October 7] attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” When reporting Palestinian deaths, NBC made no mention that over half of those killed by Israel have been women, children and the elderly. A more recent investigation found that civilians make up 83% of deaths, according to the IDF’s own data. The report also didn’t describe what Palestinian victims might have been doing when they were killed, such as the almost 1,400 who have been shot while seeking aid.
In addition to the usual rhetoric, eight of the 15 articles cast doubt on Al Jazeera by repeatedly mentioning its ownership by the Qatari government. (Qatar, like Israel, is one of 20 countries worldwide officially designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by the United States.) Three of the articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) mention the Israeli government’s adversarial relationship with Al Jazeera, with the New York Times and the Journal dedicating several paragraphs to the outlet’s alleged ties to Hamas as the presumed basis for the conflict, rather than Al Jazeera‘s critical coverage of Israeli actions.
False equivalences
Reuters‘ original headline (8/11/25) was written from the point of view of al-Sharif’s killers.
Only three of the articles use the word “famine” (Financial Times, 8/10/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25), and only the Financial Times mentions the word outside of quotes. Reuters (8/11/25) and the Wall Street Journal (8/11/25) called the situation “a hunger crisis” and “a humanitarian crisis that has pushed many Palestinians toward starvation,” respectively.
Media outlets continue to push the narrative that this so-called conflict began less than two years ago, as when NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, targeting Hamas, after the Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.”
Though the rate of killing greatly escalated after the October 7 operation, Israeli violence against Palestinians goes back to before the founding of the state, as many historians have carefully explained. In the decades immediately prior to the Hamas operation, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem counts more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and September 2023—most of them noncombatants, over 2,400 of them children under 18. (Over the same period, some 1,300 Israelis—civilians and military—were killed by Palestinians.)
The Financial Times (8/10/25) described the ongoing genocide as “triggered” by the October 7 attacks, as if the al-Aqsa Flood operation were a random act of violence unrelated to the apartheid system that Israel imposes on Palestinians. The BBC (8/11/25) described Israeli violence as a “response to the Hamas-led attack,” completely erasing Israel’s history of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that long precedes the existence of Hamas. Obscuring this sort of context is part of the motivation for Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, including al-Sharif and his colleagues.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office of the WHite House in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 2025. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Refusals to comply with Supreme Court decisions equal a constitutional crisis.
I was at an event last week where a prominent GOP pollster who often appears on CNN was discussing the details of U.S. President Donald Trump’s political profile as we approach the 100-day mark of his administration. The back and forth was interesting to me and my fellow political nerds. However, during the presentation, my inner voice sounded like Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders: “This is not normal.”
Unfortunately, far too many political insiders are acting as if Trump is a normal if a little eccentric president. They think that they can negotiate with him on issues and influence his staff to move him in their direction. No matter what Trump does, they see it as just a negotiating tactic.
April 14, 2025 should go down in American history as the day when Trump’s steps in the direction of authoritarianism made it clear to all that this is not a normal presidency. After Monday’s events, there can be no more debate about what Trump is and where he is taking America.
Let’s break down what happened. In a meeting with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, President Trump openly defied a 9-0 Supreme Court decision that said that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident wrongly deported to El Salvador, must be returned to the United States. As The New York Times put it:
The meeting in the Oval Office on Monday was a blunt example of Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts. The president and his top White House officials said the decision over Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would have to be made by [El Salvador President] Mr. Bukele.
If this was not enough, President Trump went on to outline plans for sending American citizens convicted of crimes to El Salvador. More from The New York Times:
President Trump just said he was open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to President Bukele’s prison in El Salvador. Trump had a similar response when Bukele first offered to jail convicted American criminals in February.
“I’m all for it,” Trump said, adding that his attorney general was studying whether the idea was legally feasible. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” he said, adding: “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”
Another sign that we are in a constitutional crisis happened just outside the Oval Office on Monday. President Trump had barred The Associated Press from covering certain White House events because they had refused to use his preferred nomenclature for what the White House refers to as the “Gulf of America.” Last week, a federal judge ordered the White House to restore AP access to White House events. The federal judge who ruled in this case was Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee. In his decision, McFadden wrote that:
No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints… The Constitution requires no less.
On Monday, the White House blocked the AP reporter from attending the Oval Office press conference with President Trump and Bukele. Again, Trump failed to obey a court order.
Now, barring a reporter from the Oval Office may not seem to be a big deal. However, it is the government telling the media what it can report on. Plus, the courts ruled directly in the AP’s favor. The lines are clearly drawn here.
President Trump in the Oval Office on Monday openly defied decisions of the judicial branch. One was a 9-0 ruling of the Supreme Court and the other ruling was by a federal judge he appointed. As a nation, we are clearly in a constitutional crisis. This is not something theoretical or something that might happen sometime in the future. The crisis is at hand. The fabric of the American republic is being torn in two.
What we need is bold opposition from Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. If the current leadership is unwillingly to respond, they need to step aside. The first action that each of us can take to protect the American experiment is to stop pretending that Trump is a normal president.
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US President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on April 9, 2025. 9Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
“Is it a constitutional crisis yet?” asked one journalist.
Despite a federal court ruling last week, journalists with the Associated Press were blocked from reporting on several White House events on Monday, leading to fresh accusations that President Donald Trump is openly violating court orders as well as core constitutional protections, in this case freedom of speech and the press.
“Our journalists were blocked from the Oval Office today,” said Lauren Easton, an AP spokesperson, following a press event with Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. “We expect the White House to restore AP’s participation in the pool as of today, as provided in the injunction order.”
A pair of AP photographers were later allowed to attend an event on the South Lawn, but a print journalist was barred from entry.
According to the AP:
Last week’s federal court decision forbidding the Trump administration from punishing the AP for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico was to take effect Monday. The administration is appealing the decision and arguing with the news outlet over whether it needs to change anything until those appeals are exhausted.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit set a Thursday hearing on Trump’s request that any changes be delayed while case is reviewed. The AP is fighting for more access as soon as possible.
“Is it a constitutional crisis yet?” asked Missouri-based journalist Steve Lambson in response to the latest developments.
“More contemptuous behavior by this administration,” added attorney Bernadette Foley. “What will the courts do about it? What will GOP do?”
In the federal court ruling last week, the presiding judge wrote that access to presidential events “must be reasonable and not viewpoint-based,” though the White House has been clear the decision was a punitive response to editorial decisions by AP with which it disagreed.
“While the AP does not have a constitutional right to enter the Oval Office,” the judge said, “it does have a right to not be excluded because of its viewpoint. … All the AP wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field.”
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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 2025. (Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
The news outlet has been barred from presidential events for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico by the president’s chosen name, “the Gulf of America.”
Accusing the White House of a “targeted attack” on editorial independence that “strikes at the very core of the First Amendment,” The Associated Press on Friday filed a lawsuit against three Trump administration officials over its blocked access to all presidential events.
The administration announced earlier this month that AP reporters would not be permitted to cover press events at the White House, Mar-a-Lago, or on Air Force One due to its editorial decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico by the name that has been internationally recognized for more than 400 years.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January stating that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America. Trump has the authority to change a body of water’s name for official government purposes, and some bodies of water are called by different names in different countries—for example, the Gulf of California is known as the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.
The AP said it would acknowledge Trump’s chosen name for the body of water, but continue officially referring to it as the Gulf of Mexico.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government.”
As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said this month as she threatened to sue Google for changing the Gulf of Mexico’s names in its maps feature, the U.S. does not have sovereignty over the body of water, and Trump cannot unilaterally order other entities to call it by his chosen name.
The AP on Friday said in its lawsuit that “the press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government.”
The suit names White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who has said in briefings that it is “a fact” that the body of water off the western coast of Florida and the southern coasts of several other states is called the Gulf of America.
The news outlet called on the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to stop the White House from blocking its journalists from gathering news at presidential events.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
