Category: Uncategorized (Page 19 of 20)

While it does not surprise me that the war in Ukraine is marked by technological advances, as are most wars, it is interesting that the rapidity with which drone technology is advancing is engendering a technological battle between nations off of the physical battlefield. The “First World Drone War” is not limited to the material reality of drones hitting targets in Ukraine and the struggle to gain advantage over the skies, but has spread to how allied nations share the secrets of this technology with one another, such as Ukraine using it as a bargaining tool for U.S. aid. In a way, even if the war in Ukraine does not truly encompass the whole world (aside from the obvious direct and indirect global consequences), it is serving as a long, grueling lesson in modern warfare. Other countries are studying this new technology, preparing themselves, trying to learn from the warring nations. This raises questions which I wish the news pieces had been able to address more in depth: What kind of new technological regulation will accompany the new technology? And will AI powered drones be better or worse at civilian discrimination? Another layer I hadn’t thought about before reading the “First World Drone War” piece was that people now can get individual alerts for drone strikes, which may even include drone location in some cases. Is war and defense becoming more individualized as tech advance? 

The piece on civilian volunteers led me down a similar train of thought, especially in terms of the individual choice to stay at home rather than flee to bomb shelters, which is a very individual choice despite the very collective circumstance of the war. I was also intrigued by the paying of volunteer civilian drone killers and how that has innovated the defense system. Essentially, Ukraine is integrating a makeshift volunteer civilian defense group with a wage-based economic system, essentially transforming the work into a government job. In that case, what differentiates these civilians from members of the army, besides having other jobs that they continue on the side?

And, speaking of volunteers, the Faith Under Siege documentary gave me pause as to the benefit of foreign volunteers in war. It felt ironic to me that a film so vehemently against Russian Christian nationalism was so tinged with American Christian nationalism throughout. The film’s sole focus was on Russian forces shutting down Ukrainian churches and persecution against Christians in Ukraine, when we know that Ukrainians of all religious affiliations are persecuted by Russian forces. Labeling the war Russia’s “Holy War” against the West felt like an erasure, or at least an omission, of the other religious and non-religious communities that Russia has targeted during this war. To the film’s credit, it got some incredible access and the drone footage taken from the Wall Street Journal was particularly impressive, but I was left feeling like the film was by American Christian nationalists for American Christian nationalists, to encourage more to volunteer in Ukraine. And while that is an understandable goal, it also made me wary of trusting the film as a whole. 

On a disconnected note, the piece on the Unity Hub from the Kyiv Independent piqued my curiosity about how the war has affected local news in Ukraine and whether global journalists have been able to work with Ukrainian journalists and Ukraine’s pre-existing press to report on this war. This piece from a year ago helped answer some of those questions for me. 

Trump has relied on lawsuits and settlements to control the media and undermine journalistic freedom. He sued Meta and recently settled for $25 million. His lawsuit against ABC, which attacked the way host George Stephanapoulos described Trump’s assault of a writer, earned him $15 million. In July, Paramount settled with Trump for $16 million, resolving a suit against the company’s editing of a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris, which Trump claimed was biased. The money will help fund Trump’s presidential library. These and other lawsuits, threats, and bans–targeting CNN, the Associated Press, CBS, NBC, and ABC–reflect Trump’s efforts to control the media’s portrayal of him.

Not only has Trump used legal strategies to attack the media, but he has also ordered financial changes to comply with his preferences for journalistic coverage. In January, the FCC launched an investigation into NPR and PBS, two entities receiving government funding. This led to an executive order, released on May 2, 2025, to cease the CPB’s subsidization of these outlets. The order claimed that NPR and PBS, which should be independent, cover issues in an unfair way. For many journalists, it signaled a growing need to self-censor to survive.

The sources we read for class agree that Trump’s legal and financial actions against CBS, NPR, and other outlets are part of a broader campaign to control the press. Such a campaign could enable a dictatorial grip on the press, one that only allows the media to publish material consistent with the President’s wishes. In this context, the government would become, as lawyer Bob Corn-Revere says, “the media’s editor-in-chief.”

But to Trump, control of the press is a necessary measure to temper what he perceives as a clear bias in the media. Two narratives–one fearing censorship, the other, left-leaning bias–are at war.

This tension reflects divisions that, in many ways, the media landscape forged. Since cable news enabled viewers to watch a variety of live shows and rerun programs at any time of day, media consumption has continued to fracture. Fewer people consume the same media at the same time of day than ever before. Instead, we can search and view content–and even demand an algorithm to create it–whenever we want. As our media landscape splinters, our shared sense of reality suffers. My hope is that new models of media will revive an engagement with prime time, allowing us to consume the same content, at the same time. At the same time, policy must ensure that this content is fact-based and independent from government censorship.

If one quote conveys the cornerstone message across the readings, I think it can be found in the Just Security Article by Rebecca Hamilton where she references Viktor Orbán, the prime Minister of Hungary whom she describes as “autocratic”. The quote reads “Whoever controls a country’s media controls that country’s mindset and through that the country itself.” I highlighted this quote specifically because after first reading Edward Helmore’s piece in The Guardian, it echoed a statement I had heard in another context. After going through reading by reading, a quote by Jim Morrison that was recently featured in Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour came to mind. The quote reads “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.” 

 The similarities between Morrison’s words, who is a poet and a singer, and then Orban, a politician, emphasize that media control extends beyond simply the end goal of manipulating public opinion. Rather, it raises additional questions about how this manipulation is achieved: through the framing of information, the access certain outlets are granted, and others aren’t, and the channels by which consumers encounter it, whether through social media, television, or personal networks.

 President Trump is a contemporary example of this dynamic. Through both of his administrations Trump has tried to gain support from groups his policies often hurt the most and talks down upon including immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ individuals and more. Yet his approach is effective as he was re-elected to the office the country voted him out of nearly five years ago and made inroads with some of the very groups he targeted in his first presidential campaign and administration.

 While President Trump tends to be more transparent and blunter than his predecessors through his use of Twitter and Truth Social and has “expanded” press access to nontraditional media outlets in the name of expanding freedom of speech, particularly in his second administration, his approach is more selective. By dismissing legacy media as “fake news” because they hold him and his administration accountable through threats of legal persecution and restricting press credentials, Trump has instead created a different media ecosystem. An ecosystem that resembles celebrities who tip off paparazzi to generate favorable coverage, making him and his administration look open and accessible while being calculated behind closed doors. 

 This ecosystem of manipulation is designed to counter dominant narratives that cast him in an unfavorable light, helping keep his supporters under his spell so they remain loyal, while drawing in new ones. This strategy fuels disinformation and echo chambers, but its influence now extends beyond voters to corporations. 

 As Omarosa Manigault Newman once predicted 2016, there may come a day when Trump’s detractors must “bow down” to him, a warning increasingly reflected as more companies fall in line. At his inauguration, tech leaders like Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Shou Zi Chew attended, signaling cooperation in exchange for what looked like a “get out of jail free card.” 

 With recent settlements from ABC, and deals like Paramount’s $8 billion Skydance merger on the line, Trump is attempting to prove that he can orchestrate both the fourth estate and government to control the country’s mindset and through that the country itself.

The phenomenon of the breakdown of shared facts—and indeed shared reality—in the American polity calls to my mind Hannah Arendt’s writings on truth in politics. Arendt writes that factual truth is so dangerous to tyrants because it has a kind of coercive power that prevents them from obtaining a monopoly on power in a given community: the existence of a factual truth arises outside of the political realm and is not based on political consensus, thus generating an independent sphere of influence that the tyrant cannot erode. Responding to this “stubbornness” of truth, despots seek to transform what is a fact into a kind of opinion–and thereby to muddy the distinction between what actually happened and what ought to have happened. They can do this because facts are no more “self-evident” than competing opinions about them: there is no intrinsic logic that can explain them as if they were, say, a mathematical equation. This is where the tellers of lies possess an advantage over the tellers of truth: once the former group renders truth into merely an opinion, they can create an alternative set of opinions (“alternative facts,” if you will) that can appeal much more strongly to their desired political community than actual factual truth. 

I don’t think the Trump administration has read much Arendt, but it’s clear from the readings this week that they’re taking advantage of the media ecosystem that has become more fragmented than ever over the past couple of decades. As Hughes writes, the “idea of shared facts” has been dissolved, and “it is much harder to have anything like a single national conversation about an issue. We are having all of these separate conversations in separate formats on separate platforms, sometimes talking past each other, often not even hearing each other.” Losing a shared set of facts means that we are left with entirely separate and polarized conversations that do not feel particularly obliged to base their opinions on reality. Indeed, Hughes points out that there still is some level of reporting going on by mainstream outlets, but then an “army of podcasters and content creators and YouTubers and TikTok influencers” takes that news and tries to integrate it into the opinions that they have been empowered to disseminate. Although Hughes seems to imply that it is a good thing that reporting can get disseminated to the public by being “mediated through many other people distributing their insights,” it still means that someone can shop around for the set of facts to which they wish to be exposed, and dismissing facts disseminated on other platforms as mere opinion. 

Trump and his administration seem to have attenuated this dynamic. I was struck by the audacity of his actions against traditional news outlets—particularly his baseless lawsuit against 60 Minutes. Despite Helmore pointing out that he lacked “any serious evidence” of bias in the show, he still went ahead with the lawsuit: the lack of grounding for his case didn’t matter, because the opinion–and story–he could create to demonize the show could be more convincing to his base than reality itself. Perhaps in a court of law his lack of factual basis would be a liability, but he could take advantage of the fact that his fight was in the political realm–which, as Arendt points out, relies on common consensus into which the coercion of stubborn, factual truth intrudes–to exact the concessions he sought. In this case study, we see Arendt’s warning come through: “the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.” It didn’t matter to Trump’s base whether or not his attacks were informed by evidence. Perhaps those attacks could create their own “evidence”: why would the president attack a news outlet unless he knew it was guilty? But perhaps they didn’t care one way or the other about Trump’s evidence: they just wanted the result he sought.

What struck me most throughout these readings is the confluence of multiple forms of power working against the media, both from within and without. As Gibbs points out in her analysis of Musk’s earlier role in the Trump administration, “he is the richest man in the world and owns a major media platform. We have not seen that convergence of power, influence, and levers before.” For-profit media outlets owned by multi-billionaires is a marriage of financial, attention/media, and often political power that, as others have already pointed out, presents journalism with an unprecedented challenge. Coupled with other forms of power, like technological power or the power over particular platforms (like X and BlueSky), certain media outlets are forming information empires which play into the hands of the very seats of power they are meant to be checking and holding accountable.

At the same time as power is concentrated among the few, access is dispersed among the many, across a multitude of platforms, filtered extensively through non-professional voices (i.e. friends and family, as Gibbs says), more than ever before. It can be difficult to follow how various stories and events are connected when they are dispersed in such small, short-form quantities. This filtration leads to people being less “riveted” by journalism than they once were, less moved to act or shape their views according to what they are reading in the news. At the same time, media platforms without political, financial, and technological ties to the Trump administration (those which seem to be destroying themselves from within), are either being attacked by the Trump administration via lawsuits or are preemptively capitulating. Whether the lawsuits have merit, as Alison Durkee explains, seems to bear little influence over how it plays out. The attention grabber is the lawsuit itself, and the power that the Trump administration wields over journalists through the law. In an attention economy which leads people to stop absorbing information at the headline or soundbite, the content holds less import than its packaging, and that packaging can do little to reflect the nuance of any given story — or so some of these pieces suggest.

I also appreciated Rebecca Hamilton’s point that the Trump administration does not need to sue every “disobedient” outlet to make a point. Rather, as the administration is doing with universities and colleges, it can make an example out of a few to influence the actions of the many. At the same time, like Miriam, I would push back against the notion that the Trump administration as a whole is winning against the media. I was very compelled by Gibbs’ points about the importance of explanatory journalism during uncertain times, in which understanding systems of power and how they intertwine is more crucial than ever. It almost makes the act of investigation simpler: rather than uncovering information, we need only explain it and leverage the power of storytelling and good writers to do so.

I was left with the questions: How can we adapt to make our journalism more riveting? And is good writing, or skilled manipulation of any medium of expression for that matter, enough to do it? I’m also wondering how professional journalists themselves are experiencing these attacks, and whether it is leading to any form of journalistic nihilism within media communities. Do journalists still believe in their own ability to win public trust? Is public trust still attainable?

This week’s readings trace the steps the Trump Administration has taken to tighten its grip on the press. Many of them reported resistance attempts from more enduring outlets and political veterans. However, to me, what was most striking was what was not reported: the public’s reaction. Or rather, the lack of one.

As Rebecca Hamilton points out, “in a democracy, the public serves as the ultimate check on State power.” Yet, today, that check seems absent. No large-scale demonstrations, no widespread outrage on social media. The Trump administration’s efforts to control information are not shocking in themselves. Silencing unfavourable coverage is a perennial temptation for those in power. The striking fact is that the administration can get away with it. The issue is not only their will, but the collective silence of the most.

Hamilton warns that censorship need not take the form of government bans. Instead, she calls attention to the emergence of what she calls “self-censorship.” The examples are telling: the WP suppressing a critical cartoon, the LA Times altering a submission about a controversial appointee. Such choices arise less from explicit White House orders than from a climate of anticipated punishment. Flimsy lawsuits against CBS, ABC, and Meta serve as warnings. As Hamilton notes: “Risk crossing Trump at your peril.”

What makes this dynamic more troubling is how official actions reframe the very role of journalism. The May 2025 executive order ending federal support for NPR and PBS insisted that “no media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies” and characterized these institutions as “biased.” The order does not outlaw reporting. Instead, it shifts the logic: independence becomes partisanship, survival tied to profitability or government-approved neutrality. The press is recast as a market commodity.

And yet—where is the public? Under ordinary circumstances, such executive overreach might spark protests, letters, campaigns. Instead, the broader population seems disengaged. Gibbs offers a sobering explanation: mainstream journalism is no longer the central shaper of public opinion. Most people consume information through fragmented channels—friends, family, influencers—that lack the expertise and impartiality to build a comprehensive picture. When news travels primarily through these fractured networks, attacks on press independence register as just another headline in the feed, quickly absorbed and quickly forgotten.

This fragmentation helps explain why even dramatic events, such as CBS paying millions to settle Trump’s lawsuit and canceling Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, have been absorbed by audiences as corporate maneuvering rather than democratic backsliding. The missing outrage stems not just from apathy but from an ecosystem conditioning citizens to see journalism as entertainment—consumable, and eventually discardable.

Together, these developments suggest that the crisis of press freedom is not only about state power but about public disengagement. The Trump Administration exploits legal loopholes and corporate vulnerabilities, but it succeeds most fully because the public no longer treats journalism as essential to democracy. Freedom erodes not only through censorship but through indifference, when the press becomes just another product on the shelf and citizens no longer feel compelled to defend it.

The readings this week made clear that a fight over the truth has been raging in the United States on multiple fronts, including social media and the court system. When analyzed together, the readings present a clear and startling message: discourse in the United States has been impacted by President Donald Trump’s efforts to extinguish political opposition. As the articles point out, this effort by Trump allows for the emergence of concentrated influence, coercive legal and political tactics, and even extreme fragmentation amongst the general public.

The Guardian’s article on President Trump’s war against the media, for example, helps demonstrate the impact of financial threats. President Trump is not only winning lawsuits and copious amounts of cash. Ultimately, his lawsuits are a warning for any other organization that dares to challenge him. When a figure with as much influence as the President of the United States successfully sues any news organization, other organizations are likely to also be intimidated. The financial drain on these organizations is an obvious threat, but it’s important to acknowledge that these successful lawsuits undermine public trust in the media as well.

The Harvard Kennedy School article also highlighted another facet of the problem: audiences are often getting information from those closest to them. This imposes a financial hardship on news organizations and increases the likelihood that unreliable sources “contaminate information streams.” Shared facts suddenly become nonexistent in this environment, and fragmentation allows the general public to live in separate realities. Ultimately, this makes me wonder if audiences should be responsible for seeking out diverse, reliable information, or if that responsibility should fall squarely on the journalist? Likewise, if the media has changed, as Gibbs states, is journalism really failing at all, or is the industry just dealing with changes they have no control over?

Hamilton’s Just Security article builds on this by pointing out that the trends and changes highlighted in these articles do not occur in isolation; rather, they are deliberate actions that aim to harm the free press. When reported independently, the full thrust of the problem is not outlined effectively for audiences within a media landscape that is dominated by quick bursts of information. This is why the lead is so important. As John McPhee points out in his book, the lead is like a promise of what’s to come. In a saturated media environment and a world of competing truths, it is important that the media works to explain developments completely, effectively, and early on in the article.

Finally, the Forbes article also stood out because it helped outline the corruption that can take place in these situations. If media organizations can broker “deals” with the President, then what sort of independence can these organizations ever have? The White House executive order that targets both the NPR and PBS helps shed further light on this issue. By weaponizing government funding, even the few organizations not driven by profit—and therefore also less vulnerable to Trump’s financial threats—end up being harmed.

Overall, these articles highlighted the gravity of the problem journalists and the public face. But above all, these struggles highlight why journalism is so important because despite these changes, many journalists have continued to be extremely effective in disseminating important information.

The readings for this week paint a very grim picture of the current state of our journalistic freedoms at this moment in time. The thought that a government can act as the media’s de facto editor-in-chief is a problem for the future of journalism and the democratic status of our country. At the core of this issue as stated in the articles, I believe, is that “shared facts,” truths universally believed by citizens, are being deteriorated. The rhetoric from Trump describes half of our society as puppets, doomed to the evil matrix created by mainstream media, while his followers are fighting this corrupt “wokeism.” 

The division in beliefs is therefore being further polarized by Trump’s attacks on media organizations. Many of our readings addressed Trump’s actions against PBS and NPR, highlighting the unprecedented power the President is using to control and censor journalism. The articles addressed the far-reaching impacts of these types of federal action, affecting news organizations across the country. While self-censorship is undoubtedly a major issue at play, I also believe that a subconscious type of individual censorship could become a problem. In news organizations controlled by the billionaires and Trumpies, reporters could be dissuaded from covering topics they believe will not be published or will not accurately reflect their views. I see this as a major concern, as reporters and organizations run the risk of tolerating this journalistically limiting trickle down. 

Another interesting aspect of Trump’s actions is the phrasing of his justification. In the official statement released by the White House regarding the government funding for news organizations, “bias” is the sole reason stated for the cuts. If a political spectrum truly does exist, how could we as a society possibly determine an unbiased viewpoint on any issue? Is the middle most belief the most unbiased? I find this reasoning entirely unacceptable, as the administration does not attempt to explain what unbiased reporting is, and their actions merely indicate that journalism supporting the President will be supported. 

Lastly, I do think the issue of publishing information about immigration raids is an interesting topic, as I can see a real debate with valid arguments on both sides of the issue. As a writer for the Daily Princetonian, I would be hesitant to write an article breaking the news that our star quarterback has a secret knee injury hours before a game. My organization is not beholden to the University in any way, yet I still have a vested interest in Princeton. Regardless of reporters’ individual beliefs on the raids, we still have a vested interest in democracy and allowing its continuation. This issue becomes more complicated when the realities of the situation in our country are factored into the situation, such as the mishaps with wrongful deportations. At the core, though, I would argue that allowing other situations to cause a change in reporting standards is signaling that the country’s democracy has deteriorated. 

I chose an article from Fox News for my additional piece to discuss the differences in shared facts: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/bozell-graham-trump-successfully-defunds-npr-pbs-getting-started

Each of the articles from this week depicts methods through which Donald Trump and his administration have used political slippery slopes to prosecute or pressure their dissidents. Many of these articles specify that this pressure is achieved through indirect methods, but is nonetheless an insidious attack on press freedom: through forcing all journalists to use a Trump-supporting billionaire crony’s social media platform to obtain their information, or defunding public channels of information under the guise of creating more ‘unbiased media’, for example. As Hamilton puts it in the Just Security article, “none of these decisions reflect government censorship, but direct censorship is not the only way to undermine a free press. Instead, creating an environment in which news media start to self-censor in deference to the views of those with State power is a less costly way to achieve the same outcome.”

One thing that piqued my interest was the concept of ‘explanatory journalism’ that Hughes referred to in her article for the Harvard Kennedy School, where she mentions that “investigative reporting is often about accountability and therefore often focuses on failure” while ‘explanatory journalism’, on the other hand, “is looking at where we are and how things work.” She proposes explanatory journalism as a kind of solution to the stark ideological divide that the nation faces, as the increasing scarcity of ‘shared facts’ makes collective national discourse on contentious topics difficult.

I was skeptical of this idea for two reasons: one, because Trump already has a history of litigating against journalists for what many would already consider ‘explanatory’ (like when he sued 60 Minutes for Harris’ edited interview), and two, because I think that it does little to provide journalists working for the public interest with any additional self-agency. When even the explanatory is construed as political, I’m unsure if altering the font through which journalism is delivered would do much to empower a free press (and I am also convinced that it would prove somewhat beneficial to Trump and his administration, benefitting from a media landscape shifted towards explanatory neutrality.)

This skepticism tied well to my second point of interest: the fact that Trump, as Nancy Gibbs puts it in the HKS article, has a distinctly “uncanny understanding about attention, how to capture it, hold it, divert it.” Gibbs’ words reminded me of a book I read last semester for a History class that was dedicated entirely to the history of attention: The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu, a book that explored the history of the advertising industry and its distinctive commodification of the human experience previously deemed outside the realm of profit. Wu argues that this signals a kind of moral crisis that’s a direct byproduct of late-stage capitalism.

Trump has, I think, a very strong understanding of how this commodification can benefit him and hurt his opponents. There’s much to say about the president’s ability to commodify, for example, the field of journalism itself. The White House executive order makes a direct reference to this: “Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options,” it reads. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.” Journalism, a field historically dedicated to informing the public with public interest at the heart of its philosophy, remains a viable entity according to the federal government, despite being privatized. Access to free and unbiased media, then, is becoming increasingly and forcibly compatible with private benefit; Trump has effectively put a price tag on journalistic freedom.

This week’s readings focus on government attempts to discredit media outlets that print information the Trump Administration disagrees with or does not want propagated. These efforts are taking the form of legal action against media conglomerates, attempts to limit citizen access to government information, and even intimidation of reporters. Several of this week’s sources emphasize press freedom as a litmus test for democracy, as a free and independent press often reflects the health and functionality of a democratic system. Attempts to limit and undermine press freedom, therefore, trigger concerns regarding the state of democracy in the U.S.

One aspect of media censorship that I had not given as much thought to previously was internal censorship of media outlets fearing political retaliation from the Trump Administration. Examples of this type of censorship include the Washington Post removing cartoons that depict President Trump unflatteringly prior to publication and the L.A. Times altering a reporter’s view on a Trump appointee. These outlets have begun to censor their own staff out of fear that contrasting or criticizing government positions will negatively impact the financial capabilities and reporting potential of their papers or sites. 

This fear is founded. The Trump Administration has advanced lawsuits with questionable legal bases against Meta, ABC, CBS, and the Des Moines Register. Meta, ABC, and CBS have all settled their suits, while the Des Moines Register continues their legal battle. Additionally, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reinstated previously dismissed complaints against CBS, NBC, and ABC regarding Trump’s claims of unfair pre-election coverage, as well as launching investigations into the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). These punitive measures form a hostile and fearful media environment that can lead to the self-censorship witnessed in media outlets. 

Conversely, platforms that align themselves with the Trump administration have received favorable treatment, including increased time in the Oval Office and superior reporting opportunities. The Department of Defense removed the NBC News, Politico, New York Times, and NPR offices from the Pentagon, replacing them with pro-Trump outlets outside the mainstream. These fringe media sites are more likely to propagate false or misleading information, including the claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. In doing so, they contribute to a widespread fragmentation of shared facts and erode the idea of a common truth that supersedes partisan politics. Individuals who receive news from different platforms may be exposed to opposing sets of information, effectively enabling people to live in separate realities. What does ‘truth’ mean in a world in which media outlets promoted by the White House can write anything and declare it factual? As media outlets settle cases they know lack legal standing in order to appease the President’s false narrative, have we moved past an objective truth that is provided to citizens through the news? Furthermore, when we lose the media as a watchdog for accuracy and accountability, have we entered a world in which the truth itself loses all meaning? Where do consumers of media, as well as media platforms themselves, go from here with three years remaining in the Trump Administration and attacks against media seeming to continue relentlessly, if not intensify?