On the Media

This is basically my argument in my new @wired.com essay — we haven’t even finished dealing with the downstream consequences of the LAST upheaval in Iran: www.wired.com/story/5-big-...

It appears a hospital in Teheran has now been hit.

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

Polymarket defends its decision to allow betting on war as ‘invaluable’ Everything is gambling now, even human suffering.

Polymarket defends its decision to allow betting on war as ‘invaluable’

On the Media The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.

Filmmaker Craig Renaud on his Oscar-nominated short, “Armed Only with a Camera,” a tribute to his brother, the first American journalist killed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine: lnk.to/onthemedia/b...

On the Media The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.

“Media capture,” is a phrase scholars have been using to describe the phenomena of public interests losing possession of the press to political and corporate players. @victorpickard.bsky.social on why the American system was set up to be snatched away from the start lnk.to/onthemedia/b...

The Man With a Plan to Reshape Broadcast TV | On the Media | WNYC Studios Late night host Stephen Colbert has accused CBS of spiking an interview for fear of backlash from the Federal Communications Commission. On this week’s On the Media, hear about the MA...

Listen to the full conversation here: www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...

Donald Trump’s FCC has been coming after the broadcast networks for their so-called political biases. @brookegladstone.bsky.social spoke with the conservative lawyer behind it all.

You Burned the City Just before the US entered World War II, CBS held a dinner for Edward R. Murrow. It's more important than ever to read the words spoken that night: a testimony to the power of witnessing.

"You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames that burned it. You laid the dead of London at our doors and we knew the dead were our dead — were all men’s dead — were mankind’s dead — and ours." Archibald MacLeish, Dec. 2, 1941. continuous-wave.beehiiv.com/p/you-burned...

Hell Gate We are a subscriber-funded, worker-owned news outlet about New York City, named for the city's sturdiest (and handsomest) bridge over its most treacherous currents.

Just about 24 hours are left in our Hell Gate "Welcome to Fear City" T-shirt sale! Grab an annual Believer subscription for 25% off the usual price, get a slick tee. Don't wait! hellgatenyc.com/hell-gate-t-...

X Is Drowning in Disinformation Following US and Israel’s Attack on Iran WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.

NEW: X Is *drowning* in disinformation following US and Israel’s attack on Iran. WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.

read @davidgilbert.bsky.social:

Why Apple’s move to video could endanger podcasting's greatest power - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Apple is adding video support to its podcasting apps — that’s great. But the way it’s doing so might jeopardize the openness that’s kept podcasting from getting enshittified like every other form of media. It’s not too late for them to fix this. anildash.com/2026/02/28/a...

On the Media The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.

“The headline finding is this was another record year for journalist killings after the record that we saw in 2024. 129 killed worldwide which is more than any year since CPJ began collecting data back in 1992.” - CPJ CEO @jodieginsberg.bsky.social lnk.to/onthemedia/b...

On the Media The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.

“I think by now it's time to put to rest this notion of a benevolent billionaire. We should not invest so much power into one individual over our media system and over our democratic society.” - @victorpickard.bsky.social lnk.to/onthemedia/b...

Interesting detail - Fox & Friends is hosted by the regular weekday hosts this morning not the weekend cast. How would Fox News have enough time to ask the regular cast to come in? The show starts at 6AM but they are usually there hours earlier.

A new report found 129 journalists were killed in 2025, the deadliest year since the Committee to Protect Journalists began collecting these data in 1992. Israel was responsible for 2/3. I spoke with CPJ's CEO Jodie Ginsberg on the latest @onthemedia.bsky.social: www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...

You need to listen to this.

📻 Tune into this week’s show, featuring: @victorpickard.bsky.social, Miriam Berger, @jodieginsberg.bsky.social, & Craig Renaud: lnk.to/onthemedia/b...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directs the DOD to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, barring military contractors from doing business with the company (@secwar)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

HulkSmash.gif

It’s season one and we don’t do that story specifically but there are other such cases. Check it out and let us know what you think x

WNYC's @onthemedia.bsky.social has an excellent series about this: The Divided Dial!

What a cartoonishly dumb and frightening moment we find ourselves in

The Century-Long Capture of U.S. Media | On the Media | WNYC Studios As media empires, from The Washington Post to CBS News, continue to be dealt significant blows, uncertainties abound about the remaining strength of a once robust American press lands...

From @onthemedia.bsky.social A rocking interview about media capture from mid-19th century to now. Clear, detailed, with helpful comparison to systems other than ours. Can't say enough about it. With @victorpickard.bsky.social, a brilliantly accessible expert.

www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...

The Century-Long Capture of U.S. Media | On the Media | WNYC Studios As media empires, from The Washington Post to CBS News, continue to be dealt significant blows, uncertainties abound about the remaining strength of a once robust American press lands...

I highly recommend listing to this @onthemedia.bsky.social podcast about media capture. There's some terrific history in there about how we got to this point. 🗃️https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/the-centurylong-capture-of-us-media

DOGE cost the federal government 4 million years of institutional knowledge. These graphs tell the story. - The Boston Globe Amid Trump’s bureaucracy-slashing directives, the federal workforce shrunk by about 220,000 people in 2025.

“We don’t have a government that’s properly staffed,” she said. “All of these things [federal workers do] are really part of making life a little fairer, a little safer for the public. We’ve lost that.”

www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/26/n...

The Century-Long Capture of U.S. Media | On the Media | WNYC Studios As media empires, from The Washington Post to CBS News, continue to be dealt significant blows, uncertainties abound about the remaining strength of a once robust American press lands...

Journalism is a public good and "shouldn't be left up to the mercy of ... market logics."

More in @onthemedia.bsky.social:

The Century-Long Capture of U.S. Media | On the Media | WNYC Studios As media empires, from The Washington Post to CBS News, continue to be dealt significant blows, uncertainties abound about the remaining strength of a once robust American press lands...

"It's time to put to rest the idea of a benevolent billionaire." @victorpickard.bsky.social @onthemedia.bsky.social @micahloewinger.bsky.social

Pentagon Threatens Retaliation If Anthropic Bars Use of AI for Mass Surveillance Anthropic’s CEO has expressed concerns about the use of AI for autonomous drones and surveillance.

The Pentagon is threatening to blacklist Anthropic and even invoke the Defense Production Act if the company refuses to drop guardrails that ban its AI from enabling mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, despite the CEO’s warnings about those uses.

Kalshi reveals insider trading case against editor for MrBeast With prediction markets booming, so have concerns about insider trading. Now, Kalshi has disclosed its first public actions against accounts suspected of trading on confidential information.

"It's the first time the company has publicly revealed the results of an investigation into market manipulation on the popular app.

The MrBeast employee, who Kalshi identified as Artem Kaptur, traded around $4,000 on markets related to the streamer, the company said."

The Century-Long Capture of U.S. Media | On the Media | WNYC Studios As media empires, from The Washington Post to CBS News, continue to be dealt significant blows, uncertainties abound about the remaining strength of a once robust American press lands...

I really enjoyed speaking with @micahloewinger.bsky.social for @onthemedia.bsky.social about the long history of U.S. media capture. www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...