Trump delivered another move in his plan to end democracy yesterday. As the New York Times has reported:
The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, the small, rotating group of reporters who relay the president's day-to-day activities to the public.
As they added:
The change breaks decades of precedent. It allows the White House to assert more control over which journalists can witness his activities up-close and ask him questions.
The move is much more sinister than that. The so-called 'fourth estate' that independent media represent is an informal but nonetheless crucial element within the structure of democracies, serving as a watchdog over the government and other powerful institutions by holding them to account for their actions. If Trump now wants to choose who holds him to account, guaranteeing, as a result, that only those friendly to his position have the opportunity to ask questions of him, he removes this accountability.
The next obvious question to ask is how long will it be in that case before those organisations deemed unacceptable to Trump are no longer allowed to publish or broadcast? It can only be a matter of time before that happens.
Trump's march towards full-on fascism is proceeding at pace. Despite that, the UK is still treating him as if he is an ally with whom we have a special relationship. Why? What kind of insanity does that represent when he is now very glaringly obviously our enemy and not our friend?
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The list of determinations that was published on Bluesky means Trump and his inner circle would have total control of everything governmental, including the law. He is using the threat to dissolve state autonomy as well. Mexico would love to re-adopt California on its secession, I suspect, as Canada would with Washington State!
The kicker is that not a single one of the press outlets who are allowed to participate will boycott or otherwise stick up for their fellow journalists
It sounds like they might.
I don’t think the UK has had an independent media for some time now.
I would not describe billionaire-owned as independent.
I would not describe right-wing managed broadcast media as independent either.
Badenoch wants to stop the license fee for the BBC as they showed a documentary which gave the Palestinian view of Gaza. The child who narrated has a father who is a civil servant in the Hamas administration and so the BBC must be condemned. She is indifferent to the 15,000 child deaths and probably more injured by the Israeli forces.
The ‘behind the scenes lobbies’ are equally dangerous to democracy.
@Ian Stevenson. It was the Israeli Ambassador to the UK, the ultra right Tzipi Hotovely, who made the most noise about the Gaza documentary, and when it was pulled, crowed that she had been responsible. She was backed by the Board of Deputies and numerous MPs. They chose to ignore the fact that any Minister in Gaza is/was employed by Hamas (the political element) because there was no other Government. Hotovely believes fervently that Israel must own Gaza and the West Bank. With each day that passes, her wish looks more likely to come true.
@Hannah
Thank you, Hannah. As the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, now at Exeter University, says, the name of the game is to de-humanise the colonised. But I don’t see why we have to indulge what is actually racism.
There are still some brave Jewish and Israeli people who resist that narrative. The Board of deputies don’t represent all Jews. The Reform and Liberal Jewish communities take a different view.
I recommend Pappe’s book Ten Myths about Israel but really any of his books is worth reading.
Jonathan Cook comments:
How strange that the deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament calls for the genocidal extermination of all Palestinian men in Gaza, and I can find no mention of it on the BBC or Guardian.
“Hebrew radio station Kol Barma quoted Israeli Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi as saying that all male Palestinian adults in the Gaza Strip need to be “eliminated,” adding that Israel is dealing with Gaza’s residents “in a way that is too tolerant,” and that “the residents of Gaza are not welcome anywhere, and everyone is pushing them toward Israel.”
“They (the Palestinians in Gaza) are outcasts, and no one in the world wants them. Children and women must be separated, and adults must be eliminated.”
These remarks follow a pattern of similar genocidal statements made by multiple Israeli officials.”
Staggering, and sickening, as well as predictable.
“Badenoch wants to stop the license fee for the BBC as they showed a documentary which gave the Palestinian view of Gaza.”
Classic neoliberalism. They want to privatise the BBC. The BBC’s total income from the licence fee in 2023 was £3.74bn, which would be much better in the pockets of another billionaire.
Agreed
The BBC should restore this programme to its website.
Yes indeed, the billionaire press is pretty obvious.
The broadcast media control is more subtle – and all the worse for that – ‘Manufacturing Consent’ as Chomsky’s book puts it. There still may be seemingly challenging and confrontational discussions and interviews – but only within narrow prescribed tramlines.
At various times BBC has admitted that govt is in touch on a daily basis – this is managed news.
And as we know, govt itself is captured directly and indirectly – by its ‘donors’ – bought and sold even before it gets elected.
We are apparently in a managed democracy , parliament being unrepresentative, with MPs controlled by the mafia-like whipping system, from the ruling party faction.
Can we get any sort of movement to begin a reset? A somewhat fanciful piece recently by Neal Lawson of Compass – suggesting a Bill to forbid politicians lying , may be one way.
Apparently German MPs swear an oath to vote with their conscience on behalf of their constituents and not to be influenced by anything else (whips etc).
His deal with Russia to buy steel, and no longer to buy it from Canada, is ominous. Why should he prefer to secure supplies from a despot? I think we will find out when it comes to the mid-term elections which I suspect may not be held
@John Macadam re the midterms, my suspicion is that when they are finished ferreting around in citizens’ data at the federal level the Muskovites will move on to the state level. Large numbers of people deemed by the Muskrat’s AI to be Democrat voters will mysteriously find they are no longer on the voter register. In which case the results of the mid term elections will be rather like those in Putinstan.
Yes, I think that is Plan A. Voter disqualification is a practiced art. My comment is that Trump has a safety net now for Plan Z
Four segments from Rachel Maddow worth watching this morning, Richard. No more than 21 minutes of anyone’s time and well worth that. Starting with ‘No idea what he’s doing’ and the last being ‘Anti Trump activists’.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
The segment ‘Rogue President’ is especially important as clearly getting rid of the Judge Advocates General (JAG) from all three sections of the military is to get people in who will not say it’s illegal when Trump and his cronies try to use the military against the civilian population when they try to demonstrate against Trump. I’ve said this before on your blog and I’ll say it again, but this is going to be crucial when Trump tries in some way or another to ‘suspend’ or otherwise stop the mid term elections in 2026.
Anyway, watch and learn.
Isn’t it amazing how much has been destroyed already? And this is only the start. Unchecked, it is hard to imagine just how much damage the felons and MAGA fundamentalists in the White House will do, on so many levels. Yet there must be large parts of the American Establishment, like this Air Force General, who can’t stand what is going on. Maybe they will at some point conclude that this coup requires a counter-coup. Crunch time may come when Hegseth orders the US military to some previously unthinkable act. It’s hard to imagine Trump and Vance allowing themselves to be constrained or turfed out by normal electoral processes.
Ivan
I saw this.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/msnbc-cuts-joy-reid-rachel-maddow-staff-b2705113.html
is she being muted?
Hard to tell…
I’ve no doubt that Trump will ensure he can run for – and be elected to – a third term. I’ve been watching Steve Bannon and his pronouncements, along with Russ Voight (sp?), the architect of Project 2025 and its classified Part 2.
More on that shortly….
This reeks of fear to me. Let us not forget that.
I’ve no doubt that the massive disenfranchisement already in place in the USA will continue to remove any potential Dem voters on the way to a one-party state led by King Trump. It is important to note that this is also the direction of travel in this country with the dilution of even the weak electoral commission. Labour is well-versed already in these arts, with their Anonyvoter system that seems to find staggering numbers of on-line votes to counter candidates with constituency wide support (viz Sam Tarry), prompting a local Labour worthy to say that the Tories were more democratic!
“Despite that, the UK is still treating him as if he is an ally with whom we have a special relationship. Why?”.
I saw an interview with Yanis Varoufakis where he claimed the system for controlling UK banking transactions is controlled by the USA.
This means the USA can effectively switch us off which may explain why he are forced to pretend to be friends because if we don’t they can destroy us.
Is this true? Maybe you can shed light on this?
I think that is pretty close to nonsense, although some parts of the payment clearance system are international in nature. But I think he overstates his case. Others might gave a view though.
Americans will be wise to keep an eye on their defamation laws. Trump won’t outright ban media outlets he doesn’t like but he probably will take a leaf out of the Singaporean Government playbook. Anyone who says anything unfavourable about PAP seems to get ruined by a defamation case, because PAP appoint the judges.
And who appoints the judges in the US?