The Center Square

The timing aligns conveniently with predictable fundraising narratives about federal funding threats in the philanthropic playbook for 2025: Blame everything that is wrong with my street, my city, my county, my state, my country and my world on the federal government, President Trump’s administration, and their policy plans.

Not sure this is a hot take or that I intend it to be, but, right now, it’s really easy to make difficult decisions more palatable to 50% of the general public if you blame the Trump administration for everything that’s wrong. And, in this case, it probably will be effective in improving local giving. Because not too many people actually take the time to read a 990 filing document and far fewer have ever heard of one.

I, however, did look into the numbers.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting stares at a $1.1 billion hole in federal funding, and that trickles down to local markets. As I am sure you have seen or heard for yourself if you’ve watched more than 10 minutes of your local Public Broadcasting System station or made it to a station break on your local National Public Radio operation, the desperate pleas to raise money locally are among their demands.

Meanwhile, the national players at the table – Corporation of Public Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting System, and National Public Radio – are fighting among themselves in the courts over a $57.9 million grant for satellite systems.

What gets lost in the entire discussion of public media is simply how much money there is washing through the 1,500 PBS and NPR stations.

In straight CPA terminology: There is a ton. It’s an industry measured in billions of dollars.

Roll it all up, and CPB, PBS, and NPR and the rest of public media had pulled in somewhere in the ballpark of $4.5 billion last year from all sources before the federal government determined that it wasn’t interested in participating further.

A review of Cascade PBS’s financials suggests cutting Crosscut was a choice rather than a necessity.

Cascade PBS’s Form 990 filings and audited consolidated financial statements for fiscal years ending June 30, 2022, 2023, and 2024 indicate steady growth in net assets and stable liquidity. Data is drawn directly from those 990 summaries, organization-published 990s, and independent audits.

For Fiscal Year 2024, total support and revenue for Cascade PBS was more than $46 million ($46,368,144), primarily from contributions, grants, and memberships. Total expenses were $31 million ($31,054,080), and focused on program services (approximately 68%).

This resulted in a change in net assets of $15+ million. Year-end cash and cash equivalents stood at $10,035,580, with total assets of $120,271,097 and liabilities of $24,502,315, yielding net assets of $95,768,782 ($68,180,269 unrestricted, $27,588,513 restricted).

Forgive the dense math lesson, but for those of you not familiar with reading the 990s of media companies: this is a better financial situation than most others.

Liquidity remains adequate, with reserves covering six months of operating expenses and $21,547,054 in financial assets available within one year.

Trending over three years shows the following:

Cash and cash equivalents: $10,845,616 (2022), $13,152,368 (2023), $10,035,580 (2024)—a peak in 2023 followed by a modest decline.
Total assets: $89,280,718 (2022), $106,113,292 (2023), $120,271,097 (2024).
Total liabilities: $22,947,876 (2022), $25,413,402 (2023), $24,502,315 (2024).
Net assets: $66,332,842 (2022), $80,699,890 (2023), $95,768,782 (2024).
Revenue: $33,514,267 (2022), $41,898,090 (2023), $46,368,144 (2024).
Expenses: $25,051,323 (2022), $27,390,728 (2023), $31,054,080 (2024).
Change in net assets: $8,462,944 (2022), $14,367,048 (2023), $15,068,892 (2024).

The organization maintains a $2 million line of credit for potential needs. Reserves ranged from three to six months across years. Contributions drive revenue (80–87%), with expenses weighted toward programs and salaries.

The numbers are instructive. Cascade PBS operated on a $42 million annual budget in 2024 and achieved an $11 million revenue surplus. The federal cut represents 8.3% of total budget—significant, but hardly catastrophic for an organization with a 26% revenue surplus.

Private data is not available for corporations, but running news operations for media companies over the span of 20+ years, I would bet dollars to donuts that no other Seattle-based news-media operation ran at a 26% margin in 2024. Those kinds of numbers in local commercial media are as dead as the Dodo bird.

Executive Compensation vs. News Operations

According to Cascade PBS’s fiscal year 2024 IRS filing, the nine-member executive team collectively earned more than $2.2 million. Management announced no executive pay cuts would accompany the newsroom elimination.

Crosscut was composed of 19 positions, 16 filled. Using the recently negotiated union minimum of $70,000 annually, the entire newsroom payroll approximated $1.33 million— or a little more than half of executive compensation.

Simple arithmetic: A 20% reduction in executive compensation would have saved $440,000. Combined with the “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in crisis donations received after the federal funding announcement, if Cascade PBS actually wanted to keep Crosscut, it could have.

Timing matters in business decisions. Cascade PBS eliminated the newsroom months after staff finalized their first union contract, securing $67,000 starting salaries and $70,000 minimums for all members.

Revenue Realities

The federal loss of $3.5 million is real. So is the operating surplus. So are the crisis donations that poured in when the public learned of the existential threat to local journalism – and democracy.

Consider the operational efficiency question: How does a public media organization with a 26% revenue surplus determine that an 8.3% budget reduction necessitates eliminating an entire division? Private sector media companies routinely operate on margins below 10%. Cascade PBS’s margin exceeds most Fortune 500 companies.

Within that lies the real problem with what’s been happening with public media companies. Like universities sitting on massive endowments that are conveniently tucked away from public eyes and earning massive amounts of interest through strategic investment, there really is no crisis at many public media organizations.

Sure, as Axios reported last month, in smaller public media markets – not only in Washington state, but across the country – there are real issues facing this segment of the media. But there are also local management structures that incur expenses that do not pay for themselves and require subsidy and were designed as such.

There are also organizations such as The Center Square that have reached out to help. In fact, representatives from The Center Square communicated with every single at-risk public radio station in the nation and we have pledged our help in providing the news their markets need to continue to function against the cuts, without any additional expenses to these local stations.

The Replacement Strategy

Rather than across-the-board cuts or fundraising initiatives, Cascade PBS pivoted to video production. The organization will expand existing video series and add three new positions elsewhere while eliminating 19 in news. This isn’t retrenchment—it’s reallocation.

The business logic appears straightforward: Video content aligns with traditional PBS broadcasting. Written journalism, well, it doesn’t fit the model.

The federal cut provided cover for a strategic shift that may have been contemplated regardless, but that again was not part of the contextual disclosure for shuttering the operation at the end of this month.

Comparative Context

Something also to consider, and this is where apples-to-apples comparisons are valuable. Commercial newsrooms operate on far (far, far, far…) tighter margins. I talk to these men and women daily as part of the news service my company provides. A typical metro daily newspaper runs on a single-digit margin, if they have any margin at all. Local-market radio stations in competitive metropolitan markets typically have margins in the teens. Digital news startups often operate at losses for years. Yet Cascade PBS declared written journalism unsustainable after an 8.3% budget impact.

The Center Square operates nationally, publishing an average of 63-plus original stories daily, with zero federal funding. So it can be done. Nonprofit news organizations nationwide demonstrate that written journalism can be sustained through diverse revenue streams when leadership prioritizes it.

Bottom Line

Did Cascade PBS have to kill Crosscut? The financial evidence says no. Alternatives existed.

The decision reflects priorities, not necessities. Cascade PBS prioritized executive retention over newsroom preservation, video content over written investigations, and management preferences over union negotiations.

That’s not a financial crisis. That’s a business decision. And they are perfectly reasonable business decisions.

The question isn’t whether Cascade PBS could afford Crosscut. The numbers prove it could.

The question is why it chose to close.

Perhaps in light of losing federal subsidies, Cascade PBS determined Crosscut to not be all that valuable in the marketplace of ideas.

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The Path Back to Trust: How Government Accountability Journalism Respects Rather Than Lectures Its Audience

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 20:07:24 GMT

Source: Gallup

In an era when trust in news media has plummeted to historic lows, The Center Square’s six-year growth to 1,360 outlet partners across the United States offers a counterintuitive lesson: Journalism flourishes not when it tells people what to think about their government, but when it simply shows them what government is doing with their money and allows them to draw their own conclusions about those spending priorities.

Free Press Columnist Briar Dudley at the Seattle Times recently wrote about the debate over whether journalists should avoid the word “democracy” to prevent triggering partisan fatigue.

His headline captured his personal dilemma perfectly: “Save the press but don’t say ‘democracy’.” While Dudley defends the continued use of the term, his piece inadvertently highlights why so many Americans have tuned out: Metropolitan news organizations like the Seattle Times have thrown the word “democracy” around so frequently and unnecessarily that they’ve become the boys and girls who cried wolf. They’ve stripped the meaning away from the word until it has little impact beyond signaling which tribe the writer belongs to.

Here’s an inconvenient fact that might shock newsrooms who invoke “democracy” (looking straight at you, Washington Post) like a religious incantation: the word doesn’t appear in any of America’s founding documents.

Not in the Declaration of Independence. Not in the Constitution. The founders deliberately created a constitutional republic, with checks and balances and representative government, specifically because they feared the mob rule of pure democracy. Yet modern journalists invoke “democracy” constantly, as if repetition could make their political preferences sacred.

In fact, Democracy probably does die in darkness. But it’s buried deeper when you bastardize the word “democracy” day after day after day after day. Media need only look in the mirror to see the ones pulling the cord on the lamp.

The Respect Principle

The Seattle Times, like many legacy metropolitan newspapers, has been ideologically imbalanced for what is objectively a long time. Over the past 20 years, it went away – gradually but all at once, and now is quite possibly irretrievably gone.

This imbalance manifests not just in what some of these newsrooms cover (and those they intentionally omit), but in how they frame every story as a battle for democracy itself. They’ve worn out the word through overuse, turning what should be a meaningful concept into a partisan trigger.

At The Center Square, we’ve made a radical decision by measure of today’s news-media standards: we ban staff-generated opinion content. Completely. We don’t need reporters to lecture readers about democracy because we’re too busy showing them how their government actually works – and where, objectively, it doesn’t. We don’t need to invoke the founders’ vision because we’re focused on today’s budget realities.

Curiosity, rather than conjecture or conviction, should drive the news.

Every newsroom faces a fundamental choice: Speak with your audience or talk at them. When you constantly tell readers that every executive order, every legislative vote, and that every policy disagreement endangers our democratic norms, you’re not informing - you’re haranguing. You’re the boys and girls who cried wolf and, eventually, people stop listening.

But I believe many metro columnists are well beyond that point and are simply singing to their choirs.

The Erosion of Credibility Through Lecturing

The death of straight-news reporting didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual surrender, one opinion piece at a time, one solutions-journalism lopsided advocacy story at a time, one “democracy in danger” headline at a time, until readers could no longer distinguish between actual threats and partisan hyperbole. The sky can’t fall every day.

When journalists transformed from reporters into democracy’s self-appointed guardians, they lost something essential: credibility. The founders understood that in a constitutional republic, the press serves the people best by informing them, not by telling them what to think. They created a system of representative government with enumerated powers and clear limitations – nowhere did they suggest that journalists should serve as democracy’s PR department.

Look at any major newspaper today. Stories that should be straightforward – a tax increase, a regulatory change, a budget vote – are wrapped in layers of democratic implications. Reporters don’t just tell you what the governor did; they tell you what it means for democracy. They’ve appointed themselves as constitutional scholars and moral arbiters, despite the fact that many couldn’t tell you (and make no effort to tell you) the difference between a democracy and the constitutional republic we actually inhabit.

This is what happens when newsrooms prize an ideology over information. The construction worker watching his or her property taxes rise doesn’t need another democracy lecture. They need to know where their money is going and what they’re getting for it. Small business owners navigating local or state regulations don’t require civics lessons from journalists. They need clear, factual reporting about what rules must be followed. They have a payroll to make, and never stop thinking about the families their business supports.

The Center Square Model: Show, Don’t Tell Democracy

Our stringent focus on straight-news reporting reflects a deeper understanding of how representative government actually works. The founders created a system where informed citizens could hold the elected and their bureaucratic staff accountable through regular elections and constitutional constraints. They didn’t envision a priesthood of journalists interpreting sacred democratic texts. They envisioned a free press that would report facts – and could, without fear of repercussion.

By banning staff-generated opinion content, The Center Square newswire honors that original vision better than outlets that wrap themselves in “democracy” while pushing partisan perspectives. We don’t tell readers that a government program threatens or strengthens democracy. We report what it costs, whom it serves, and whether it achieves its stated goals. Readers can decide for themselves what it means for representative government. The reader can decide on their own whether government action or inaction jibes with their life.

Our “Accuracy + Velocity + Frequency” mantra enforces this discipline. When you’re focused on getting accurate information to readers quickly and consistently, you don’t have time to pontificate about democratic norms. You’re too busy doing the actual work of accountability journalism: examining budgets, tracking spending, measuring results.

The Taxpayer as North Star

Living among the people teaches you that they understand our system of government better than many journalists. They know we live in a constitutional republic where their representatives are supposed to be accountable to them. They don’t need journalists invoking “democracy” every third paragraph. They need information about what those representatives are actually doing.

The plumber, the teacher, the farmer – they’re not confused about our form of government. Well, perhaps some K-12 public school teachers and college professors are, but many are not. Nonetheless, they elect representatives. They expect those representatives to spend tax money wisely. When that doesn’t happen, they want to know about it. Not through the lens of democratic theory, but through simple facts: How much was spent? What was accomplished? Who made the decision? How did my locally elected representative in government vote on the legislation?

This is why our ban on staff-generated opinion content matters. In a constitutional republic, a nation of laws, citizens need facts to hold their representatives accountable. Every opinion piece about democracy’s fragility is a missed opportunity to report on what government actually did today. Every column invoking the founders is time and physical publishing and broadcast space that could have been used to show taxpayers where their money went.

The Multiplication Effect

Our growth to 1,360 outlet partners proves something the democracy-obsessed media establishment doesn’t want to admit: Readers are tired of being lectured about “democratic” values and hungry for actual information about their government. They want news, not a sermon.

These partners span the entire political spectrum because facts about government operations transcend partisan democracy debates. When we report that a federal agency spent $50 million on a program that failed to meet its objectives, we don’t need to invoke democracy. The facts speak for themselves. Conservative outlets can use that information. Progressive outlets can use it. Those who consciously try to convey the news straight can use it. Taxpayers of all political stripes can use it to evaluate their representatives.

The word “democracy” has become so politicized, so overused, so stripped of meaning that it now divides rather than unites.

But everyone understands waste. Everyone understands accountability. Everyone understands results – or the lack thereof.

By focusing on these universals rather than partisan trigger words, we serve the actual functions of representative government better than outlets that cry “democracy” at every turn.

The Restoration of Trust Through Restraint

Here’s what Mr. Dudley and the Seattle Times, and frankly so many others, miss: You can’t save journalism by invoking democracy more cleverly. You save it by doing the work that makes representative government possible – providing citizens with accurate information about their government’s actions.

Dudley’s headline acknowledges the problem – “don’t say ‘democracy’” – but his solution is to say it anyway, just more strategically. This misses the point entirely. The word has lost its power not because of messaging strategy but because of overuse and misuse. When everything is a threat to democracy, nothing is. When every story requires democratic context, readers tune out and miss the facts.

The founders were precise with language. They created a constitutional republic, not a democracy, and for specific reasons. They wanted informed citizens making thoughtful decisions through their representatives, not mob rule driven by passion or the latest policy craze. Modern journalism’s obsession with “democracy” often serves passion over information, emotion over facts, tribal loyalty over citizen accountability.

At The Center Square, we don’t need to invoke democracy because we’re too busy serving its actual functions. Every story about government spending is a tool for accountability. Every report on program effectiveness is information citizens need. Every fact we publish serves the constitutional republic’s requirement for an informed citizenry.

The Seattle Times publishes approximately 15 opinion pieces defending democracy for every piece of original enterprise reporting showing what government actually does. They’ve cried wolf so often that when real threats emerge, who will listen? Meanwhile, the daily operations of government - the budgets, the programs, the regulations that affect real people - go underreported.

Democracy – or more accurately, our constitutional republic – thrives not when journalists constantly invoke it, but when they do the unglamorous work of reporting facts. With 1,360 partners and growing, The Center Square has proven that there’s a massive appetite for news that serves representative government through information rather than incantation.

The path back to trust isn’t complicated. Stop crying wolf about democracy. Start reporting what government does. Stop telling people what the founders would think. Start showing them what their representatives are doing today. Recognize that in a constitutional republic, the press serves best not as democracy’s PR department but as citizens’ information service.

Don’t lecture about democracy from the ivory tower. Serve accountability through originally reported facts from the ground up.

The founders would understand. More importantly, so do news consumers.

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When Newsrooms Build Intelligence Networks: Chicago Public Media’s Dangerous ICE-tracking Operation

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 14:57:07 GMT

Juan Espinoza Martinez sits in federal custody in Chicago, charged with soliciting murder of Chief Gregory Bovino, the Commander at Large of the U.S. Border Patrol.

“$2k on information when you get him,” he allegedly posted on Snapchat. “$10k if you take him down.”

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors are charging multiple individuals with vehicular assault against immigration officers. Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling warns, and as The Center Square reported: “When you plow into a vehicle that contains law enforcement agents, you’re using deadly force and they can use deadly force in response.”

Yet as The Center Square reported these developments over the weekend of October 4-5 and then again on Monday, October 6, two of Chicago’s most prominent newsrooms continue operating a crowdsourced platform tracking these same federal agents.

The Chicago Sun-Times and NPR affiliate, Chicago Public Radio’s WBEZ, operating jointly after a $61 million acquisition of the newspaper, are collecting time-stamped photos of ICE agents with location data— “information” that now carries a street bounty.

According to its 2023 public disclosure, on its last filed 990, Chicago Public Radio had received $1.699 million in government grants and had more than $74.9 million in net assets.

The Intelligence Operation

No need to speculate why these newsrooms are taking this on—their own portal spells out what they’re building: “We’re collecting photos of ICE and other federal agents for a map that illustrates the scope of the deployment in the Chicago area.”

Their requirements: Each photo “must contain time and date information.” Their system “automatically extracts metadata from the image file.” They gather “location information, which we’re translating into map coordinates.” They’ve built Spanish-language versions and partnered with Microsoft for “pro bono technical advising and tools” to create “gold-standard image processing automations.”

This isn’t journalism. It’s surveillance infrastructure, platformed by a once proud newspaper, a withering NPR affiliate, and powered by Microsoft. That’s quite a team.

Their explanation reveals the mindset: “How could we possibly cover the deployment of troops and more ICE agents if the operation was large and dispersed?” Their solution: “Let’s enable members of the community to send in sightings of feds to illustrate the geographic deployment—where they are.”

Sightings of feds. Where they are. Not investigating what happened. Not documenting misconduct. Encouraging the tracking of officers now facing death threats and making that information widely available.

And if that’s OK with you, feel free to stop reading right here because you won’t like the rest of this anymore than what you’ve just read.

How Real Journalism Works

Maps are fine. They help offer context to the news. The Chicago Tribune showed the right approach in the aftermath of the hellstorm that hit Chicago in 2020. After the violence and looting from mobs fueled by George Floyd’s death ended, the Tribune mapped what occurred between May 29 and June 4, 2020. The Tribune’s mapping “showed incidents of looting and damage, reports of arson as well as homicides and people shot if that incident was related to the unrest.”

Their investigation “identified more than 2,100 businesses that were damaged or ransacked throughout Chicago,” revealing that “many businesses were on the South and West sides, far from the attention given to damage downtown.” That was important to know, because the businesses affected were locally owned and operated, and the livelihoods of families. They color-coded incidents—looting, arson, shootings, homicides—to create a comprehensive, historical record.

That’s accountability journalism: Documenting completed events, revealing patterns, serving public understanding. The Tribune didn’t ask citizens to track police movements during active unrest. They investigated afterward. Their reporting added context, not actionable intelligence.

The Advocacy Confession

The Sun-Times and WBEZ abandon any pretense of objectivity in their closing appeal: “Ultimately, participating in democracy involves revealing oneself. Journalists take that risk everyday. By sending in photos, Chicago, we hope, will stand with us to document this moment of federal intervention in the city’s daily life.”

Stand with us. Against federal intervention.That’s an interesting new approach to journalism. They aren’t asking the public to document the acts against law enforcement, because—like 2020—it is OK to lash out in acts of assassination and other violence in 2025. Apparently, there is only one way to think about this kind of unrest, and choosing teams is perfectly fine.

When newsrooms ask citizens to join them in opposition to law enforcement, they’ve chosen sides. When they frame immigration enforcement as “intervention” requiring resistance, they’ve become activists. When they create infrastructure for tracking “feds” while officers face murder solicitations, they’ve already dehumanized ICE in the same stride taken to cross every ethical line our profession once recognized.

The Accountability Double Standard

The newsrooms protect contributor privacy, allowing users to “retain their privacy” and noting reader participation could be offered, “optionally and voluntarily.” Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ did write that they worry about “preventing abusive content from reaching our staff.” God forbid that they see the blood.

But federal agents? No privacy protection. No safety considerations. Their movements, patterns, and locations published for anyone—including those offering bounties—to analyze. Seems like fair play at a time when the dehumanization of each side of this ongoing culture war is part of the deal, but where even super-left publisher The Atlantic is authoring work under the headline “Left-Wing Terrorism is on the Rise.”

As a publisher with four decades in journalism, I’ve spent many cigar-filled nights pondering the industry in which we compete. I’ve never seen such selective application of ethical standards or more bizarre judgment.

Surveillance enables harassment.

What’s At Stake

Mayor Brandon Johnson issued an “ICE-free zone” executive order October 6, limiting federal officers’ use of city property. The White House called it a “disgusting betrayal of every law-abiding citizen” showing “true loyalty: to criminal illegal alien predators, not the terrified families of Chicago.”

Yes, that reads like statements from two separate worlds.

With media trust at 28% overall and Republicans’ trust of media at 8% (an all-time low) according to Pew Research’s latest measurement, we in the news industry cannot afford to validate criticisms of bias by literally taking sides. In the same polling, 51% of Democrats (the lowest measurement since 2016) trust the media.

At The Center Square, we follow a simple principle here: We report what government does, not where agents are. We investigate spending, effectiveness, and accountability in something close to real time. We do not provide directions to legislators’ homes or the local bars where they hang out in places like Olympia, Harrisburg, and Springfield.

We never ask readers to “stand with us” against any government agency. In fact, we don’t produce opinion pieces, never tell readers to think a certain way, and intentionally publish work that allows the readers to get to the facts quickly and then think for themselves.

The Clear Choice

The Sun-Times and WBEZ must choose: Dismantle the tracking portal, or simply concede that they’ve abandoned journalism for activism. Enough with the fiction of neutrality.

While this mapping of law enforcement may achieve the new standard of “minimally viable truth,” as NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher said in her 2024 TED talk, tracking the movements of law enforcement is maximally dangerous and fuels further opportunity for agitation. And it could cost more people their lives.

Federal agents now face murder bounties and vehicular assault while two newsrooms maintain a platform providing exactly what those bounties seek—operational intelligence on officer movements.

This isn’t a gray area. It’s not a close call. When your intelligence platform operates while blood spills on Chicago streets, you’ve failed journalism’s most basic test: report the story, don’t become the story.

If Sun-Times and WBEZ wanted to make an impact, maybe map incidents after they occur. Investigate patterns. Hold all parties accountable. But don’t actively enable violence.

As I write this on the evening of October 6, 2025, 279 days into 2025, the current year-to-date homicide count in the City of Chicago is 352. That puts the city on pace for 460 for the year.

So far this year, 1,580 people in Chicago – or roughly the total underclass enrollment of a small college like Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington—have been shot this calendar year. Not Cook County. Not Northern Illinois, but in the city limits.

Through the first five days of October, there have already been 10 homicides in Chicago.

The distinction between documentation and surveillance, between accountability and targeting, between journalism and activism couldn’t be clearer. Tracking “sightings of feds” serves those who would do officers harm. And it’s disgusting.

As a former colleague of mine liked to say, journalists are not special people, but they have a special job.

What the Sun-Times and WBEZ are doing ain’t it.

Kimmel’s Suspension Was Never About the First Amendment

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 21:01:16 GMT

President Joe Biden tapes an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Source: Official White House Photo on Flickr.

ABC and Disney are too large and too sophisticated to accidentally omit or distort facts about a high-profile murder. Whether in their news division or late-night programming, they carry a well-defined, legal obligation as licensed broadcasters not to falsify or distort the news.

That obligation was not met when Jimmy Kimmel mischaracterized facts about the man accused of murdering Charlie Kirk, the president and founder of Turning Point USA.

When Kimmel returned from suspension on September 23, he tried to transform the debate into a free speech battle, invoking the First Amendment and painting criticism from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr as “un-American censorship.”

That was nonsense from the start.

Put aside the hypocrisy of such a claim from a man who openly advocated for the “cancellation” of many he disagreed with, but here’s the critical truth: this was never a First Amendment matter. Kimmel was disciplined because ABC, an FCC-regulated broadcaster that owns and operates local affiliates and distributes to other affiliate station groups, aired false factual claims about an ongoing high-profile criminal case.

That implicates the FCC’s news distortion rule, not constitutional free speech protections.

The Facts Kimmel and ABC Ignored

On September 15, Kimmel told his audience that Tyler Robinson, charged with Kirk’s assassination, was affiliated with “the MAGA gang.” That was broadcast to millions as fact. The news business moves in seconds now. And by the night Kimmel smeared a large swath of Americans, multiple reliable sources—including FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino (Sept. 12) and Utah Governor Spencer Cox (Sept. 14)—had already confirmed Robinson’s motive was personal, not necessarily political.

And if it was remotely political, Kimmel’s strike zone wouldn’t stand up to booth review.

More tellingly, public records revealed Robinson had broken with his conservative family, advocated pro-LGBTQ positions, and was in a relationship with a transgender partner, Lance Twiggs. Those are documented facts drastically at odds with Kimmel’s “MAGA” narrative. ABC’s news resources had access to the same information, but the company chose to air the distorted characterization anyway.

The FCC Rules That Actually Applied

Under the FCC’s news distortion rule, the standard is clear: a broadcaster cannot deliberately falsify or recklessly misrepresent significant facts in matters of public importance. A political assassination qualifies. And the distortion isn’t permitted in programming that airs as part of a newscast, a sit-com, a late-night show, or Monday Night Football. It simply doesn’t matter.

Enforcement hinges on four criteria—intent to distort, evidence of that intent, knowledge by management, and significance of the event. Kimmel’s broadcast checked all four boxes. His comments, and the resulting aftermath, had nothing to do with free speech or censorship and everything to do with compliance with binding FCC standards that ABC accepted when it obtained its license.

Argue whether the United States should have an FCC if you’d like, but it has one and the rules are explicit.

Kimmel’s half-apology on September 23—“it was never my intention to blame any specific group… but to some, that’s what it sounded like”—is itself an admission. He acknowledged advancing a false characterization while hiding behind the weak shield of “satire.” That is neither comedy nor protected opinion under broadcast law. It is factual distortion that violates FCC rules.

This Was Never About Free Speech

One point must be clear: ABC’s suspension of Kimmel was neither censorship nor a First Amendment violation.

Private corporations cannot censor; they can only hold employees accountable. The way that they do that is to remove them from the air.

The First Amendment protects individuals from government suppression of speech, not from workplace discipline under contracts and licenses.

ABC’s parent company, Disney, acted because its broadcaster transmitted factual distortions during coverage of a murder investigation. It doesn’t matter how sentiment played in social media or in legacy media reporting that sympathized with Kimmel. This falls squarely under the FCC’s jurisdiction.

The broadcaster’s First Amendment rights were never implicated. That’s merely a distraction from why what Kimmel said was wrong and the actual reason he was under fire. The FCC did nothing. ABC suspended Kimmel. Was there pressure from the FCC? Yes, and rightfully so, given the clarity of its mandate that publicly licensed broadcasters not manipulate the news. And no, what Kimmel said could not be considered satire.

Government officials—such as Carr when alluding to enforcement consequences, or President Trump when threatening ABC’s license—should avoid entangling themselves in content decisions.

That’s not appropriate for anyone. Threats from the federal government veer toward inappropriate pressure. It was that rhetoric that created the impetus for Kimmel’s fellow late-night hosts and his defenders to make this matter about the First Amendment AND censorship.

Still, those comments don’t make this a First Amendment test case. The issue at hand was broadcast license compliance, not constitutional censorship.

And, again, Kimmel was suspended by ABC.

Accountability Over Rhetoric

Somehow, late-night TV hosts have become self-ordained news synthesizers for their audiences. Political shots, hot takes, and diatribes that all lean one direction are actually protected speech, if the facts are presented accurately.

President Trump would prefer that Kimmel, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert tone down their steady stream of left-leaning commentary, but there is nothing in the FCC’s rules that calls for balance. If it did mandate balance, gaping holes would exist in the nightly news and most network programming.

Good thing for Jimmy Kimmel, because in the same apology monologue, Kimmel took several shots at conservatives and referred to the political divide in the country as “our side” and “the other side,” saying he is with the people “on the left.” Not necessarily an earth-shattering admission. (If you’re interested in the economics of alienating half your audience through political bias, you may want to read this post as well.)

Still, Kimmel hasn’t slowed down since.

But Americans shouldn’t want balance-focused FCC rules, because we don’t need speech to be muted. In fact, your TV can be muted, the channels can be changed, and the entire set can be unplugged if you don’t like what’s on it. A better option would be to eliminate the FCC altogether. I’m not sure if the FCC is even relevant anymore. Want to DOGE something that seems mostly worthless? Maybe the FCC is the right federal agency to eliminate next.

That said, Kimmel’s emotional tribute to Kirk’s widow on his return to TV might have been heartfelt (who knows—he cried throughout it, yet still had focus to skewer his usual targets), but it cannot erase that ABC misled its audience on a matter of public significance. Under the FCC’s current authority, when licensed broadcasters claim to tell the truth about high-profile crimes, accuracy is not optional. Distortion, even under the guise of comedy, satire, or any other performative attempt at getting a laugh, violates their license obligations.

This is why these lingering concerns about freedom of speech and weakening of First Amendment protections are wrong and misleading. Free speech is unlimited whether on a street corner, on YouTube, or on the stage at Stand Up Live in Phoenix. But ABC doesn’t operate under those rules—it operates under an FCC license that imposes direct responsibilities to the public. That distinction matters.

Where the Real Threat Lies

The real threat is not the FCC enforcing distortion rules—it’s broadcasters blurring the line between accountability and censorship to escape responsibility. When Kimmel invoked the First Amendment, he was attempting to flip the narrative, portraying himself as a victim when he was actually the violator.

The First Amendment protects robust political commentary. It protects satire. It even protects offensive and unpopular jokes. But it does not protect broadcasters who knowingly present false factual claims about an ongoing political assassination while under an FCC license.

Kimmel knows this distinction. ABC executives know this distinction. Disney knows it, too. They just hope viewers don’t.

One Question Can Change Everything

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 21:00:59 GMT

Photo: Molly Riley / Official White House Photo via Flickr / United States Government Work

Sometimes the most powerful moments in journalism happen in the span of 30 seconds. A courageous journalist, a direct question, an unfiltered answer—and suddenly, the world shifts.

On September 15th, The Center Square’s Washington bureau chief Sarah Roderick-Fitch stood in the Oval Office as part of the White House pool reporters and posed a simple, straightforward question to President Trump: Would he designate Antifa as a terrorist organization?

His immediate response—“Yes, I would like to designate the Antifa movement as a terror organization”—became the shot heard around the world of journalism.

Within hours, every major news outlet in America was chasing the story. The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, Fox News—all of them following The Center Square’s lead. The video clip ran on endless loops across cable news.

Our reporting dominated news cycles for days. But here’s what really matters: Within a week, President Trump followed through on his commitment. The Netherlands became the first nation to follow suit and Hungary the second.

Think about that for a moment. One question. Three governments changed their official stance on a controversial movement that has dominated headlines for years.

This is why being in the room matters. This is why asking direct questions matters. And this is why The Center Square exists.

I’ve been in this business long enough to remember when journalism was simpler, or perhaps the standards were higher—when reporters asked tough questions and politicians gave straight answers, or at least tried to dodge them in interesting, clever, or creative ways. Somewhere along the line, too many White House correspondents started asking about process instead of policy, about palace intrigue instead of public impact.

Not us. Not that day.

Sarah didn’t ask about the president’s tweets or his mood or what he thought about some congressman’s latest comments. She asked a substantive policy question that millions of Americans had been thinking about for years as they watched their cities burn during protests. She asked about accountability. She asked about public safety. She asked the kind of question that makes powerful people make definitive statements they can’t walk back.

“Antifa is terrible,” Trump said, adding, “They get away with murder.”

The response from the journalism establishment was telling. Some were stunned we’d gotten such a direct answer. Others seemed almost offended that the “new kids” had broken such a major story. But mostly, they did what journalists do when someone beats them to a story—they followed our lead and some begrudgingly gave us credit. Even our competitors had to acknowledge: The Center Square had just changed the game with regard to reporting on domestic terror.

News organizations grow as they grow trust. To earn a spot in the Oval Office was the product of more than six years of tireless grinding, asking difficult and challenging questions that break away from the pack to get at the issues that everyday Americans want to see addressed.

This moment crystallized everything we’ve been building toward. When we decided to pursue White House hard-card credentials, when we made the investment to place a bureau chief in D.C., when we committed to being part of the press pool rotation—all of it led to this moment. Our first time with a presidential question, and we made it count.

But here’s what I want you to understand: This wasn’t luck. There was preparation involved to meet the opportunity. Sarah knew exactly what question to ask because she understands a mission to hold the powerful to account and inform everyday American taxpayers. The Center Square is not there to play gotcha games or score political points. The wire exists to get answers to the questions that matter to the 141 million Americans we reach every day through our 1,330-plus local-market news-media partners.

The ripple effects continue even now. Metropolitan news organizations from Seattle to Miami used our reporting to examine Antifa’s presence in their communities. International news organizations cited our exclusive. Policy makers in other nations began their own discussions. All because one reporter asked one direct question and didn’t accept spin as an answer.

This is the power of journalism done right. Not opinion masquerading as analysis. Not partisan talking points dressed up as news. Not advocacy journalism. Just straight questions that prompt straight answers about issues that affect the lives of Americans.

Some folks in media circles asked me afterward if this changes our approach. Will we now chase sensational stories to maintain the spotlight? The answer is no.

This moment reinforces a core mission. The Center Square has a talented group of professional journalists spread out across the country. We keep asking the direct questions others avoid. We’ll keep pushing for substantive answers about government spending, effectiveness, and accountability. We’ll do the journalism that actually matters.

Because here’s the truth: In a world drowning in hot takes, manufactured outrage, and lecturing solutions-focused journalism that wilfully obfuscates truth-seeking, what I believe readers really want is someone in the room who will raise their hand and ask the burning question everyone else is too afraid to ask.

We provide the American public straight facts, because we respect our audience.

That’s The Center Square. It’s who we are. And that September day in the Oval Office, we proved that sometimes the simplest questions can change the world.

Plenty more of that to come.

Straight News as Public Service: How The Center Square Fills America’s Government Accountability Gap

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 21:01:06 GMT

Source: Political awareness, digital savviness and trust in the media all play large roles in the ability to distinguish between factual and opinion news statements, Pew Research Center

Journalism’s most fundamental responsibility in the United States is to hold government to account.

While opinion and commentary flood every platform, the essential work of government watchdog reporting—tracking how tax dollars are spent, measuring program effectiveness, exposing waste and inefficiency—has become dangerously scarce.

At The Center Square, we’ve built our entire operation around filling this critical gap, producing roughly 60+ original accountability stories every weekday that give Americans the unbiased facts they need about their government’s size, scope, cost, and performance.

I’ve been in this business long enough to witness its transformation, and to recognize that this business continues to evolve. I grew up in journalism before the internet revolution and became an executive editor in the mid-2000s, just as news organizations began producing digital content. In that earlier era, government accountability reporting was standard practice—the commodity every newspaper provided.

City hall reporters scrutinized budgets line by line. Statehouse correspondents tracked every bill affecting citizens’ wallets. Beat reporters knew which agencies delivered results and which wasted resources. Clear walls separated this factual reporting from opinion pages.

Today, that matrix has completely inverted. Commentary has become the commodity—ubiquitous, unfiltered, and increasingly indistinguishable from news coverage. In fact, in 2018 the Pew Research Center conducted a study in 2018 to explore whether news consumers could distinguish facts from opinions, and even the most politically engaged survey respondents only could do so 36% of the time.

Social media enables instant punditry from anyone with an internet connection. Meanwhile, the expensive, labor-intensive work of government oversight has withered in so many markets. Organizations that once employed teams of investigative reporters now rely on aggregated content and opinion writers. The watchdogs have largely abandoned their posts.

This shift has infected even major news organizations' government coverage, although one could argue their departure from fact finding and truth telling may be more of a designed feature than a bug associated with right-sized newsrooms. Rather than investigating whether existing programs deliver promised results, many reporters now advocate for expanded government initiatives. They prescribe solutions before documenting problems. They tell readers which programs deserve more funding rather than examining whether current funding achieves its stated goals. This approach—often labeled “solutions journalism”—represents advocacy masquerading as accountability.

The Center Square exists specifically to reverse this dangerous trend. In a market oversaturated with political opinion, serious government accountability reporting has become the specialty product our country requires. We focus relentlessly on documenting government’s actual performance: How much did your state spend last year, and on what? Which federal programs meet their goals, and which consistently fail? When local governments raise taxes or fees, where does that money actually go? We answer these questions with verified facts, not predetermined narratives.

Our operating principle is uncompromising: We produce zero opinion pieces of our own about government policy. Our journalists—experienced professionals with deep expertise in public finance and government operations—don’t advocate for larger or smaller government. They document what government actually does, costs, and achieves. This isn’t ideological neutrality for its own sake; it’s methodological discipline that serves readers who need facts to form their own conclusions.

This approach resonates across the political spectrum because fact-based government accountability transcends partisan divisions. Conservatives seeking evidence of wasteful spending find it in our reporting. Progressives wanting data on program effectiveness get it from the same stories. Independents looking for unbiased information about government performance rely on our consistent, fact-based coverage. By avoiding prescriptive framing, we serve all Americans who fund government through their taxes.

But what’s most important here is that all Americans are finding this in one specific place, through the unique commitment to reporting by The Center Square.

Our accountability mission shapes every editorial decision. When covering new programs, we seek to report precise costs and funding sources. When investigating agencies, we compare budget growth to performance metrics over time. When governments claim success, we verify outcomes against stated goals. This isn’t anti-government or pro-government—it’s pro-transparency and pro-accountability.

Recognizing that our 1,330 outlet partners sometimes need opinion content about government policy, we carefully curate external op-ed submissions. Dan McCaleb, our executive editor and Chief Content Officer, personally reviews a handful of op-eds daily, ensuring they meet our standards for factual accuracy. These pieces remain clearly labeled as commentary—completely distinct from our accountability reporting.

The current media paradox demands attention. Government at all levels spends more money than ever before, yet receives less systematic scrutiny. While pundits fill airwaves with political speculation, government agencies operate with minimal oversight. The unglamorous but essential work continues: attending budget hearings, analyzing audit reports, filing transparency requests, verifying performance data. The Center Square performs this work daily because an informed citizenry depends on it.

Somewhere, before an opinion is generated, some journalist had to document the facts. That’s our role. That is what separates The Center Square from every other news organization in the United States.

Our commitment to straight government reporting isn't nostalgic but forward-looking. We recognize that in today’s commentary-saturated media environment, unbiased accountability journalism has become the premium product citizens need most. Our growing network and readership demonstrate clear market demand for facts about government operations. People want to know how the sausage is made, but they also want to know who is paying for the next great idea designed to improve society.

Some argue pure objectivity in journalism is impossible. We acknowledge that all reporting involves editorial choices. However, through transparent methodologies, comprehensive sourcing, and clear separation between reporting and analysis, we minimize bias while maximizing public service. Our goal is factual accuracy rather than false equivalence.

Every day, The Center Square proves that straightforward government accountability reporting creates both civic and commercial value. While competitors chase engagement through sensationalism or pursue influence through advocacy journalism, we build sustainable trust through consistent, reliable reporting on what government does with public resources.

Our mission remains focused: Document government operations through facts, not opinions. In our country, nothing matters more than ensuring citizens have accurate, unbiased information about government’s performance.

That’s not just our business model—it’s our contribution to restoring government accountability in America.

Chris Krug is publisher of The Center Square, a national news organization focused on federal, state and local government accountability. Subscribe to receive updates on how we’re changing the news landscape.

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Charlie Kirk's Legacy: Why Our Freedoms of Speech and Defense Must Never Enable Violence

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:08:40 GMT

Charlie Kirk speaks with attendees at the 2025 Young Women's Leadership Summit in Grapevine, Texas, on June 14, 2025. Gage Skidmore / Flickr / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Cropped from Original

The founders designed the First and Second Amendments as interlocking safeguards against tyranny.

The First Amendment protects our fundamental rights to speak, worship, assemble freely, publish freely, and to petition the government—the essential tools of self-governance and accountability.

The Second Amendment ensures citizens retain the means to defend these freedoms when institutional checks falter.

Together, they create the first two essential pieces of world’s most unique constitutional architecture, guaranteeing that ideas flourish without fear of suppression, supported by the principle that Americans possess both a unique voice and recourse.

Rather than competing values, the First and Second amendments form complementary protections—each reinforcing the other's role in preserving liberty.

Two non-negotiables here:

Neither the First nor the Second is intended to serve as a prophylactic defense or justification for the mentally ill, the politically radicalized, or bloodthirsty cowards to act upon hurt feelings from ideas articulated in words they find distasteful, damaging, or simply disagree with to take another person’s life; and
Neither the First nor Second has anything to do with domestic terror, assassination, or murder.

Be clear: Charlie Kirk will be remembered for his deep understanding of the First Amendment, his message, and a meteoric rise to prominence as a young conservative who uniquely was willing to discuss the issues that most Americans don’t want to discuss or cannot allow themselves to discuss with others. The Second Amendment had nothing to do with his tragic death.

Murder is murder, and Kirk’s murder should be mourned by every American.

That is unequivocal.

The Wire Service America Needed

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 20:00:57 GMT

Source: Generated using ChatGPT

The Associated Press and Reuters each had more than a century to get this right.

They failed.

When only 45% of Americans trust journalists to act in the public interest and 58% call them “biased,” what you're looking at is institutional collapse.

When veteran newsroom editors spend decades wishing their wire services would just do the basics—accuracy without agenda, taxpayer focus without foundation interference—you're looking at market opportunity.

At The Center Square, we built what they wouldn't - or couldn’t.

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The Solutions Journalism Problem

For decades, mainstream government coverage typically operated from a simple premise—reporters worked for taxpayers, not for government officials or foundation program officers. Most city council meetings, statehouse budget fights, and federal regulations got filtered through the question that mattered: How does this affect the people paying for it?

Then solutions journalism gained prominence, backed by foundation funding, and priorities shifted. The Associated Press began forming partnerships that question editorial independence. In 2023, AP announced a collaboration with CBS News and the Solutions Journalism Network focusing on youth mental health—producing what critics describe as promotional stories about “zen dens” in Colorado schools and peer counseling programs in Los Angeles while often omitting costs, effectiveness data, or alternative approaches.

According to its own materials, AP’s Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative covers “systemic issues within local communities” by spotlighting preferred solutions rather than examining all available options. The taxpayer perspective took a backseat to advocacy.

In 2019, my team of veteran editors—people who'd spent careers using AP and Reuters copy before this introduction of solutions journalism entered the market—decided to build what we’d always wanted to receive: clean wire service fundamentals focused on the people that government actually serves.

What the Data Shows

Today, the platform we built, The Center Square, is accepted and republished by all genres of news publishers. This growth is not by accident. Six years after our founding, Pew Research Center’s recent study of over 9,000 Americans documented journalism’s credibility crisis—and validated our approach.

The trust numbers are devastating:

Only 45% of Americans have confidence journalists act in the public’s best interest
58% describe most journalists as “biased”
56% say journalists can’t separate personal views from reporting
49% say journalists are losing influence versus 15% gaining

What Americans actually want:

84% say journalists should “definitely report news accurately”
64% want journalists to “correct false information from public figures”
“Relatively few” want journalists expressing personal opinions
Top three important traits: honesty, intelligence, authenticity

We built The Center Square to deliver exactly this: Deliver straight news with Accuracy, Velocity, and Frequency. No staff-written opinion. No solutions journalism, and no hidden agendas. Instead readers receive short, important stories from statehouses, cities, and Washington, D.C.

The Market Response

This reader-first mindset grew The Center Square from zero outlet partners in 2019 to 1,330 today. News organizations serving American communities increasingly choose us, demonstrating strong market demand for our straightforward approach to government coverage focused on taxpayer impact in our accountability reporting.

To explain this growth, let me share a story:

When I was a publisher, the top of my subscriber “quit list,” those ending paid subscriptions, was typically led by “death,” a “move out” of the distribution market, or the rising “cost” of a daily subscription.

Today, we hear from executives, publishers, and broadcast leaders across the country that the top complaint they receive is what their readers are calling clear, left-leaning bias from the AP.

And, let’s face it, Reuters never was a meaningful U.S. wire service. Most of its customers are larger metropolitan papers. Very few local-market publishers and virtually zero local-market broadcasters subscribed to Reuters, whose content is incredibly dense, inside-baseball reporting through a European lens.

Local editors recognized clean wire copy when they saw it in The Center Square as the product they'd been seeking all along.

What Taxpayer Focus Actually Means

Consider AP’s approach to youth mental health coverage in the example above: telling stories about “zen dens” in Colorado schools and peer counseling programs in Los Angeles without articulating costs, comparative data on effectiveness, alternative approaches, or fiscal impact on taxpayers funding these programs.

A fact-forward approach to a story such as this would look like this: “School district allocates $180,000 for student mental health coordinator; per-pupil costs increase 2.1%; district cites pilot program data showing 15% reduction in counselor visits”

Compare those headlines to the solutions-journalism approach: “School creates innovative ‘zen den’ to support student wellness”

The first serves taxpayers with facts they need to evaluate government spending. The second serves an agenda, promoting predetermined solutions while ignoring fiscal reality.

People want to know what the program is going to cost, and who is going to pay for it. There is no journalistic justification for concealing that information.

Why Legacy Outlets Struggle to Course-Correct

When 58% of Americans describe journalists as “biased,” they’re identifying what appears to be a fundamental problem with advocacy journalism presented as objective reporting. When I see bias, this is where I believe the biggest gap lies between what the American public wants from journalism and what it receives from the legacy partners it no longer trusts.

Solutions journalism functions as advocacy journalism—it often starts with preferred outcomes and works backward to supporting narratives. It is the world that the journalist wants, rather than the world in which the journalist is practicing the craft.

AP’s collaboration with the Solutions Journalism Network exemplifies what critics see as the corruption of wire service principles. When nonprofit news organizations partner with advocacy groups focused on promoting “systemic solutions,” they risk abandoning journalistic neutrality for activism. The reward is being paid to play. That’s a risk we do not take and will not take because such coverage intentionally excludes balance, ignores contradictory data, and taints results by filtering information through predetermined conclusions.

And, again, that’s not journalism. That’s something entirely different. It’s playing a game with the reader. It doesn’t matter if the word “analysis” or “special report” sits atop the copy, or if the story is produced, as they so often are in the Seattle Times by a “lab” or “project” reporter, it’s disingenuous. It’s a mask over the truth.

We built The Center Square from scratch without these advocacy entanglements, allowing complete focus on what Pew Research documented Americans wanted: honest, authentic journalism that serves taxpayers over institutional agendas. The Center Square explicitly practices journalism, not advocacy—a distinction that appears to matter when 84% of Americans want accurate reporting without the opinion contamination that solutions journalism frequently produces.

The Pew Validation

Every element of our approach aligns with documented public preferences:

Honesty through transparency: We state our taxpayer focus upfront instead of claiming impossible neutrality while making biased editorial choices. We are intentional in speaking to both sides of the aisle in the work that we publish. Truth speaks loudest, and for itself.

Intelligence through relevance: Deep expertise in state and local government where policy most directly impacts citizens, matching Americans’ documented preference for “deep knowledge of topics covered” over institutional prestige.

Authenticity through acknowledgment: Honest perspective rather than false objectivity, delivering the authenticity Pew Research found Americans crave.

Accuracy without agenda: Factual reporting that 84% of Americans want, without the opinion mixing that “relatively few” want.

What We’ve Restored

The Center Square didn’t invent taxpayer-centric coverage—we restored emphasis on an approach that was once more common in American journalism. The approach that we take across the country is no different than the approach that the journalists who worked for me in the Chicago suburbs 20 years ago took on. It serves to create a clear transparency for We The People.

Traditional government reporting frequently emphasized fiscal impact and public accountability before many outlets adopted broader institutional missions.

Our growth from zero to 1,330 partners suggests American news consumers were ready for journalism to remember its core function: holding government accountable to the people who pay for it.

The Bottom Line

Pew Research Center’s data confirms what we experienced: Americans reject advocacy disguised as journalism. The rise of solutions journalism correlates with the documented credibility crisis. Solutions journalism in all forms is inherently biased, and it no longer slips past the American public.

Americans told researchers they want transparency about editorial perspective combined with rigorous factual standards—not false objectivity covering up advocacy missions.

The Center Square succeeded because we gave Americans what they told Pew they wanted: journalism that serves taxpayers by holding government accountable to the people who fund it.

Sometimes the most revolutionary act is returning to what actually worked. Check out this content for yourself by subscribing to The Center Square.

Chris Krug is the publisher of The Center Square newswire service. This Substack post was inspired by Pew Research Center’s August 2025 study “Americans’ Views of Journalists and Their Role in Society.” The Center Square’s growth from 0 to 1,330 partners reflects documented public demand for taxpayer-focused government accountability coverage. The Center Square is a 501(c) nonprofit, which does accept philanthropic support from Foundations. Editorial independence is a prerequisite for all incoming grants. Donor information is not shared with the newsroom.

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The Double Standard in Journalism Ethics: A Publisher’s Perspective

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 15:27:02 GMT

Source: “Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low,” Gallup

Journalism ethics debates reflect their political moment, revealing how power shapes even principled discussions. While core values ostensibly remain constant, it has become clear that the application varies almost wholly based on who occupies the White House. This inconsistency undermines journalism’s credibility.

The news media industry as a whole has worried aloud about trust for decades. It has suffered from a loss of trust. The industry is always talking about what it can do to restore trust. But it has been a strange conversation.

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I started thinking specifically about the state of journalism ethics after reading a Columbia Journalism Review story published August 21, of this year, headlined: “Thirteen journalists on how they’re rethinking ethics.” Margaret Sullivan and Julie Gerstein from Columbia’s journalism ethics center built their piece from 13 industry professionals they interviewed about adapting standards.

This assessment is critical, but fair: Aside from Elena Cherney’s thoughts on sourcing and the value of building source relationships, much of what else was shared from the 13 is stuff that you’ve likely heard before. And a lot of it is just as internally puzzling as what you have heard before from people in such roles.

Ethicists and academics have mostly spoken to their peers at institutions they believe are like themselves. They have not demonstrated an ability to widen their circle, which is why there hasn’t been anything meaningful to show for the talk. The conversation exists in what has become, largely, an echo chamber.

These are mostly the same voices that participate in calls to “turn down the rhetoric” whenever their newsrooms begin leaking partisanship. Saying the right things and doing the right things are not the same thing.

But I would offer this: Journalistic trust is a solvable problem.

If a newsroom focuses on the facts; presents them fairly; is consistent with the scope of its work; speaks to a broad range of sources; and is truly curious for the benefit of its readers and viewers, it will earn trust.

Over time.

And if it doesn’t, it’ll continue to lose it—slowly, and then all at once.

Cherney, senior editor for ethics at the Wall Street Journal,who spoke on the challenges of original reporting, was a highlight among the lowlights. Journalism is difficult. It takes significant work to be a good journalist.

Focusing specifically on anonymous sources, which are used today like Q-tips, she offered the following: “Reporters are only as good as their sources. The best sources—well-placed people with direct knowledge of events—often aren’t willing to go on the record precisely because sharing the information could put them, or their jobs, at risk. The fewer people who know, the more risk a source may be taking by talking to journalists—and the more newsworthy the information may be.”

That’s solid advice, whether you are a 19-year-old intern trying to summon the courage to pick up the phone and make a call to someone you don’t know to ask them questions they probably don’t want to answer, or if you have been in the business for 40 years and are still reluctant to pick up that phone and make a call to someone you do know and ask them questions you know they don’t want to answer.

But get past Cherney’s valuable, viable, and actionable thoughts in that compendium of insights from the other 12, and you’ll find what’s plaguing journalism—advocacy-laden insights that suggest these people really do not understand the hole that their approaches have dug.

For journalism to truly rebuild trust, ethics must transcend partisan pandering. We must be, as a friend likes to say: “Upstream from politics, on the moral high ground.”

Much was written when Uri Berliner exposed that the National Public Radio newsroom in Washington, D.C., had 87 registered Democrats and zero Republicans on its staff. That was and remains embarrassing.

Among all the talk in the industry about the need for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion—on both the staffing side and the sourcing side—has there been any reflective consideration that ideological diversity is also important? If so, NPR has said nothing about addressing it and has offered no evidence that it considers such diversity important.

This moment will continue to be a rough ride for the entrenched national mainstream publishers and broadcasters, whose trust has suffered the most. They focus on the federal government as core to their reporting, which means focusing on President Donald Trump. There is a fixation — an unhealthy one. He leads the nightly news unless there is a natural disaster or a national tragedy.

The national mainstream media lost its collective mind during the first Trump administration, and then lost its way during the Biden administration.

Now, in the second Trump administration, the national mainstream has become easy to ignore —not only because it demonstrates no discernible range, but also because most Americans simply stopped watching and would rather receive their national news in a local news package, whether delivered in print or via broadcast.

Consider how Rod Hicks, a former Society of Professional Journalists director of ethics and diversity, framed the Trump years: “Traditional journalistic norms and conventions for covering politics and politicians were not created for a president like Donald Trump.”

Translation: We need special rules.

His prescribed solution? Don’t just report what politicians say—immediately counter their statements with “documented evidence that they’re false.”

Where was this urgency during the Biden administration? The same newsrooms that breathlessly fact-checked every Trump utterance discovered measured nuance when covering the Democratic president.

The so-called “big-thinkers” in the industry cannot get out of their own way.

To say that the national mainstream media has done this to itself is not an oversimplification.

Standards for calling out falsehoods, transparency requirements, and accountability mechanisms should apply equally regardless of presidential party or perceived threat level.

The profession must recognize this bias and commit to consistent application of standards — aggressive accountability for all administrations, not just those deemed threatening. Only then can journalism ethics genuinely fulfill its role rather than serve an audience of willing believers.

Here’s what consistent journalism ethics looks like: The same standards for everyone. Period.

If aggressive fact-checking matters, apply it universally. If questioning anonymous sources is important, do it regardless of which party benefits. If democracy needs watchdog journalism, that includes watching the watchdogs’ preferred candidates.

At The Center Square, we’ve built our reputation on this simple principle: Cover every administration, every governor, every mayor with the same skeptical eye. Our readers have come to trust our work over the past six years because they know we’re not adjusting our standards based on election results.

The establishment media—and I am not talking about your local news source, which does its sincere best, but the national players—could learn something from that approach. Until they do, they’ll keep hemorrhaging credibility while wondering why readers seek alternatives.

The answer is simple: Americans want journalism that serves truth, not parties. They want consistency, not convenient ethics that shift with the political winds.

True journalism ethics doesn’t ask which party holds power—it holds all power accountable. Anything less is just politics by other means.

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Solutions journalism is not journalism

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 23:46:43 GMT

David Bornstein, the co-founder of Solutions Journalism Network. Source: YouTube

Journalism that doesn’t intentionally seek the truth, that isn’t honest, sincere, and fueled by curiosity isn’t journalism. It’s a lie.

That statement may sound harsh, but it is the necessary starting point for understanding the ongoing transformation of American journalism. News in the United States has always wrestled with its twin obligations: to inform citizens with facts and to shape public understanding.

What has changed in the past three decades is that large advocacy organizations have succeeded in redefining the mission of local-market journalism – in print, on the radio and on television – in major cities away from government accountability toward what is now called solutions journalism.

This shift is not incidental—it is deliberate, organized, and funded.

Pull back and look at it for what it is, what it seeks to do, and why it has become part of the mainstream, and it begins to look familiar. That is because it is eerily reminiscent of earlier moments in American media when truth was subordinated to larger ideological or market imperatives, such as the yellow press of the early 1900s.

Give the audience what it wants, regardless of the “truth” that it selects to tell, and the revenue will follow.

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Theory Versus Practice

The true problem with solutions journalism is that the journalists begin with the outcome, and source their way to that “truth” with “experts” that provide “information” that threads the story together.

The earliest origins of solutions journalism, which is a euphemism for “civic journalism” can be traced back to a Columbia Journalism Review article published in 1998, in which author Susan Benesch wrote, “Civic journalism promotes democratic participation by giving journalists direct involvement with the population they serve instead of staying a separate entity.”

Journalists, now in an activist role, no longer are held to the standard of balance, or seeing counter sources, differing perspectives, and data that would or could prove the hypothesis of these stories.

The formula is constructed this way:

Response: Creating a thesis based on a specific response to a social crisis.
Insight: Demonstrating what can be learned from the social crisis.
Evidence: Use of data or information that proves the thesis.
Limitations: The contextualizing of this information.

And while the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), the father of this bastardization of journalism, includes among its definition of “limitations” that this work, “doesn’t shy away from revealing shortcomings,” most solutions journalism builds such a strong case for whatever it is advocating that realities are often squashed by the proposed solutions.

The term “solutions journalism” may have been publicly formalized in 2013 when former New York Times staffers David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg launched the SJN. In its own words, SJN seeks to “rebalance the news” and that “solutions journalism is what audiences want.”

But the real story isn't the “success” of SJN—it's how quickly commercial publishers abandoned their independence for foundation cash.

In a recent round of funding, SJN created a “journalism revenue accelerator” with a cohort that included such publishers as Chicago’s Better Government Association, the Dallas Morning News, and the Baltimore Banner. From SJN’s report on that initiative, came this: “The way we are learning how to expand our journalism offerings and monetize them simultaneously is really revolutionary,” said Brittany Harlow, operations manager and senior journalist at Verified News Network (Oklahoma), one of the eight newsrooms that make up the first cohort.

Traditional newspapers and television stations that had operated for decades on advertising and subscription revenue suddenly started accepting philanthropic grants with explicit editorial requirements. Major commercial outlets—The Seattle Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Fresno Bee, The Detroit Free Press—that once prided themselves on editorial independence lined up for foundation money that came with strings attached.

Progressive funders promote solutions journalism because it reframes reporting around “what works” in advancing equity and social change, aligning news with preferred policy reforms. This contrasts sharply with the mission of government-accountability reporting, which answers only to the truth.

Think about some of the headlines from the Covid-19 era, the lockstep reporting from the mainstream on vaccination efficacy, from the benefits of lockdowns and the characterizations of “essential” and “non-essential” workers. Now think about the still-lingering impacts of this reporting, which was influential, and how deleterious that lack of authentic journalistic approach has been to society.

Accountability journalism seeks no outcome but truth, exposing failures of power regardless of ideology. Solutions journalism, by design, encourages advocacy-oriented storytelling, while watchdog reporting preserves journalism’s core responsibility: to pursue truth without fear, favor, or predetermined agenda.

Why isn’t there more focused reporting coverage on the persistent crises of homelessness, violent street crime, and murder in cities like Chicago, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.? Quite simply, because few are paying for that kind of coverage. Government-accountability reporting would focus there, but aside from a handful of outlets—The Center Square newswire among them—few seem to believe that rigorous coverage of these public policy failures matters to readers.

This cultural shift in journalism was unprecedented. Commercial media had always maintained a clear separation between business operations and editorial decisions. Publishers sold ads, editors made coverage decisions. That wall didn’t just crack—it collapsed.

The Revenue Sources: Familiar Faces

Publishers told themselves they were “diversifying revenue streams.” In reality, they were trading editorial control for financial survival. And once they got that first taste of foundation funding, they discovered something troubling: it was easier than building sustainable reader relationships.

There is an entire network of progressive funders – names you’ll recognize, if you’ve ever watched public television or listened to public radio – that are practicing solutions journalism with help of SJN.

The Editorial Transformation

Once metropolitan publishers accepted funding from advocacy organizations, their editorial priorities shifted predictably. Instead of primarily scrutinizing government actors, reporters were encouraged to highlight community groups, nonprofits, and public-private partnerships as “solution providers.”

The philosophical underpinning of this shift can be heard clearly in a 2024 speech at a TED event by National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maherv when she was CEO of Wikimedia Foundation: “Perhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”

Yes, I am really stuck on those words. I’ve written about Maher’s speech before. I will continue to write her words because they continue to offer an out for any CEO or publisher to compromise the basic tenets of good journalism for predictable outcomes that do nothing for their audiences.

It is not genuine for journalists to convince readers in single-sided “straight-news” how to think. That is saved for the editorial page, labeled as “opinion,” thus carrying with it a clear message that this is an individual point of view.

Solutions journalism crosses that line, providing only selective truth, but presenting itself as fact. Truth, what most Americans would consider balanced reporting, itself became a stumbling block. Publishers embraced this framework because it justified taking foundation money while claiming they were still practicing journalism.

The Real-World ‘Results’

The pattern repeats across commercial outlets that accept foundation funding. Here are just a couple of examples, but there are thousands of others:

The Detroit Free Press focused on “telling city stories” as part of a grant that it received in 2019 from The Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ford Foundation. In 2016, the Free Press accepted a grant through SJN to focus on children facing “toxic stresses” in their lives. The Free Press was part of a larger consortium of news organizations in Michigan and New York that participated in accepting grants to produce solutions-focused news.

The Seattle Times has taken in millions of dollars in donor contributions from such funders as the Gates Foundation, to focus on solutions journalism since at least 2013, when it began designating reporting and reporters to “labs” and “projects.” It took in millions more from the Ballmer Foundation in 2021 that coincided with a $38-million contribution to the University of Washington to focus on mental health. The paper calls it impact journalism in this video it published. Take a look at the local-reporting team at The Seattle Times, and you’ll see that 27% of the newsgathers at the Times have either a “lab” or “project” designation.

Elsewhere around the country, smaller startups, most of them nonprofits, have gone all-in with a focus on solutions journalism, and accepted what The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported to be $1.25 billion – some of which it says was taxpayer-funded, to support these initiatives.

These newsrooms didn’t stumble into foundation capture, they volunteered. Their publishers actively chose revenue – and, in some cases, their existence – over editorial independence.

Echoes of Yellow Journalism

This isn’t the first time commercial publishers abandoned truth-seeking for external incentives. In the early 1900s, publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer filled papers with sensational stories serving their political and commercial interests rather than the public good. The Spanish-American War demonstrated how journalism divorced from truth-seeking could manipulate public opinion toward catastrophic ends.

The parallels are striking:

External Control: Yellow journalism served publishers’ political and commercial ambitions over the job of informing the public. Today’s solutions journalism serves foundation agendas. In both cases, commercial publishers allowed outside interests to shape editorial decisions.

Truth as Secondary: Yellow journalism twisted facts for market ends. Solutions journalism selectively frames stories to emphasize funder-approved outcomes over objective reporting.

Publisher Complicity: Both movements required commercial publishers to actively participate in undermining journalism’s truth-seeking mission.

The difference lies in methodology, not result. Yellow journalism used sensationalism and fabrication to sell papers. Solutions journalism uses foundation-funded focus on the issues relevant to the funders to maintain financial viability. Both represent publishers and broadcast heads choosing external revenue over editorial integrity.

What Was Lost

When commercial publishers and broadcasters traded editorial independence for foundation funding, they lost the essential thing that made their journalism valuable: the ability to follow stories wherever they lead.

The real story under the defunding of the Public Broadcasting Corporation earlier this month wasn’t about taking away content from local-market stations. That’s not my perception at all. Rather, it was about taking away the taxpayer funding mechanism for the perpetuation of one-sided news coverage funded by all Americans.

Real journalism requires freedom to investigate anyone. It requires independence to criticize solutions that aren’t working, even when those solutions are favored by funders.

Most critically, it requires the adversarial relationship with power that makes journalism essential to democracy. When publishers accept funding with editorial requirements, that relationship becomes compromised. Citizens need reporters who will ask tough questions of city council members, school board officials, nonprofit executives, and foundation program officers.

Publishers told themselves they were saving local journalism. In reality, they were destroying what made journalism worth saving.

The Trust Collapse

The greatest irony is that funding solutions journalism probably has accelerated the trust crisis publishers were trying to solve. When readers realize coverage serves outside interests rather than meets expected editorial standards, skepticism naturally deepens.

Gallup polling confirmed in 2024 this trend: public trust of mass media (the largest brands in the production of news) has declined fastest in markets where foundation funding is most prominent.

Readers aren’t stupid—they recognize when publishers have compromised their independence for revenue.

In the end, the readers lose – and so do these publishers

The rise of solutions journalism represents commercial publishers’ willing surrender of editorial independence for foundation revenue. This wasn't forced upon them—they actively chose it.

We have been here before. Yellow journalism showed how dangerous publishers become when they abandon truth-seeking for external incentives. Solutions journalism is the modern iteration of that same choice.

Katherine Maher’s assertion that “reverence for the truth might be a distraction” didn't create this crisis—it simply articulated what commercial publishers had already decided. It lifted the lid on the BS. When publishers prioritize revenue over truth-seeking, they cease serving journalism’s democratic function.

The warning is clear: journalism that does not intentionally seek the truth is not journalism at all. And publishers who trade editorial independence for one-sided truth aren’t saving journalism—they’re destroying it.

Chris Krug is publisher of The Center Square, a national news organization focused on federal, state and local government accountability. The Center Square is published by the nonprofit Franklin News Foundation, which does accept philanthropic support from Foundations. Editorial independence is a prerequisite for all incoming grants. Donor information is not shared with the newsroom. Subscribe to receive updates on how we're changing the news landscape.

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The Transformation of Poynter: From Journalism Trainer to Industry Gatekeeper With Ties to Big Tech and Federal Taxpayer Dollars

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 20:32:50 GMT

Source: What is the Poynter Institute? on YouTube

For decades, the Poynter Institute served as journalism’s premier training ground, teaching reporters the fundamentals of clear writing, ethical decision-making, and investigative techniques.

In the late 1990s, I attended a Poynter seminar designed for mid-level managers who sought to sharpen their skills and take on more significant roles in a news organization. In the early 2010s, I authored content for and helped build one of Poynter’s first online training modules, which focused on ethical news decision-making that spanned editing and photo selection. At that time, I appreciated Poynter’s commitment to teaching and training the industry. What I learned helped me to be a better editor, and the work that I produced helped editors to think about how they could improve their work products.

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Today, however, Poynter occupies a markedly different position in the media landscape—one that raises questions about institutional neutrality and the concentration of influence in American journalism. The cultural shift that has occurred is stark. As palattable as the difference between Coca-Cola Classic and New Coke.

Poynter was not inherently political when I interacted with it years ago. It was neutral.

Then it wasn’t. And it still isn’t.

Where this transformation is clearest is in Poynter’s self-coronation as the arbiter of what is and isn’t factual. That links directly to Poynter’s acquisition of PolitiFact (from its corporate cousin, The Tampa Bay Times) in 2018 and its launch of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). These moves shifted Poynter from teaching journalism to actively producing it, and from training practitioners to certifying who qualifies as a legitimate fact-checker globally. That evolution has allowed it to become the self-proclaimed decider of good and bad, and to divide the news industry into white hats and black hats.

And with that, it became a partisan player. It started calling balls and strikes. Its fact-checks around coverage of Russian collusion, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and January 6 were relevant in real-time consideration because the fact-checks associated with those stories leaned distinctly in one direction. As glaringly obvious were the sins of omission during President Biden’s administration, where his consistent speaking gaffes and steady stream of incoherent public moments–all of which when objectively considered were symptoms of his cognitive decline–were largely ignored.

The financial architecture supporting this evolution deserves scrutiny. Poynter’s funding once relied heavily on tech platforms like Google and Meta (both of which have ended their financial support of fact-checking) along with major foundations including Gates, Knight, Omidyar, and Newmark.

It was also revealed last week through a fundraising letter from Poynter President Neil Brown, who also is on the board of IFCN, that Poynter had accepted significant taxpayer money from the federal government during the Biden administration. That work included the use of taxpayer dollars to train foreign journalists, “in fragile democracies in Central and Eastern Europe,” through the State Department and separately to train personnel at the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which Brown referred to in his letter as “our largest teaching client.”

The focus of that funding structure—while perhaps necessary for Poynter’s survival—created clear conflicts when the same platforms funding Poynter were subject to fact-checking by Poynter-certified organizations.

The IFCN certification process exemplifies this new gatekeeping role. It is a journalistic black box. Organizations seeking platform partnerships for fact-checking must obtain IFCN certification, giving Poynter significant influence over which voices can participate in content moderation decisions. It includes on its advisory board recently retired Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who was among the first prominent fact-checkers in the industry and whose work has been long criticized for political bias.

This concentration of authority in a single institution, particularly one dependent on tech and government funding, represents a departure from the distributed, competitive marketplace of ideas that traditionally have characterized American journalism.

Critics point to patterns in how Poynter-affiliated entities characterize news organizations across the political spectrum. A review of Poynter’s commentary and PolitiFact’s work shows frequent labeling of certain outlets as “right-leaning” or “conservative,” while similar ideological labels for left-leaning outlets appear far less frequently. This asymmetry in labeling suggests an institutional blind spot that undermines claims to neutrality.

The practical impact extends beyond labeling. When Poynter-certified fact-checkers flag content, platforms may reduce these outlets’ distribution in search results or append warning labels. This power to influence reach and credibility creates soft censorship that bypasses traditional editorial competition. News organizations find themselves navigating not just audience preferences and advertiser demands, but also the standards set by a centralized fact-checking infrastructure with a distinct political leaning.

American journalism has a trust problem with the American people, and fact-checking as we know it today throws fuel on the burnpile. Watch this video from the Pew Foundation about trust, released in January 2022, before the Twitter Files reporting came to light. An update today would almost certainly show that trust is even lower.

This dynamic contributes to journalism’s increasing polarization. Rather than fostering a diverse ecosystem where different editorial approaches compete for credibility, the fact-checking infrastructure creates a “with us or against us” atmosphere.

Organizations that challenge fact-checker determinations risk being labeled as promoters of “misinformation,” while those that align with fact-checker perspectives may receive an implicit credibility boost.

The Center Square newswire has had disagreements with Poynter, and the resolutions fell short because they ultimately were defended by pointing to Politifact.

Case in point: When I reached out to Poynter in January last year about a story their reporter Angel Fu wrote about the Baltimore Sun using The Center Square, I was met with outright contempt. My concern then was that Fu had labeled The Center Square as “conservative” without external citation. Poynter administrator Jennifer Orsi, Vice President, Publishing and Local News Initiatives, stood behind the work, writing back: “In terms of the description of The Center Square as ‘conservative,’ I think we are going to have to agree to disagree. My colleagues at PolitiFact -- whose reporting I trust -- have used this descriptor several times in recent years in fact-checks that mention The Center Square.”

It must be great to create cover for your subjectivity with fact-checking controlled by your own organization. Apparently, newsrooms with clearly progressive editorial approaches are OK, but if you are not onboard with that, your product is “conservative.” Keep in mind that The Center Square publishes none of its own opinion work, and that our staff is not granted the liberty of presenting any point of view. And I would point Orsi to the multiple media monitoring platforms not associated with their reporting that label The Center Square’s work as “center.”

But the sad reality is when you focus on taxpayer issues – the size, scope, and cost of government as part of government-accountability reporting – Poynter views that as “conservative” because Politifact says so.

Outside of our own experiences, the controversy surrounding coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election illustrates the tensions created by fact-checking. While mainstream outlets received Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting, subsequent investigations and disclosures have raised questions about key aspects of the story. Independent journalists and media outside of the mainstream that questioned the prevailing narrative early on often faced fact-checks and platform restrictions, only to see some of their skepticism validated by later revelations.

Looking at this coverage from the vantage point of time, you must ask: Were the fact-checkers and accolades biased, or has mainstream media become that bad at telling the American public the truth?

You may recall the Jack Dorsey-era of Twitter, and then the Post-Elon Musk reporting on government influence at Twitter (then X) to suppress certain stories. Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, David Zweig, Alex Berenson, and Paul D. Thacker wrote copiously in 2022 and 2023 about the unholy intersection of government influence and pressure, American journalism, and social media.

This is not to suggest that fact-checking serves no purpose or that misinformation isn’t real. Rather, it’s to recognize that centralizing the authority to determine truth in any single institution—particularly one with specific funding dependencies that it, especially in the case of tech, utilized for algorithmic weighting—creates systemic risks for journalism’s credibility and independence.

The solution isn’t to abandon efforts to combat misinformation, but to acknowledge that Poynter’s evolution from neutral trainer to active participant in content adjudication represents a fundamental shift requiring greater transparency and accountability, but – more important– intentional ideological range.

Right now, as the government has bowed out of supporting Poynter directly or indirectly, it is asking you to pay to keep their interpretation of fact-checking alive. Be wary, because when any institution accumulates the power to significantly influence which journalism is seen as legitimate, questions about that institution’s own biases and dependencies become paramount.

Journalism thrives on competition, skepticism, and diverse perspectives. The concentration of fact-checking authority at Poynter and its certified partners, combined with their integration into platform content moderation, risks creating a monoculture that mistakes institutional consensus for objective truth. For an industry already struggling with public trust, this additional layer of gatekeeping may exacerbate rather than solve journalism’s credibility crisis.

Moving forward, journalism must grapple with whether institutions like Poynter can simultaneously serve as trainers, producers, and arbiters of journalism while maintaining the independence and neutrality their influence demands. The answer to that question will shape not just Poynter’s future, but the future of American journalism itself.

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When Crime Stats Collide: How D.C.'s Youth Violence Crisis Got Lost in the Media's Coverage of Trump Sending in the Guard

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 16:15:49 GMT

Sarah Roderick-Fitch | The Center Square

Visit Washington, D.C. Navigate the Metro after a Nationals night game, or simply try to enjoy dinner in Navy Yard, and you'll understand why District of Columbia residents desperate for safety don't care whether crime statistics suggest a downward trend—they care that crime remains random and that groups of teenagers are terrorizing their neighborhoods with impunity while the media debates talking points.

Juvenile crime, statistics that are not represented in the now-voluntary crime-reporting statistics compiled by the FBI, is at issue in Washington, D.C., and in cities across the country. It is an incredibly difficult subject to report. For that, I point to big-city politics.

So it is important to find objectivity where it exists, and that requires a lot of digging.

Here is something to consider: According to reporting from local NBC affiliate WRC-TV's in April, the number of juveniles arrested in D.C. has risen each year since 2020, with more than 2,000 arrested in both 2023 and 2024.

More troubling still, according to that WRC report: Juveniles accounted for 51.8% of all D.C. robbery arrests in 2024, and about 60% of all carjacking arrests made through April 2025. Nearly 200 juveniles arrested in 2024 for violent crimes had prior violent crime arrests, the definition of a revolving-door system that fails to deter repeat offenses.

Look at the problems with trusting crime stats, but then–wherever possible–the data within the data. It’s telling, and allows us to peer inside national aggregated crime data.

This explains in no small part why President Trump’s federal takeover of D.C.’s police force resonated with many Americans who understand their own hometown’s crime challenges, even as most mainstream media coverage focused primarily on contradicting his claims.

The divergent press coverage of this unprecedented intervention reveals fundamental differences in how news organizations view their role in serving the American public. Let’s talk about that.

The Tale of Two Journalisms

News happens in real time, and reporting moves just a half-step behind. This is important to consider in any comparison of work. And, for the sake of comparison of approach, consider the differences between how The Center Square newswire (TCS) and the New York Times (NYT) covered Trump’s move to allocate additional crime-enforcement resources to D.C.

The New York Times is a contradiction in terms—the most consistent, arguably best-programmed news product in the world, rarely wandering off-brand, with exquisite editing that delivers sharp, convincing writing. The New York Times maintains a consistent editorial framing that aligns with progressive policy perspectives. Watch any Sunday morning politi-talk show and you'll almost certainly hear repackaged NYT stories published earlier in the week, spun further left, spoken as truth.

NYT’s predictability was clear in its coverage of Trump's D.C. takeover. Coverage challenged Trump’s narrative from the jump, headlining its main bar: “Trump Takes Control of D.C. Police, Citing ‘Bloodthirsty Criminals.’ But Crime Is Down.” Their extensive coverage included charts, street interviews with skeptical residents, and, of course it’s somehow related, reminders about Trump’s pardoning of January 6 rioters. It had nothing to do with anything related to crime in D.C., but whatever.

Though detailed, this framing clearly aimed at validating NYT’s readers’ existing skepticism rather than helping all Americans grasp a complex situation.

It is this real-time capture of how stories are told that reveals the difference between journalism that seeks to inform and journalism that seeks the satisfaction of an audience.

At The Center Square, we believe news should inform all Americans, not just those who share particular political viewpoints. Each day, more than 141 million American adults—53 percent of U.S. residents over 18—read a story provided by The Center Square newswire. This reach reflects our newsroom’s commitment to straightforward reporting that respects readers’ ability to evaluate information for themselves.

Our coverage exemplified this approach. We reported Trump’s ”Liberation Day” announcement, included Metropolitan Police Department statistics showing a 35% decline in violent crime, included Mayor Bowser’s response calling the action “unsettling and unprecedented,” and provided reactions from officials across the political spectrum—from Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s praising the move to Maryland’s Democrat Gov Wes Moore calling it, “deeply dangerous.”

Beyond Fact-Checking: The Real Story

Crime reporting data is almost unfathomably imprecise. Since the FBI replaced its Summary Reporting System with the National Incident-Based Reporting System, widespread underreporting has plagued crime data collection.

These inherent inconsistencies underscore why every journalist covering crime should know– and explain to their readers– that recent stats should be considered beneath a massive asterisk.

For example, in 2021 and 2022, New York and Los Angeles city police departments reported no information to the FBI, per the FBI. None. No report was filed. Major cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami have since failed to submit complete data due to differences in local reporting systems or challenges aligning with FBI standards.

This isn’t about which outlets get facts right or wrong— reported crime statistics are fundamentally flawed. As an industry, media continues to get crime stats wrong for one reason: we provide them without context.

What’s more important is this: Journalism serving all Americans must present information in ways that zero in on what is known. When half the robbery arrests and 60% of carjacking arrests involve juveniles (again, whose crimes are not reported as part of the data), dismissing concerns about youth crime because overall statistics have improved fails to acknowledge why many D.C. residents—regardless of political affiliation—share concerns about public safety.

A Washington Post poll in April 2024 indicated that 65 percent of D.C. residents said crime is ‘extremely serious’ or ‘very serious’ and 10 percent said they felt less safe than the year before. WaPo’s headline on that story? “Poll finds growing public concern over safety in D.C. despite drop in crime.” This apparent disconnect between statistics and public sentiment reflects how lived experience shapes perceptions of safety more than reported aggregate crime rates. Try to find that in the NYT story or, for that matter, WaPo’s coverage of the D.C. police takeover.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's explanation deserved prominence in coverage: Youth under 18 can only be federally prosecuted for murder, rape, armed robbery, or first-degree burglary. “Even if they shoot a gun but don’t kill you, I can’t get it,” she said in a news conference that was included in TCS’s reporting. This jurisdictional limitation helps readers understand why federal intervention might appeal to those frustrated by repeat juvenile offenders.

The NYT fact-checking was rigorous—Trump probably did overstate D.C.’s crime rates compared to global cities. Again, pencils have erasers for a reason. Who knows how good global crime-stat keeping is. But focusing primarily on debunking claims risks missing why the intervention resonated with Americans who’ve witnessed brazen daylight carjackings, group attacks on vulnerable victims, and young offenders operating with perceived impunity in hometowns from Boston to Seattle.

There is a reason why so many Americans are disillusioned with the news and why trust is challenging.

Trust the Reader

Our approach at The Center Square trusts readers to weigh competing claims.

We presented Trump’s D.C. policing announcement, the contradicting statistics, and diverse official responses. We included procedural details about the 30-day limitation under the Home Rule Act and explained how 800 National Guard troops and 500 federal officers would supplement D.C. police. Readers can evaluate whether this approach might address crime overall, juvenile crime, or prove overall ineffective.

We’re not here to tell anyone what to think. Fact is we’re journalists, not sociologists.

The media landscape increasingly divides between outlets producing intramural journalism for their own audiences and those committed to informing all Americans. When news organizations prioritize placating their existing readership over fairly presenting complex issues, they abandon journalism’s fundamental purpose: helping citizens understand their world and make informed decisions.

The New York Times’ predictability serves its audience well—they know exactly the progressive perspective they’ll receive on any political story. But this consistency comes at a cost: Important stories that don’t fit the brand go unreported (because, somehow, they don’t matter), and complex issues that do matter and do fit get packaged into predetermined narratives that then become the feedstock for an entire ecosystem of unchallenged political commentary. Again, what’s in the NYT daily becomes the soundbyte on Sunday mornings.

Want to talk Capital-D Democracy? That approach lacks the diversity of thought that a healthy democracy requires and is a result of an abdication of responsibility to accuracy.

The Reality on the Ground

Washington’s crime reality defies simple narratives. It is complex. It is also scary, as the 2024 WaPo poll suggests. Overall, crime may have declined – or it may not have. Depends on how much you trust the statistics.

Yet juvenile crime’s persistence explains why many D.C. residents – and Americans who have experienced or know someone who has experienced the randomness of city crime – believe something must change.

Journalism serving all Americans must acknowledge both realities without privileging one narrative over another.

The question isn’t whether Trump’s takeover will solve D.C.’s challenges, but whether American journalism can help the person riding that Metro after the Nationals game understand both why they feel unsafe AND what exists within the statistics that suggest they should feel safer.

The future for Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and the rest of late-night TV is primed for either a significant reinvention or all-out elimination. Waiting until 11:35 p.m. to watch anything, unless the target demographic is second-shift workers, doesn’t seem like anything that anyone would need to do.

Stephen Colbert didn’t lose his show because he mocked Trump. He lost it because he forgot the first rule of show business: you need an audience to have a show and stay in business.

When you spend every night telling half of America they’re idiots, don’t be shocked when they change the channel. Or stop watching the entire network associated with your show.

When you demand viewers show up at 11:35 PM for appointment television in the age of TikTok, don’t be surprised when they don’t. And when you’re bleeding out, $40 million a year, while your competition on cable is beating you with a smaller budget and smarter shows that draw in more diverse ideological audiences, don’t blame politics for your cancellation.

The Late Show died the same way Blockbuster did—not from some grand conspiracy, but from refusing to read the room. Carson knew you don’t divide your audience. Netflix knows you give everyone something to watch. Gutfeld knows you can win late night without alienating half the country.

Colbert’s epitaph won’t read “Silenced by Trump.” It’ll read “Killed by Math.”

Chris Krug is the publisher of The Center Square. The Center Square newswire service partners with more than 1,250 local news partners across the United States, providing taxpayer-centric coverage of local, state, and national government accountability reporting as part of Franklin News Foundation’s 501c3 nonprofit mission.

The Real Reason CBS Canceled Stephen Colbert: It’s Not Politics, It’s Math

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 12:03:29 GMT

Source: Myotus, Wikimedia Commons

When news broke on July 17 that CBS had canceled Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, citing “financial” reasons, a predictable chorus of political explanations followed.

And, of course, President Donald Trump was somehow central to it. More on that in a few graphs.

Speculate through the tears or the laughter, because this cut is about as polarizing as any one you will see in television, but let me offer you one thing, friend: It’s a hell of a business plan to, night after night, insult half of Americans because of their political ideology while welcoming media-infatuated politicos such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) onto your show to tell the president to “piss off.”

America’s changing media consumption habits tell a story and perhaps the only story here—one where appointment television has become economically unsustainable, and where programming choices that alienate broad swaths of your potential audience only make a difficult situation worse.

Late Night TV is Dying

The Hollywood Reporter revealed some brutal truth in its July 18 reporting: Perhaps none of the big-budget late-night network shows is profitable anymore.

“In terms of linear TV ratings, all of the late night shows are a shadow of their peaks, according to Nielsen data for live +7 and original episodes only: Colbert: 2.47M viewers; Kimmel: 1.75M; Fallon: 1.25M; Meyers: 949K; After Midnight [also recently canceled]: 652K; and Nightline: 827K. According to the media measurement firm iSpot, brands have spent an estimated $32.2 million on advertising on the Late Show this year, while spend[ing] on Kimmel and Fallon’s shows topped $50 million each.”

$32 million or $50 million ain’t what it used to be. Colbert is paid, per industry reports, between $15-20 million a year and the Late Show had in the ballpark of 200 employees.

Maybe it’s just that Colbert can’t read a P&L.

But here’s the unnecessary political drama that some would like to plug into the ending of a show that once was great, certainly was profitable, but lost its way in an era where the end of network television’s stranglehold on information and entertainment is beginning to look like the crash scene in the Great Gatsby.

The cancellation of the Late Show next May is not connected to the $16 million settlement between President Trump and CBS’s parent company (over a manipulated “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign), Paramount, nor is it any form of retaliation or delayed payback.
While Paramount is currently awaiting FCC approval for its acquisition by Skydance—a deal that's been pending since September 2024, months before Trump was inaugurated—this corporate transaction is also wholly unrelated to the show’s demise.
The true reason for the cancellation is straightforward in the show’s economics: According to a report from Puck, Colbert’s show has been hemorrhaging money –– losing approximately $40 million per year.

No, it’s looking very much like the show was undone by demographics, an economic inevitability, but a lopsided political posture that undoubtedly expedited its demise.

The Colbert Problem: Programming for Half an Audience

Colbert’s unrelenting ideological assault left no room for soft-right and many soft-left viewers.

Consider the guest roster from 2024:

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (two appearances),
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (two appearances),
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (two appearances),
New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (two appearances),
California Rep. Nancy Pelosi,
Vice President and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris,
Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg, and
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Media figures who appeared on the show, including: John Dickerson (three appearances), Anderson Cooper (two appearances), Rachel Maddow, and Bob Woodward, aren’t regarded as centrists.

The list reads like a who’s who of progressive politics.

Sure, Republican-ish former U.S. representative Adam Kinzinger appeared, too, but to call those who support Trump part of a cult.

Here’s a critical business lesson: When you program exclusively for one political perspective, and I would think that this is incredibly important at a network level, you’re knowingly and voluntarily cutting your potential audience in half, or more.

The show is built in the New York bubble and performed as if the 400 or so people in the studio audience were the only ones who mattered. And, as Schiff’s appearance the night after the announcement the show was being canceled amplified, the idea that they were alienating half their potential audience is inconsequential. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

When entertainment options are infinite and available on-demand, there’s no reason to subject yourself to content that repeatedly reminds you that you are stupid and that your worldview is illegitimate.

Hell, I can get that pretty much on-demand, without leaving my driveway, for free. (Does anyone else have teenagers at home?)

The Harsh Business Reality

Let’s make a distinction here that is important.

Video is and will continue to play a huge part in the future of news and entertainment. Video is an incredible medium. The Center Square is firmly focused on building meaningful video content, which I am sure you are seeing in local news outlets, across social media, and being clipped into local news broadcasts.

But we are not asking anyone to show up at 7 p.m. – let alone 11:35 p.m. – to watch it. We’re creating it, and then streaming it as quickly as we can ensure the highest editorial standard in the production process. The videos are short, contextual, and they give you the story straight.

All the tears from those who think – or worse, say – that this is political payoff are being wasted. Don’t ever waste tears. You may need them later.

CBS executives weren’t responding to political pressure—they were responding to mathematics. When you voluntarily eliminate half your potential audience through ideological programming choices, and layer that on top of the structural decline in appointment television viewership, you create an unsustainable business model.

The streaming revolution succeeded precisely because it abandoned appointment viewing and offered something for everyone. Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok don’t care about your political affiliation. Colbert’s show was asking people to organize their evenings around 11:35 PM start times to consume content that half of them found politically objectionable.

The Local News Gateway is Broken

Here’s something else to consider: Local nightly news was once the gateway to late-night shows. And this could spell the end for all of what now exists in late-night. Appointment television is your grandfather’s Oldsmobile.

The share of Americans who say they follow local news “very closely” has crashed to just 22% in 2024 from 37% in 2016, per Pew Research—a 15% decline in less than a decade.

If Americans won’t commit to closely following local news, why would they stay up until 11:35 PM for late-night entertainment when they can – and, more importantly, do – watch it on their phones anytime they’d like.

In 2018, 76% of local TV news consumers got their information through an actual television set. By 2024, that number had fallen to 62%. Meanwhile, digital pathways grew from 24% to 37% of local TV news consumption.

The era of gathering around the television at appointed times is over, and late-night shows that require viewers to stay up until nearly midnight are swimming against an irreversible tide.

So, Not Good News for Late-Night TV

Colbert’s show was the king of what the network ratings indicate is a molehill rather than a mountain.

And, mind you, Colbert, whose show had the largest late-night audience among all of the three networks – is not being replaced, the show is being canceled. Gonzo. Meanwhile, Greg Gutfeld’s show at Fox News is hitting numbers above those of Colbert’s – on cable.

Begs a question: Could the financial fortunes at ABC or NBC be any better with their late-night programming? Begs an answer: Unlikely.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel is arguably as fixated on the Trump administration as Colbert. In 2024, he hosted: CNN anchor and Biden decoder Jake Tapper, VP Harris, Jane Fonda, George Conway, Adam Kinzinger, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Again, not exactly a diverse ideological group.

NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, interestingly, did not have a single political figure on his show last year. Not one.

Johnny Carson was the king of late night TV. In his “60 Minutes” interview in 1979, Carson said “I have an aversion to political jokes. I don’t want to hurt anybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to divide the audience.”

Stephen Colbert didn’t lose his show because he mocked Trump. He lost it because he forgot the first rule of show business: you need an audience to have a show and stay in business.

When you spend every night telling half of America they’re idiots, don’t be shocked when they change the channel. Or stop watching the entire network associated with your show.

Colbert’s epitaph won’t read “Silenced by Trump.” It’ll read “Killed by Math.”

The Media Literacy Myth: Why Pennsylvania Shouldn't Follow Washington, Other States Down This Path

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 16:15:29 GMT

John | Unsplash

The Pennsylvania legislature is considering a bill to teach media literacy in schools, joining states such as Washington, Illinois, and Delaware in what proponents call the fight against misinformation.

I want to write about that idea before it becomes a law anywhere else in the country.

But I will offer you an option nearly identical to what they once offered at the Coors brewery in Golden, Colo., which, when I lived in suburban Denver and worked at the Post, was about 5 miles from my house:

At the plant, there was the long tour, where you walked through shining subway-tiled halls, learned about the history, craft, artistry, and industry of brewing beer in the Rockies. And there also was the short tour, where you walked about 20 feet, took a short staircase down to the rathskeller and had a couple of frosty pops. Either way, you left the plant feeling enriched.

Option 1: The full tour, which in this case is probably 1,000 words about why state-directed media literacy initiatives are dumb, don't work, and waste taxpayer money, with some color about why even the privately funded media literacy initiatives are dumb, waste money, virtue signal, and don't work; or

Option 2: You read the next paragraph and then go about your day.

The Short Tour: Everything You Need to Know About Media Literacy

For those taking the short tour: Media literacy requires nothing more than a simple recommendation that everyone—young, old, and those anywhere in between—should broaden their news-media source options as part of a healthy media diet. Every news-media organization has a distinct point of view. Some, like The Center Square, tell you what that is: We are focused on government accountability and the taxpayer's perspective in the news because that once was a pillar of American journalism, but now is largely absent. Some, like pretty much all of the mainstream Big Media organizations and many of the fringe nonprofits, don't. So you should read across brands about the subject matter that you care most about or has the greatest impact on your family, friends, and freedom. That's it. That's the entire curriculum.

The Long Tour: Why Solutions Journalism Is the Real Problem

For those taking the long tour: Accepting information solely from a single source is dangerous now, but not for the reasons these legislators claim. The real danger lies in the fact that so many news-media outlets have forsaken objective journalism for solutions journalism—a troubling trend that even the most trusted institutions have embraced.

Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, once a bastion of objectivity, now teaches solutions journalism as a legitimate approach. This isn't journalism; it's advocacy with a press badge. It’s awful.

Solutions journalism, for those unfamiliar with this academic euphemism, encourages reporters to not just identify problems but to advocate for specific solutions. It sounds noble until you realize it fundamentally transforms the journalist from observer to participant, from reporter to activist. When journalism schools teach advocacy over objectivity, they're not preparing journalists—they're training political operatives with notebooks.

Seriously, if there is something to defund in higher education, it should be any state or federal tax dollar that makes its way to journalism instructors to teach aspiring journalists to be anything other than objective, curious, and transparent.

The MediaWise Debacle: A Personal Case Study in Failure

I saw firsthand how misguided top-down media literacy efforts can be through my experience with the Poynter Institute's MediaWise project. Funded by Google and backed by Stanford University's prestige, MediaWise appeared to have everything needed for success: deep pockets, academic credibility, and a mission everyone could support—teaching people to identify reliable information online.

It failed spectacularly at the time. I think I was blamed for it failing, and I believe that I was replaced by NBC news anchor Lester Holt. Yeah, pretty sure that's what happened, and it still amounted to a popcorn fart of an idea on the execution side because—again—it didn't make sense to anyone.

Wrong Message, Wrong Time, Wrong Messenger

In my time associated with it, MediaWise failed because it was the wrong message at the wrong time from the wrong messenger. For more than a decade, Google has maintained a virtual stranglehold on local-market advertising.

Local merchants who once relied on their hometown newspapers, radio stations, and television broadcasters to connect with local audiences moved their advertising dollars to Google because, frankly, Google had a better product. And because even when there was a time for local-market newspapers and broadcasters to come together to build a unified marketplace through their trade organizations and associations, such attempts failed for a lack of belief that the digital ad marketplace would be anything more than just a passing trend and certainly a lack of investment in zeros and ones on the nascent interwebs.

Seriously, among all the great miscalculations in the history of business, there may have been none greater than thinking local-market reputation would overcome technology. There was a misread of the urgency, the market, the audience, and the competition. Aside from that, it was all good for the legacy publishers.

The Google Problem Nobody Wants to Acknowledge

In a free market, that's how it goes. No complaints there. However, the concentrated power of Google—which sits at the heart of any serious antitrust discussion involving media—is that it holds this dominance over all local markets simultaneously. Facebook's influence shouldn't be overlooked either, as it too became an incredibly powerful local-market connector between merchant and consumer. But Google remains the 8,000-pound gorilla in the room.

Google and Facebook (now Meta, I guess) have had on-again, off-again relationships with local publishers, but for the legacy media there was and will be no putting the horses back into the barn.

For that very reason, the idea that local-market publishers and broadcasters would have any interest in supporting MediaWise—lending it staff time (amid ongoing layoffs) and scarce financial resources (single-digit margins) to connect members of their community with anything associated with Google—represented a stunning misunderstanding of the market, misreading of trust, and absence of emotional intelligence.

You don't ask the wounded to reload the weapon that shot them.

When Government Decides What’s True

It has been about 10 years now that we have seen states across the country wanting to participate in similar folly with taxpayer dollars, adding a dangerous new element: government oversight of what constitutes reliable media.

Seriously? Only government would think that's a good idea.

When government funds media literacy education, it necessarily must define what sources are credible and which are not. Who makes these determinations? Political appointees? Education bureaucrats? Committees subject to lobbying and political pressure? The same legislators who can't agree on basic facts want to teach our children which facts to trust.

The State-by-State Folly

Illinois mandated media literacy education without funding, forcing teachers to become arbiters of truth without training or resources. They call that an unfunded mandate, and I am sure that it works swimmingly across my adopted home state.

Delaware spent $250,000 developing standards that someone, somewhere, had to decide were the “right” standards.

Washington distributes grants to districts that promise to teach the “correct” version of media literacy.

New Jersey created a commission to develop guidelines—as if truth could be determined by committee vote. Democracy!

Each of these efforts shares a fatal flaw: they position government as the ultimate authority on information reliability. This should terrify anyone who values free speech and free thought, regardless of political affiliation.

The Practical Problem Nobody’s Discussing

Consider the practical implications. A lesson plan must include examples of “reliable” and “unreliable” sources. In our polarized environment, these choices inevitably become political. Is Fox News reliable? CNN? The New York Times? Breitbart? The answer depends entirely on who’s writing the curriculum. Today’s approved source becomes tomorrow’s blacklisted outlet when political winds shift.

Government’s Proper Role: None

The proper role of government regarding media is simple: None.

The state should not attempt to interpret media for the benefit of taxpayers, just as it shouldn’t subsidize media companies to any extent.

(Set aside National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—that’s a separate matter deserving its own discussion.)

What Real Media Literacy Looks Like

Real media literacy doesn’t require million-dollar programs or government standards. It requires teaching actual critical thinking skills: logic, reasoning, research methods, understanding bias (including one’s own), historical context, and the economics of media.

These are thinking skills, not conclusion skills. They teach how to evaluate information, not which information to trust.

Parents and communities can handle this without government intervention. Libraries can offer programs on research skills. Civic groups can host debates on current events. Teachers can incorporate primary source analysis into existing curricula. None of this requires government-approved lists of reliable media sources or legislative involvement—and certainly not a dime of additional taxpayer money.

The Dangerous Precedent

The push for government-funded media literacy represents a dangerous precedent. Once we accept that government should teach our children which media to trust, we’ve crossed a line that’s nearly impossible to uncross. Today’s media literacy infrastructure becomes tomorrow’s information control system.

The Path Forward for Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania legislators should reject this right here and now. Instead of following other states down this path, they should trust parents, teachers, and communities to teach children how to think, not what to think. They should focus on traditional education—reading, writing, arithmetic, logic—that provides the foundation for lifetime learning and critical analysis.

The solution to our information challenges isn’t more government intervention. It’s less. Teach children to read widely, think deeply, be curious, and to question everything—including the institutions claiming to teach them the truth about truth.

That’s real media literacy. It costs $0.

That concludes the long tour. The rathskeller is down the steps.

NPR Goes Down under the Weight of Just Three Words: Minimum Viable Truth

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 20:30:30 GMT

National Public Radio building in Culver City, California. Source: Jengod from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution.

NPR CEO believes in “minimum viable truth.” If you aren’t familiar, don’t feel bad. Few are. It's not journalism—it's propaganda with a philosophy degree.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's announcement on Friday, August 1, that it will run out of money in September and thereafter shutter, marks the culmination of a predictable decline for an institution that abandoned its mission in favor of promoting ideology—a $1-billion defunding that didn't happen overnight but was crystallized in one damning revelation.

The Berliner Bombshell: 87 Democrats, Zero Republicans

In May 2021, Uri Berliner, a 25-year NPR veteran, did something simple yet devastating: he looked up the voter registration of NPR’s newsroom staff in Washington, D.C.

The results: 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans.

Not one. That's more politically uniform than Pravda during the Soviet era.

When Berliner presented these findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting, the response wasn’t denial or concern. It was, in Berliner’s words, “profound indifference.”

Think about that. A major news organization, funded by taxpayers across the political spectrum, had created an ideological monoculture so complete that not a single Republican voice existed in editorial positions. By 2023, per Berliner’s essay, only 11 percent of NPR’s audience described themselves as conservative, down from 26 percent in 2011.

When you lose more than half your conservative audience in a decade, you’re not doing journalism—you’re preaching to the choir.

As Berliner would write in The Free Press: “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”

Enter Katherine Maher: NPR’s Middle Finger to Its Critics

Faced with Berliner’s documented proof of ideological capture, NPR’s board had a choice: address the problem or double down. They chose to give their critics the middle finger.

In March 2024, they appointed Katherine Maher as CEO—someone who had never been a reporter, editor, publisher, or broadcaster. This wasn’t tone-deaf leadership. This was a deliberate message: We hear your concerns about ideological uniformity, and we’re responding by hiring someone who doesn’t believe in objective truth.

Here’s where it gets surreal: In a 2021 TED Talk, Maher, then CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, actually said this out loud:

“We shift from focusing on one key truth to instead finding minimum viable truth. Minimum viable truth means getting it right enough, enough of the time to be useful enough to enough people. It means setting aside our bigger belief systems and not being quite so fussy about perfection.”

She went further, arguing that “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”

Getting what things done, ma’am?

This wasn’t a slip of the tongue. This was her operational philosophy. And NPR’s board knew exactly what they were getting. Board Chair Jennifer Ferro praised Maher as “an extraordinary leader who has tackled the issues around reliable and accessible information for all.”

That last phrase—”reliable and accessible information for all”—would prove bitterly ironic.

Meanwhile, I can only imagine what it was like over at the Public Broadcasting System, trying to keep their heads down, trying to figure out where they could send Rick Steves to gin up some interest in PBS, or what they could Ken Burns-ify into some attention. And then they look across the street at NPR, and see the anarchy and chaos happening there.

You could argue, and I don’t know that there would be a tremendous amount of pushback, but PBS’s part in misuse of taxpayer dollars resonates as a distant second in the two-horse race to oblivion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

PBS had gone woke, made some terrible choices in programming, and its news and commentary had become virtually irrelevant through a lack of ideological diversity and fresh ideas. Its news has possessed a decided left tilt to it for years.

But its news division just never had that much impact to begin with. Their nightly program is “watched” – I presume – primarily by people who fall asleep during “Grantchester.” And, to the credit of PBS, I have no evidence that it ever openly discussed manufacturing a minimally viable truth approach to journalism.

One might, however, argue that any funding for PBS news was simply waste rather than a financial instrument for corruption.

To put a finer point to it, as lame as PBS’s news products are, they rarely present the same ideological agita that listening to an hour of NPR consistently produces for audiences in the middle and right of center.

The end to National Public Radio’s federal funding didn’t happen overnight. More like suddenly, and then all at once.

Collapse at the Speed of Sound

Within just one month of Maher’s arrival, Berliner went public with his whistleblower essay—years of internal warnings finally exploding into public view.

He detailed NPR’s systematic failures:

The Russiagate obsession that proved unfounded;
The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story; and
The one-sided COVID coverage that dismissed the lab leak theory as racist conspiracy mongering.

The timing was no coincidence. NPR had answered Berliner’s concerns about bias by hiring a CEO who embodied that bias.

Maher’s response was textbook gaslighting. Instead of addressing Berliner’s data and documented bias, she suggested he had questioned “whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity.”

She reframed his fact-based critique as an identity-based attack.

Within days, Berliner resigned, writing: “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”

The dominoes fell fast. Conservative lawmakers seized on Berliner’s revelations and forced them into a public forum for discussion. Then along comes President Trump’s 2025 executive order, which cited violations of the Public Broadcasting Act’s neutrality requirements.

The result: complete defunding. Half a billion dollars gone from NPR, another half-billion from PBS.

Brothers and sisters, let me tell you: I miss Prairie Home Companion, Click and Clack, Bob Ross, and Mr. Rogers. If reruns of Gunsmoke can outperform new network shows, then perhaps those four could make their own respective comebacks.

Why This Matters

At The Center Square, we operate on a different principle: facts are facts. Truth isn’t negotiable, consensus-based, or “minimum viable.” It’s discovered through investigation, verified through multiple sources, and reported without fear or favor. This isn’t a conservative or liberal position—it’s Journalism 101.

We don’t take government money. We hire journalists from across the political spectrum because intellectual diversity strengthens coverage. And we never, ever, subscribe to the notion of “minimum viable truth.”

There’s no such thing as “minimum viable truth” in journalism. Those three words reveal everything wrong with modern media: the belief that truth is flexible, that narrative matters more than facts, that getting it “right enough” is good enough.

The First Amendment protects the press from government interference precisely because journalism requires independence. When government funds media, when newsrooms become ideological monocultures, when CEOs treat truth as negotiable, the result is inevitable.

The Real Cost

The $500 million in lost federal funding is just a number. The real loss is the collapse of an institution that could have served all Americans. NPR had the infrastructure, the talent, and the mission to be something special. Instead, under leaders like Maher, it became just another progressive echo chamber.

Katherine Maher wasn’t the cause of NPR’s failure—she was its final insult. A CEO who believed in “minimum viable truth” leading a newsroom with minimum viable diversity, serving a minimum viable slice of America. When your response to “we have no Republicans in our newsroom” is to hire someone who thinks truth is negotiable, you’re not fixing the problem—you’re flaunting it.

NPR welcomed in minimum viable truth. They got maximum viable consequences.

That’s not a partisan position. It’s the foundation of journalism itself.

Chris Krug is the publisher of The Center Square, a news service that provides state and local government coverage across America without taking government funding.

The Bias Business: Why It Seems as if News is Picking Sides (And Why We're Not)

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 13:50:57 GMT

Image generated using ChatGPT

Thanks to Max Tani at Semafor for getting me thinking about how incredibly weird the news media marketplace is — on the one day last week when I'd promised my wife I'd actually relax and stare at the backyard.

His piece on how partisan media outlets are struggling to sustain their business models hit on something I've been watching unfold across our industry: The news business has become the bias business.

That’s not exactly a newsflash. But while business might be booming for some, the cracks are starting to show.

Tani's reporting on Courier Newsroom perfectly illustrates the paradox. Here’s an outlet that produced over 500 stories on a single federal spending bill — 500! — but couldn’t get those stories in front of anyone who wasn’t already a true believer.

I mean, it was the One Big Beautiful Bill, but c’mon. Five-hundred stories? That's not a media strategy; that’s an extremely expensive and futile exercise in preaching to the choir.

The Echo Chamber Economy

What we’re witnessing isn’t just bias — it’s the industrialization of repetition. Turn on MSNBC and Fox News at the same time, and you’ll often see the same story told two completely different ways –– over and over again. I pick on TV a lot. Sorry, that won’t stop.

Open your browser and you’ll find dozens of outlets essentially rewriting the same partisan talking points with slightly different headlines. This was particularly clear during the reporting of the ICE raids at Glass House Farms, a marijuana growing operation north of Los Angeles. There, U.S. customs agents and other law enforcement arrested at least 200 people and took into custody 10 illegal immigrant children — eight of them unaccompanied. All this occurred while officers were pelted with rocks, accosted by protesters, and caught in what was objectively a 500-person riot. (You can read more on why you see this different reporting across platforms here.)

There has been a tremendous amount of investment in news-media from Big Left Donors who want Big Left Media to flourish in the present and the future. So many of these left-leaning outlets have perfected the art of the outrage cycle: Take a story, add a progressive spin, republish it across multiple platforms, repeat. ProPublica does an investigation, and suddenly the minions at dozens of outlets are repackaging the same angles with increasingly hyperbolic headlines.

The distinctively right-leaning outlets play the same game — they’re essentially selling the same product with different packaging. There are only so many ways you can write, “the mainstream media is lying to you.”

When Van Jones told the New York Times’ DealBook Summit last December that, “The mainstream has become fringe and the fringe has become mainstream. There are platforms…getting 14 million streams and we’re on cable news getting one to two million,” he wasn’t wrong.

Podcaster Joe Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” is a cultural revolution in news-media and is believed to have more than 14.7 million subscribers and his engagement with that audience is extremely high. Compare that with what the New York Post just reported about the sizes of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC –– the cable-news leaders for decades –– are pulling in each night.

But let’s straight away set aside talk television from the lede here. So much of what you are watching isn’t journalism. It’s content manufacturing, customized for willing audiences.

The Oversaturation Problem

Here’s what the bias peddlers don’t want to admit: They’re flooding the market with lookalike products. It’s like opening 20 pizza shops on the same block, all claiming to make “authentic” pizza, but really just reheating the same frozen pies.

When everyone’s selling the same story — just with different ideological toppings — you create a race to the bottom. The only way to stand out is to be more extreme, more outraged, more “authentic” to your base. It’s not a sustainable business; it’s a sugar high that inevitably leads to a crash.

Core to Tani’s story was the plea that Courier’s CEO, Tara McGowan, made for more funding as the publication’s base and donor support has gone looking for better. Think about Courier Newsroom's 500 stories on that spending bill. Were they 500 different stories, or was it the same story told 500 times? When your business model depends on a rinse-and-repeat deluge of confirmation bias, even the true believers gag.

What an incredible waste of time and resources.

The Diminishing Returns of Repetition

Any business school student can tell you what happens when you flood a market with identical products: margins collapse. That’s exactly what’s happening in ideological media.

The first outlet to break a story with a partisan angle gets the clicks. The second gets some spillover. By the time the twentieth outlet publishes their take, they’re fighting for scraps.

So what do they do? They amp up the rhetoric. They make the headline more inflammatory. They stretch the truth a little further.

It’s not journalism anymore — it’s an arms race of exaggeration. How is that accomplished?

Well, when the story has run its course but the publisher isn’t satisfied with the outcome, whatever nut of a story existed in the beginning has become an oak tree of hot takes, outlier examples that supposedly validate the original notion, and other assorted piles of BS – all shoved down the throats of social media consumers.

The Real Business Problem

The fundamental issue isn’t about left versus right. It’s about lazy business models that confuse repetition of tropes with reporting.

When Arabella-funded nonprofit States Newsroom publishes another story about how Republican policies hurt working families, they’re not breaking news — they’re manufacturing content. When any right-leaning news outlet publishes another piece about media bias, they’re not investigating — they’re recycling.

This model only works as long as audiences don’t realize they’re being fed reheated leftovers. But audiences are smarter than these outlets give them credit for. They’re starting to notice that today’s “breaking news” looks suspiciously similar to yesterday’s outrage, and last week’s scandal, and last month’s crisis.

A Different Approach

At The Center Square, we’ve made a different calculation. We’ve built our publishing model around one fundamental truth: every piece of legislation, every policy change, every government decision ultimately has a taxpayer impact. And we are all taxpayers.

More importantly, the Associated Press (AP), the once sober, stoic, dutiful publisher of important news, has abdicated the space. Suddenly, and then all at once.

Try to find an AP story that objectively digs into the size, scope, cost or effectiveness of local, state, or federal government. You may have to wade through a few dozen stories about climate change and threats to democracy. The government accountability part has seemingly been skipped, because the AP, too, has flipped the switch and actively participates in solutions journalism as well as whatever this pre-2024 presidential election BS was.

CBS Television talked about how they’d been practicing solutions journalism with the Associated Press in 2022. Yes, the same network that settled a defamation suit in early July with President Donald Trump over its editing of an interview with Democrat candidate for president, Kamala Harris.

Look, coverage of the news should not be about race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, height, weight, or your ability to hit a Titleist straight (which, I cannot). The taxpayer angle is the great equalizer — it affects everyone, regardless of identity or ideology. Government isn’t funded by some abstract entity; it’s funded by people. Real people who pay taxes in countless ways, whether they realize it or not.

Our journalistic commitment goes deeper than just following the money. We practice a strict no-opinion approach to journalism. While we republish select op-eds for the benefit of our wire partners, we don’t write our own opinion pieces. Our stories are built exclusively on facts. We give readers information to think about — we don’t try to do their thinking for them.

This means rejecting the trendy “solutions-oriented journalism” that’s infected so much of our industry. You know the type: a reporter starts with an agenda, finds friendly sources who agree with that agenda, and packages it all as a straight news story. That’s not journalism — it’s advocacy dressed up in a press badge. It’s bereft of genuine curiosity, it’s selfish, and worst of all, it deceives readers who think they’re getting news when they’re really getting someone’s predetermined conclusion.

At The Center Square, every story starts with questions, not answers. What’s the fiscal impact? Who pays? How much? What are the trade-offs?

We don't know where the facts will lead us until we follow them.

It’s not as sexy as outrage. Then again, I haven’t heard from our marketing team that they’re considering a swimsuit edition. It doesn’t generate the same social media engagement as partisan red meat. But it builds something more valuable than clicks: An audience that trusts us to give them information, not instructions.

The Coming Market Correction

Markets have a way of punishing oversaturation. We saw it with the dot-com bubble. We saw it with subprime mortgages. And we’re about to see it with ideological media. An already fragmented media landscape is primed for implosions.

When every outlet is selling its version of the same partisan product, when every story is just a rehash of the same talking points, when the entire business model depends on keeping people angry about the same things day after day — something has to give.

The audiences are already getting tired. The engagement metrics are softening. The business models are straining. Courier Newsroom’s struggles aren’t an anomaly — they’re a preview.

Building for What’s Next

While others are doubling down on the bias business, we’re preparing for what comes next. We’re betting that audiences are hungry for actual information about how their government works and what it costs them — not prepackaged conclusions about what they should think.

We’re betting that the taxpayer angle isn’t just one perspective among many — it’s the essential perspective for understanding public policy.

Every law, every regulation, every government program has to be paid for by someone. That’s not ideology; that’s arithmetic.

Think about it: Every ideological outlet can tell you why a policy is morally right or wrong based on their worldview. But how many can tell you exactly what it costs? How many break down the fiscal note without trying to lead you to a predetermined conclusion? How many news sources that are part of your news-consuming diet trust you to form your own opinion once you have the facts?

This commitment to fact-based, opinion-free journalism isn’t just principled — it’s practical. While others exhaust themselves and their audiences with the same partisan battles, we’re building something sustainable: a newsroom that practices genuine curiosity, follows facts wherever they lead, and respects readers enough to let them think for themselves.

It’s harder work than solutions journalism. When you can’t start with your conclusion and work backwards, when you can’t cherry-pick sources who agree with your thesis, when you have to let the facts speak for themselves — that takes real reporting. But it’s the only kind of journalism worth doing.

The Long Game

I’ve been in this business long enough to know that what seems permanent rarely is. The bias bubble will burst, just like every bubble before it. The market will tire of being fed the same stories repackaged as news. The audience will demand something more substantial than ideological comfort food.

When that happens — and it will happen — The Center Square will still be here, doing what we’ve always done: following the money, analyzing the budgets, calculating the costs. Because unlike political narratives that shift with the wind, math doesn’t change. Taxpayer impact is real whether you’re liberal or conservative.

The “Media,” as it is so often called –– as if it is one big, fat blob of a thing –– can only sell the same political story so many times before people realize they’ve already heard it. But everyone needs to know what their government is costing them. That need doesn’t go away just because the political winds shift.

We’ll be ready with the numbers that matter.

• Chris Krug is publisher of The Center Square newswire service

P.S. To those wondering if The Center Square itself leans right — you’re proving my point. In today’s environment, just trying to report without a progressive slant makes you suspect. When straight news seems biased, that’s how you know the market has lost its bearings.

When Government Officials Attack the Press: A Case Study in Accountability Journalism

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 20:00:53 GMT

Source: Sgt. 1st Class Jon Soucy, U.S. Army | DVIDS

When government officials demand corrections to factual reporting, it reveals something important about how they view the press—and how they hope you'll view their policies.

The week of July 7th provided another example when California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office took to social media to attack The Center Square's reporting on $101 million in post-wildfire housing funds. Their response, claiming our article was “riddled with factual inaccuracies,” deserves careful examination — not because they’re right (spoiler alert: they are not right), but because of what their pushback reveals about government messaging versus reality.

The Original Reporting

The news stops for nothing and nobody. That includes natural disasters. While others in news media have run off to the latest tragedy, we continue to report on the massive efforts to rebuild western North Carolina. Long after the last camera crew rolls out of Hill Country, we will continue to focus on the horrific flash-flooding in Texas. And The Center Square hasn’t lost sight of what’s happening in the aftermath of the wildfires that tore through Southern California in January.

In mid-June, a colleague and I toured Pacific Palisades, a stunningly beautiful community that was burned nearly in its entirety by fire fueled by high winds. The aftermath is stark: rusted, twisted steel framework and beams throughout the town. Just last month, the Pacific Palisades was still very much in the clean-up phase, with the downtown area cordoned off or fenced off on virtually every block. Streets were still closed. Massive construction vehicles, cranes and dump trucks were present everywhere.

Staying with this important story, reporter Kenneth Schrupp covered Newsom’s July 8 announcement of $101 million in funding for “multifamily low-income housing development” in fire-affected areas from Pacific Palisades to Altadena, in Los Angeles County. That story included direct quotes from Newsome and California Department of Housing and Community Development officials, who explicitly stated the funding would “contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles” with priority for “geographic proximity to the fire perimeters.”

The Center Square also reported on existing California state law and Los Angeles ordinances regarding rent-protected housing replacement requirements—context that apparently struck a nerve. And while $101 million may sound like a lot of money to you, against California building codes and regulations, that amount of money is a drip toward any solution addressing property and economic losses between $250-275 billion, according to recent Los Angeles Times reporting.

The Governor’s Response

The Governor’s Press Office claimed our headline — “Newsom unveils $101M to build Palisades low-income housing” — was “flatly wrong” because the funding isn’t limited to Palisades.

Let’s examine this:

The Governor’s own statement mentioned “Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Malibu.”
The funding notice specifically prioritizes proximity to the “Palisades fires.”

When government funding explicitly prioritizes an area and officials repeatedly reference it, reporting that connection isn’t misleading—it’s journalism.

More revealing was their claim that The Center Square falsely reported on state law requirements for replacing rent-controlled housing. They insisted “State law does not require rent-controlled units destroyed in the LA fires to be replaced with low-income units.”

The Real Story

Here’s what’s actually happening: The Governor’s office is playing word games. While they claim executive orders allow rebuilding at market rate “subject to local rent control laws,” they conveniently ignore that those very local laws—which remain in effect—contain the replacement requirements reported.

The state funding notice itself reveals the truth. It explicitly includes:

Requirements that 40% of units in Supportive Housing projects go to formerly homeless individuals or those exiting institutions
Scoring preferences for projects closest to fire zones
Density bonuses of 50-80% for transit-oriented developments with income restrictions
Multiple funding streams that can be “stacked” to increase low-income unit requirements

This isn’t about helping everyone rebuild. It’s about using disaster recovery funds to reshape communities according to specific policy goals.

Never let a perfectly good crisis go to waste, some in government may say.

Why This Matters

When government officials attack factual reporting with semantics and misdirection, they’re betting you won’t read the fine print –– that you are just skimming headlines, or gleaning information on the fly. Important to remember when you see this kind of pushback: Government plays politics with everyone, whenever it needs to.

They are not held to any standards for accuracy or fairness –– until they go to the polls.

Moreover, the government is counting on press releases being reprinted as news and social media outrage drowning out substantive reporting.

While The Center Square news team receives and reads thousands of press releases from across the country each week, our editorial standards forbid the regurgitation of information provided by government, organizational, or corporate entities as fact.

In short, we don’t rewrite press releases and then call it good. That gets you fired here.

Still, we have a policy to review any public concern with the work we publish and Dan McCaleb, Chief Content Officer, personally reviewed Governor Gavin Newsom’s complaints –– point by point. No corrections were issued because none were warranted. We did clarify two minor points to make the story clearer to our readers, but every claim in our story was backed by government documents and direct quotes from officials.

This isn’t about politics—it’s about transparency. Whether you support affordable housing mandates or oppose them, you deserve to know what your government is actually doing, not what they want you to think they’re doing.

The Accountability Gap

This exchange illuminates why independent statehouse reporting matters more than ever. When facts were published that complicated the Governor’s preferred narrative, the response wasn’t to dispute the evidence—it was to attack our credibility and demand we parrot their talking points.

Our reporters don’t write stories to please or antagonize politicians. We report what government does, using their own documents and statements. If that makes officials uncomfortable, perhaps they should examine their policies, not attack the press.

After reviewing all claims made by the Governor’s office, The Center Square stands behind its reporting. The facts speak for themselves—even when government officials wish they didn’t.

This is what accountability journalism looks like: Following the money, reading the fine print, and refusing to back down when powerful interests demand you look the other way. Judge for yourself at TheCenterSquare.com.

The Statehouse Gatekeepers: How Elite Media Handed Government the Keys to Press Access

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 14:02:39 GMT

Screenshot | Jonathan Choe video used with permission

In statehouses across America, a quiet war is being waged over who gets to hold government accountable. The battleground isn't partisan politics—it's press credentials.

In Washington state, this spring 2025, we witnessed the latest casualty: A credentialed journalist was turned away from a routine legislative briefing by a government official who declared, "You're not a real reporter."

How did we get here? Follow the thread, and it leads straight to journalism's elite gatekeepers who would rather hand control to politicians than share access with new voices.

The Abdication That Changed Everything

The wheels came off the wagon earlier this year in Washington when Jerry Cornfield, head of Washington's Capitol Correspondents Association, made an unprecedented decision.

Rather than grant credentials to reporters the organization must not have wanted to admit or defend the association's credentialing practices against legal challenges, he abdicated the organization's decades-old responsibility and handed it back to the government.

This wasn't just bureaucratic reshuffling. Cornfield, attached to the Arabella Advisors-funded States Newsroom project, chose to let politicians control press access rather than allow independent journalists into the club.

The Washington State Senate eagerly seized this power, passing Resolution 8638 that restricts media access to legislative wings unless “specifically requested by a senator or senate staff.”

In one voice vote, five decades of press independence vanished. Poof.

The Elite Media's Dirty Secret

There’s a cord running through journalism that spools directly up to the elites—a long-standing cabal of journalists and news organizations that work to keep competitors away from the news.

They preserve their direct access by currying favor with those in positions of power, creating a cozy relationship that serves neither truth nor the public interest.

You may think that all scoops come from dogged, shoe-leather reporting. Far from it, most of the big ones are portioned out to the reporters who play the game.

This gatekeeping is anti- lowercase-d-democratic at its core. During the COVID-19 era, it reached its peak with cries of “misinformation” and “disinformation” used as weapons to silence alternative voices. But the practice predates the pandemic and continues today in state capitols where the “club” decides who’s legitimate - therefore who’s allowed to keep you informed on government activities.

The Center Square - the national newswire I founded and where I serve as publisher - witnessed this system in action when our Washington statehouse reporter, Carleen Johnson, observed a seasoned journalist with valid credentials being denied access to a Senate Democrat press briefing. Despite holding an official pass issued that morning, the reporter was told they couldn’t enter “the wings” where briefings occur.

When pressed, Senate Democrats’ communications director Aaron Wasser revealed his new criteria: “You’re not a real reporter.”

The b*!#sh^t that reporters go through to have the privilege of listening to the b*!#sh^t on legislative floors is an inherent part of daily journalism that the public rarely sees. But it’s there, and it stinks.

Our Fight for Access—And Yours

Sadly, this is just the latest example, but it’s not new. Since our founding in 2019, The Center Square has fought these battles, state after state.

We’ve challenged the gatekeepers in Illinois for years before they relented. And we had to fight through the old guard of the local correspondents association for that, as well.

We’ve demanded access in Pennsylvania, where another Arabella-funded reporter tried to hold out our reporter through specific rules proposing additional burdens on nonprofit media brands. (An attempt that would have hurt a growing number of media companies - more on that in a later post…)

Today, The Center Square is credentialed at every state capitol where we’ve applied for access.

We’re hard-carded media at the White House and regularly serve in the presidential press pool, which means that our reporting is made available to all news-media when the president speaks from inside the oval office or in smaller venues where access is limited by physical space.

I don’t tell you these accomplishments lightly. They are ones for which I am very proud. I don’t like bullies. It took years, a stiff upper lip, and a hell of a newsroom to cut through some of the openly-bias, intentionally-bureaucratic hurdles we faced to be able to report our credentialing success rate.

We didn’t achieve this by asking permission from journalism’s old guard. We did it by insisting that credentialing be based on objective standards, not subjective judgments about who’s “real” enough.

The Center Square publishes, on average, 300 stories per week from statehouses and across the country, every week. We have more than 1,250 outlet partners nationwide that rely on this work every weekday. I think that makes us, by any measure, real. (And if you think there are harsher critics of your reporting than a thousand news editors and publishers each serving unique audiences, I welcome your opinions - ckrug@thecentersquare.com.)

Yet, the fight goes on.

In Washington, the kerfuffle over credentials actually led to the state senate eliminating free movement to the corners of the senate floor (where a reporter could actually have a one-on-one with an elected official), and the Washington house has no credentialing policy whatsoever.

Yeah, well, that aggression won’t stand, man. Washington’s legislature needs to get its act together ahead of the next special session or the start of the 2026 legislative year to ensure voters know what is happening.

Why Statehouse Access Matters

The timing of Washington’s press crackdown reveals why this matters. As The Center Square reported, this restriction coincides with Governor Bob Ferguson signing the largest tax increase in state history—$9 billion in new taxes hitting families and businesses already struggling with affordability. Remember, there are fewer than 8 million people who live in the state of Washington.

State legislatures control $3.5 trillion in annual spending across the United States. They decide your property taxes, business regulations, education funding (and education freedoms), and criminal justice policies. Yet statehouse press corps across the nation are shrinking, creating an accountability vacuum. We need more people with pens, pads, cameras, and microphones haunting our statehouses, not fewer.

Into this vacuum step organizations like ours, The Center Square, committed to government-accountability journalism at the state level. Is it any wonder the old guard and their political allies want to keep us out?

The Dangerous Precedent

Amidst this mess in the 2025 session, an executive at the state’s Newspaper Publishers Association told The Center Square: “Our media has to have access, and we’re seeing a decrease in access.” But, again, this isn’t just about access—it’s about who decides that access.

When journalists like Cornfield hand credentialing power to government, they betray the fundamental adversarial relationship between press and power. When elite media organizations gate-keep to protect their privileged position, they abandon their duty to the public.

Sen. Jeff Wilson warned during the resolution debate that they were moving to “control who gets to talk to when, who, and how.” His Republican colleague, Sen. John Braun, noted there had been “no instance of misbehavior” by press—the restrictions were simply because leadership was “sensitive to media that aren’t 100% on their side.”

The Path Forward

News media has changed. It no longer is controlled by the elites. If anything, the 2024 presidential election showed how little influence that Big Media (network newscasts, cable news, The New York Times, Washington Post, et al) had with regular Americans in the middle. Yet in state capitols, the old guard clings desperately to their gatekeeping power.

The solution isn’t complicated: Credentialing must be based on objective, transparent standards that any legitimate news organization can meet. Not friendship networks. Not political comfort levels. Not whether someone graduated from the right journalism school or works for the right outlet.

Every time gatekeepers—whether journalists or politicians—pick winners and losers in the press room, democracy suffers. The public loses access to diverse viewpoints. Accountability withers. The powerful protect themselves from scrutiny.

The Center Square will continue fighting for access in every statehouse, not just for ourselves but for the principle that journalism belongs to everyone willing to do the hard work of holding government accountable.

Because when elite journalists would rather surrender to government control than share the press room, someone needs to stand up for the First Amendment. Even if it means being told we’re not “real” reporters by those who’ve forgotten what real journalism looks like.

The idea of journalistic competitors determining who will and won’t be credentialed is a petri dish for fomenting corruption.

Then again, petri dishes are typically transparent, which these selection processes are not.

The battle for statehouse press access is the battle for government accountability. Which side are you on?

Witnessing credentialing games in your state? Email me at ckrug@thecentersquare.com

The Media's Original Sin: How Biden's Decline Became Journalism's Greatest Failure

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 12:30:04 GMT

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book "Original Sin" is migrating toward the Bargain Bin, but it's already ripped open a wound festering in American journalism for years. The book details President Joe Biden's cognitive decline through about 200 interviews with Democratic insiders—and raises a question that should haunt every newsroom: How could we have missed this?

Except we didn't miss it. In CNN’s own surveying/polling in August 2023 via SSRS Research, 74% of Americans said that the statement, “stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president,” does not apply to Biden.

This book gaslights the American public about being gaslighted. And that will forever be the real story here.

What Everyone Could See

Let's start with what was plainly visible: Biden's odd and uncomfortable gait, vacuous stares, increasing incoherence when tired. The stumbles. The falls. I was at the Air Force Academy in May 2023 when Biden face-planted over sandbags behind the lectern. It was awful.

According to Tapper and Thompson, staff allegedly discussed preparing a wheelchair for a potential second term. And let's not forget when Biden told the world he had cancer – in 2022. The legacy media had so normalized Biden's incoherent statements that this was never meaningfully probed. In polling by CNN via SSRS in November 2019, the sharpness/stamina question was asked in exactly the same words, and 51% of Americans said he did not meet that criteria then.

But the real story is that nearly nothing else was hidden. None of the falls or gaffes or garble. It was all there, even during the 2020 campaign—broadcast live to millions of Americans who saw it with their own eyes.

The Architecture of Denial

What Tapper and Thompson attempt is revealing the machinations behind the curtain. They describe a tightly controlled "politburo" of advisors who maintained Biden's public image by suppressing dissent and limiting access.

But they themselves were behind the curtain, with colleagues who had access and insights. There's no possible way their telling of this story is genuine. Not even the staunchest ideologue could be so profoundly ostrich-headed and maintain a job in journalism.

The only time I've seen anything this wildly overlooked that was so evident was in the 1990s, during baseball's steroid era. But here's where it gets uncomfortable: Even Tapper and Thompson—journalists at major outlets—are implicated in what they call "media complicity." That's too easy an out.

If the book were serious, it would have interviewed White House beat reporters and invested time with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who related a story about arguing with Biden over whether the president had signed a bill banning liquid natural gas exports.

Talking to real American voters throughout 2024—not just coastal enclave inhabitants—paved the way to Trump winning. It was an all-out rejection of what Americans were being told from news they grew up trusting.

The Question That Won't Go Away

Let's get to the central question: Is it reasonably possible that legacy media "missed" Biden's cognitive impairment? That trained observers with administration sources simply didn't notice what millions watched on their screens?

No. It's not reasonably possible. It’s just not.

The evidence was public, repeated, and observable. These weren't isolated incidents. The media didn't miss it. The legacy media – as a collective – chose not to report it as a crisis.

They ignored the Camping World-sized red flags Biden displayed, from his belligerent interview with Charlamagne Tha God to asking CBS's Errol Barnett whether he was a junkie when asked about cognitive issues, to saying poor kids were just as bright as white kids—all during his 2020 campaign. And while each of those interviews exposed an old-school racism, they were arguably more awful because they were so wildly out of bounds contextually. Seriously, who says things like this and runs for – and wins – a presidential election?

How Journalism Failed

What happened was a collective editorial decision to redefine "fitness." As long as Biden showed up, read the prompter, and avoided major scandal, he was considered operational. Cognitive clarity was deprioritized in favor of policy outputs. The American news media allowed that, unchecked.

Newsrooms made deliberate choices. Many reporters depend on access—their continued presence in briefing rooms relies on not alienating gatekeepers. Raising concerns about Biden's capacity was coded as fringe, conspiratorial, or cruel, even when grounded in fact.

The packaging of the presidency by spokeswomen Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre was so tightly controlled it created plausible deniability. Even seasoned journalists were shown theater, not truth—and many played along.

The Messenger Problem

Here's what makes this even more damning: When some outlets—labeled "conservative" or "alternative"—called out Biden's impairment, they weren't taken seriously. Why?

Because the mainstream ecosystem had pre-discredited those outlets based on who was making claims, not their content.

Most national newsrooms lean ideologically uniform. They dismiss information from outside their bubble. When alternative outlets flagged Biden's decline, the message was filtered through contempt for the messenger rather than evaluated on merit.

Biden's stumbles were reframed as "deepfakes" or "right-wing smears"—not because they weren't real, but because acknowledging them would require legitimizing critics whom elite institutions distrust. And have been telling their readers to distrust as well.

The Reckoning

This book exposed something broken at American journalism's heart. Conservative and alternative media weren't taken seriously not because they were wrong, but because the institutional press decides in advance they can’t be right.

This was not a miss. It was a collective omission—one that should haunt every newsroom that failed to act on what millions could see.

When we stop trusting our own eyes, when we filter truth through tribal loyalty instead of professional skepticism, when we decide in advance which messengers we'll believe and then blindly follow—we stop being journalists.

We become something else entirely. It then becomes propagandizers masquerading as independent journalist. And that is the true original sin.

Chris Krug is publisher of The Center Square and CEO of the Franklin News Foundation.