Skip to main content

Media Bits and Bytes – August 5, 2025

No future for TV...?

Ruben Bolling
  1. CPB Gets the Ax
  2. Big Tech Under Legal Fire
  3. The Democrat at the FCC
  4. Working at a Tech Co-op
  5. The Grasp of Palantir
  6. ADL Backs Clampdown on Social Media
  7. Corporate Media Flim Flam Progressive Candidates
  8. The End of Television?
  9. Bro-casting
  10. That Was the Show That Was

 

CPB Gets the Ax

By Nick Popli
Time

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Friday that it would begin winding down its operations after President Donald Trump rescinded $1.1 billion in funding for the nonprofit, which for decades has helped sustain NPR, PBS, and hundreds of local public media stations across the country.

Big Tech Under Legal Fire

By Rob Larson
Jacobin 

After Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the Big Tech firms continue to be battered by antitrust lawsuits stemming from prior administrations. The cases could even lead to the forced breakup of some of the tech giants.

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

The Democrat at the FCC

By Liam Scott
Columbia Journalism Review

As the FCC’s sole Democrat, Anna Gomez has been outspoken about protecting the First Amendment. She told an interviewer that she never thought she’d see the FCC “so willingly cede its independence to this administration and allow itself to be turned into an instrument of censorship and political retaliation.” Every morning before work, she checks her email to see if she’s been fired.

Working at a Tech Co-op

By Catalyst Cooperative
Grassroots Economic Organizing

Catalyst Cooperative is an all-remote, 8-person, tech worker cooperative based in North America. The coop was founded in 2017 with the mission to make US energy system data more accessible. We filmed this interview to help researchers or coop-curious individuals learn more about what it's like working at a tech cooperative.

The Grasp of Palantir

By Makena Kelly
Wired

The Trump administration has dramatically expanded its work with Palantir, elevating the company cofounded by Trump ally Peter Thiel as the government’s go-to software developer. Following massive contract terminations for consulting giants and government contractors like Accenture, Booz Allen, and Deloitte, Palantir has emerged ahead. 

ADL Backs Clampdown on Social Media

By Stephen Prager 
Common Dreams

Free speech advocates are raising concerns that a new bipartisan bill would force social media companies to censor criticism of Israel on their platforms. Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Don Bacon (R-NE) rolled out the bill, alongside Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Corporate Media Flim Flam Progressive Candidates

By Sam Rosenthal
Common Dreams

The Times’ repeated attempts to twist reality to fit a narrative depicting the collapse of progressive politics is evidence that just the opposite is true: Once again, progressive policies and candidates are on a roll. Grijalva and Mamdani’s wins put the lie to an oft-circulated idea that progressive policy can only win in young, urban areas.

The End of Television?

By David Dayen
The American Prospect

Television as we have known it for more than 75 years in America affirmatively is going extinct, and practically nobody has reckoned with the implications of that.

Bro-casting

By Jackson Katz
Ms.

The Trump team’s decision to have the candidate appear on numerous “brocasts” with popular hosts who have large, predominantly young male audiences had paid off handsomely. They intuited, in ways the Democrats are only now beginning to understand, that if politicians want to win young men’s votes, they need to enter those spaces and appear authentic and relatable.

That Was the Show That Was

By Patrick Murfin
Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout

Long ago before there was a Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert show, even before there was a Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, there was a little thing on TV called That Was the Week That Was which brought political satire and cutting edge social commentary into the unsuspecting and unprepared living rooms of millions.