Media Bits and Bytes – August 19, 2025
- Big Tech’s AI Offensive
- The ICE Alert App
- From MAGA to Meta
- Trump Helps Tech Moguls Evade the Law
- Without CPB, Docs for Broadcast Are on Hold
- Washpost Exodus
- Groups Tell FCC: End Media Mergers
- Christian Militias Recruit on Instagram
- In China: Appropriating Snow White for Women’s Rights
- ESPN vs Spike Lee and Colin Kaepernick
By Marty Hart-Landsberg
Reports from the Economic Front
We need to seize the moment and begin building organized labor-community resistance to the unchecked development and deployment of AI systems and support for a technology policy that prioritizes our health and safety, promotes worker empowerment, and ensures that humans can review and, when necessary, override AI decisions.
By Sam Wolfson
The Guardian
IceBlock offers real-time alerts about the presence of agents – while fiercely guarding the anonymity of its users. Within two months, the app had soared on the charts in Apple’s app store – prompting the US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to attack the app and its founder, claiming they were “obstructing justice”.
By Ryan Adamczeski
The Advocate
The man Meta has appointed to help address “ideological and political bias” in artificial intelligence is a conservative influencer who believes that pesticide turns children LGBTQ+. Robby Starbuck, a failed filmmaker turned failed congressional candidate, has been appointed as an AI bias advisor at Meta with the goal of making the company's chat bot less “woke.”
Trump Helps Tech Moguls Evade the Law
By Rick Claypool
Public Citizen
The Trump administration is ending federal enforcement against lawbreaking by Big Tech corporations. Parroting President Trump’s complaints about “weaponized” government, tech executives oppose protections for consumers, investors, and the public. Their goal: to derail enforcement by federal agencies charged with protecting Americans from their misconduct. It’s working.
Without CPB, Docs for Broadcast Are on Hold
By Anthony Kaufman
Independent Documentary Association
With the defunding and impending closure of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, independent documentaries have become the latest targets of relentless attacks on local economies, small businesses, and public information. Many documentaries in production have been affected, either left unfunded or adrift in terms of their future distribution.
Media and Democracy Project
The Bezos agenda is now apparent—to defang a once-great lion of the Fourth Estate into a weakened watchdog of Trump’s fascist assault on America. Columnist Ruth Marcus’s resignation from The Washington Post was an act of courage and leadership. Courage is contagious and since then other newsroom personnel have departed the paper.
Press Freedom Groups Tell FCC: End Media Mergers
Free Press
Media owners argue that increased mergers and acquisitions are necessary for their companies to compete in a dynamic and increasingly online media ecosystem. They say mergers create so-called “synergies” that allow them to reach a broader audience with more efficiency. In practice, this has translated to newsroom layoffs and closures and the spread of “news deserts” across the country.
Christian Militias Recruit on Instagram
An emerging guard of paramilitary activists are using social media and edgy aesthetics to build a new brand of anti-government, Christian nationalist militias.
In China: Appropriating Snow White for Women’s Rights
A dark AI‑crafted retelling of the Disney classic by Beijing-based screenwriter Wen Jing has captivated millions on social media, sparking debate over women’s roles in fairy tales and modern society.
ESPN vs Spike Lee and Colin Kaepernick
The Guardian
Director Spike Lee’s multi-part documentary series for ESPN Films about former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked a national debate when he protested racial injustice nearly a decade ago, will not be released, the filmmaker and ESPN said. The network’s decision to drop the series comes as the Trump administration has sued broadcasters that reported critically on the president.