Media Bits and Bytes — September 2, 2025
- Saving Digital Democracy
- When Neutrality is a Constraint
- Saving Rural Newspapers
- Reality Bites in DC
- Sam Altman Gets CGT-5 Backlash
- Pondering Techno-Development
- California News Coalition Launches Police Misconduct Database
- E. Jean Carroll's Tell-all Doc is Here
- Trump’s War on “Woke AI”
- What the Tech Lords Have in Store
By Muhammed Bello Buhari
Global Voices
Across continents, the voices that most need digital space are being silenced not by force, but by shutdowns, surveillance, censorship, and biased algorithms. What was once a tool for liberation is now increasingly a site of repression.
When Neutrality is a Constraint
By Lisa Armstrong
Columbia Journalism Review
Does a profession that was founded to reflect the concerns of elites—property-owning white men—and helped shape public discourse in ways that protected their political and economic power, have the mettle to meet this particular moment?
By Sarah Raza
Associated Press
A dozen recently shuttered newspapers across Wyoming and South Dakota are set to publish again, after buyers stepped up within days to prevent the rural communities from becoming “news deserts” where little or no local media remains.
By Jennifer Schulze
Indistinct Chatter
DC residents are flooding social media with critical reality checks on Trump’s takeover scheme. Local news is also doing important on the ground reporting.
Sam Altman Gets CGT-5 Backlash
By Will Knight
Wired
OpenAI’s GPT-5 model was meant to be a world-changing upgrade to its wildly popular and precocious chatbot. But for some users, last Thursday’s release felt more like a wrenching downgrade, with the new ChatGPT presenting a diluted personality and making surprisingly dumb mistakes.
By Walden Bello
Foreign Policy in Focus
The only constraint to AI is the material one of how many transistors can be imprinted on a silicon wafer or computer chip. However, these limits continue to be breached by ever more sophisticated micro-processes that have allowed the number of transistors per chip to increase ten-million-fold over the last 50 years.
California News Coalition Launches Police Misconduct Database
Current
Seven years in the making, a database of police records on misconduct, shootings and use of force causing serious injury or death is now public on the websites of LAist and KQED in San Francisco. The database is free to access and doesn’t require an account.
E. Jean Carroll’s Tell-All Doc is Here
By Matt Donnelly
Variety
A sure sign of authoritarianism is repression of women and censorship and abuse of power. The timing of this film is absolutely important. And people will get to know E. Jean’s entire story. That was always my intent. I did not make this to focus purely on the assault.
By Tori Noble and Kit Walsh
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The White House’s recently-unveiled “AI Action Plan” wages war on so-called “woke AI”—including large language models (LLMs) that provide information inconsistent with the administration’s views. It targets measures designed to mitigate the generation of racial and gender biased content and even hate speech.
What the Tech Lords Have in Store
By João Camargo
Common Dreams