Media Bits and Bytes — September 15, 2026
- Bernie and Bannon on the Same Page
- Will Political Cartooning Survive?
- Anthropic Scandals
- Fighting Media Oligarchy
- Amazon’s New Encryption Method
- UK’s Fox News: GB News
- A Solar-Powered Community Network in Kenya
- Truth Social is a Money Magnet
- A Media United Front Against – Muslims?!
- New Orleans Says NO to High Tech Policing
Bernie and Bannon on the Same Page
By Kathryn Watson, CBS News
Steve Bannon, one of President Trump's earliest advisers, and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders — along with a bipartisan group of members of Congress — appeared at the “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington, D.C. They're calling for a “human-centric” approach to developing artificial intelligence technology, and are skeptical of the AI companies leading the industry.
Will Political Cartooning Survive?
By Fern Shen and Mark Reutter, Baltimore Brew
The Baltimore Sun fired its celebrated political cartoonist Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher last year. It felt to him and his fans like the ultimate indignity. But in an even more mortifying development, The Sun has begun publishing cartoons produced not by professionals like Kallaugher. Or by human beings at all. Welcome to the brave new world of A.I. journalism.
Anthropic Scandals
Big Tech Divided By Yuvraj Malik, yahoo!finance
Altman and Musk Back Amodei By Robert Booth and Julia Kollewe, The Guardian
The Whistle Blower By Jon Queally, Common Dreams
By Victor Pickard, The Progressive
We must lay the groundwork now to launch necessary structural reforms the moment we dethrone Trump and his ilk. This project requires a clear analytical framework for understanding exactly why such run-amok media concentration is bad for democracy, and why breaking up media conglomerates is both necessary and insufficient for reconstructing the media we need from the ground up.
Amazon’s New Encryption Method
By Erica Portnoy and Thorin Klosowski, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Amazon recently debuted a new feature for its Ring cameras. The idea is to cut back on the amount of video content available to the company, and thus potentially available to law enforcement. But while it might technically add a speed bump to accessing full video content, it doesn’t deliver nearly the level of privacy we should be demanding from video doorbells and other security cameras.
The Week
GB News went live on 13 June 2021, the first news channel start-up in the UK since Sky News in 1989. Broadcast free on most platforms, it promised to serve audiences on the right who felt ignored by traditional media with a news agenda not governed by liberal metropolitan values and assumptions: it calls itself “the people’s channel”.
A Solar-Powered Community Network in Kenya
By Débora Prado, Association for Progressive Communications
In many communities overlooked by major internet service providers, connectivity is not the only missing piece. Community networks seeking to bridge this gap often face other structural challenges, including the lack of reliable electricity supply. In Kenya, Arid Lands Information Network has turned to a form of clean energy – solar power – as its primary power source in Sipili.
Truth Social is a Money Magnet
By Noah Hurowitz, The Intercept
A lawsuit filed with the Freedom of the Press Foundation argues the president is restricting First Amendment-protected information in a scheme to enrich himself.
A Media United Front Against – Muslims?!
By Eoin Higgins, The Intercept
No surprise that Bari Weiss’s tenure at CBS News would see the network devolve into rank Islamophobia. But the tying of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed to the 9/11 attacks was an unexpected new low. To make matters worse, many centrist Democrats and their allies cleared the way for just this kind of attack.
New Orleans Says NO to High Tech Policing
By Mike Ludwig, Truthout
A $300 million grant program for cities of more than 100,000 people offers to pay for high-tech policing and public safety infrastructure in exchange for local officials complying with federal mass deportation efforts. Edith Romero, an organizer in New Orleans with the privacy group Eye on Surveillance, says local advocates pushed the city away from applying for the grant.