Believe it if you can, but the media industry in this country may have become worse this week. One of the prevailing themes in my podcasts and coverage of the press is the staunch, almost militant manner which failing news outlets refuse to address the underlying causes of their failings. Oh, they might acknowledge that there is a problem – the ratings, subscriptions, public trust polling, and/or layoffs display things rather starkly. And if those were not enough indicators, the November elections were the ultimate repudiation of their narratives. 

Yet the participants cannot bring themselves to address the very influences bringing about these dismal results. Their actions have not altered at all, which is remarkable considering the self-involved nature of most in the industry. These are people who love to look in the mirror, but they cannot look themselves in the eye. This has brought the public to a realization: If these journalists cannot be honest with themselves, why should we expect them to be telling us the truth?

Over the past week, all of this has been placed under the Klieg lights and we are seeing the press industry sinking to yet a new depth. Two items within the news industry have transpired to expose the refusal to make needed change: the Associated Press' feud with the White House, and CBS News having a disastrous Sunday of broadcasting anti-1-A content. The juxtaposition of these events exposes the press anew, with the press industry resembling a kicked-over anthill.

The AP-WH tussle seems trivial to some, all while revealing so much. The White House Communications Office has limited AP correspondents from attending Donald Trump’s frequent Oval Office pressers, as well as relegating them to coach with the press pool on Air Force One. The squealing has been remarkable…and completely off base. Many in the press claim this is somehow a 1st Amendment violation, with freedom of the press invoked on the regular.

To show just how ridiculous this accusation is, can someone explain how an outlet supposedly being silenced can release a statement about it being censored?? The very fact that the general public has access to the complete letter released from the AP pretty much blows apart the claim. They are yelling about how they are being silenced.

The AP is taking a hardline stance of not recognizing the alteration to The Gulf of America, which is fully in their right to do so. But the point is that there are defenders of this decision saying that the AP is proper for resisting this capricious name change demand. And yet, it sure appears to be a decision made entirely because it is a proposed change from President Trump. The news syndicate, in truth, has a history of playing along with numerous other examples of geographical relabeling.

AP changed
McKinley to Denali
Kiev to Kyiv
&
Turkey to Turkiye

But Trump did this so it’s principled to act like babies?
STFU! https://t.co/t5qZVGWwnZ

— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) February 15, 2025

The AP is backed on this because they are the self-proclaimed arbiters of news language, but as we have covered prior, the AP Stylebook is no longer a highly regarded gospel in publishing. Over the years it has been transformed from the source of proper linguistics to foisting narrative agendas through the language. The AP has dictated things such as not using “illegal immigrants” accurately and describing the wanton destruction of the BLM summer as “protests” and not “riots.”  

There is no better example of how the stylebook has become a woke, anti-conservative resource than its refined approach to that very word. It declared that using “woke” needed to be placed in quotations, as the once positive term had become bastardized and redefined. The cause? Those damned conservatives.

Use quotes around the slang term “woke," which originally described enlightenment or awakening about issues of racial and other forms of social justice.
Some people and groups, especially conservatives, now use it in a derogatory sense implying what they see as overreactions. pic.twitter.com/Tlowr9zD3C

— APStylebook (@APStylebook) May 3, 2023

Meanwhile, as the AP is defended by press members screaming with lumps in their throats, numerous examples of censorship support have been pouring forth, and we see no such concern or crying over this. It is a deeply revealing paradox.

Just days ago, CBS News had a galling weekend. Many outlets were enraged that JD Vance dared criticize the European Union for its hostile approach to free expression. (This approach mirrors the outrage currently that Trump and Elon Musk are daring to curtail wasteful government spending.) In response to this, we watched on “Face The Nation” as Margaret Brennan actually suggested that the Nazi Holocaust took place as a result of free speech.

Not satisfied with that abomination of journalism, the esteemed “60 Minutes” had a segment that sympathetically looked at Germany taking steps to criminalize free speech. They literally have word police, with possible arrests made for insulting people, and punishment for simply re-posting what someone else may have written.

Then, as if the program had invalidated itself enough, after setting the table for clamping down on freedom of speech in the name of protections against misinformation, the show delivered misinformation – on the very same broadcast. They delivered a weepy report about USAID workers who were recently terminated, but it was later learned they were in fact contract workers - employed elsewhere - and connected to the highest executives inside the agency, with one being the speechwriter for its administrator, Samantha Power. 

To see these two examples playing out at the same time is a deeply revealing reality of how far lost the press complex has become. The screeching over the AP exclusions is one thing – and honestly, largely expected, to some extent – but to listen to these peals of First Amendment outcries is too much to lay off from scorching. 

The inaccuracy of their claims that the news syndicate is in some way being silenced (while it certainly is not silenced in any form) is bad enough. But in the face of a major network pushing out a pro-censorship narrative, seeing that met with abject silence gives it all away. 

The brevity of an explanation: they want censorship, on their terms. It simply means that - much like control of the news narrative - they also want control of who gets silenced. And the entire reason there is so much yelling taking place today is because they are losing control over both entities.