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Extra! Extra! All the News the Media Won't Print
Maybe you can help explain the following examples of editors and reporters going AWOL and suggest how they could overcome their jaded inaction.
May 09, 2026
Editors of newspapers like to say that they cover the newsworthy events “without fear or favor.” Sure. But how can they cover events without the requisite curiosity, without deeply feeling for the public’s right to know, and without breaking through their “comfort zone”?
Maybe you can help explain the following examples of editors and reporters going AWOL and suggest how they could overcome their jaded inaction.
1. You’ll recall the criminal enterprise, led by felon Elon Musk, in 2025 called “The Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE. Trickster Trump allowed Musk to rampage through one government agency after another. In fact, DOGE ushered in a regime that set records in government waste yet received insufficient media attention. By shuttering, dismantling, or closing programs and whole agencies serving people’s needs—health, safety, and economic support and protections—the Musk-Trump DOGE left crumbling agencies doing little or nothing with hamstrung staff.
There is sprawling corruption and waste inside the government, causing devastating and real waste by not preventing sicknesses and injuries, and forcing consumers deeper into personal debt for necessities such as healthcare, housing, food, and transportation.
With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed.
Since DOGE began to wind down last summer, after Musk exited as a hyper-wealthy fugitive from justice, there have been no thorough investigations by Congress nor by the inspectors general, most of whom President Donald Trump illegally fired very early on in his dictatorial regime.
Not a day goes by without Trump unilaterally wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on his White House ballroom, on further larding runaway Pentagon spending. Wasteful and unnecessary military attacks, and the firing of government auditors, watchdogs, irreplaceable experienced managers, and first responders to disasters all contribute to freezing vital government services.
2. Why has the media not covered the legislative drive in New York’s state legislature to end the 45-year-long rebate of a tiny sales tax on stock transactions? Minimally estimated at $15 billion a year collected and electronically rebated back to the brokers, the bill S01237-A allocates the revenues to mass transit, education, healthcare, and the environment (visit greedvsneed.org for more information on the campaign to pass this legislation). Two years ago, the sponsoring lawmakers led a demonstration before the New York Stock Exchange building. No coverage. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani needs this money for his people-serving programs, yet he has been totally silent about ending the rebate. No reporters are asking him why?
Over the last eight years, I have spoken to seven reporters and two business editors, who say that it is a good story, recently made better by Mamdani not speaking out about this proposal. The journalists said they would get back to me. None have. That’s not indifference from the top; that’s silent censorship! Only the Amsterdam News wrote a long feature on this topic. The rest of the New York City media balked. Shame on The New York Times and the New York City daily newspapers.
3. The vast death undercount in Gaza (over 600,000, not the reported 75,200) is explained away by both the mainstream and independent media. Reporters say they have no reliable estimate of the enormous death toll. Nonsense. Dig in and investigate! Various disaster casualty specialists have estimated deaths at hundreds of thousands resulting directly from Israeli military genocidal violence and indirectly from the related absence of food, water, healthcare, medicine, fuel, and electricity, blocked by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. One expert on bombing casualties, professor emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, calculated that the TNT volume of Israel’s bombs, missiles, and artillery was the equivalent of six or more Hiroshima atomic bombs and more devastating because of today’s precision targeting of this tiny enclave of crowded, defenseless civilians.
What other ethnic group would have its death toll underestimated by nearly 90%? (See my March 28, 2025 column “The Vast Gaza Death Undercount—Undermines Civic, Diplomatic, and Political Pressures” and my February 21, 2025 column “Stop Repeating the Vast Undercount of Gazan Deaths. It Is Ten Times Greater.” Also see “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount” in the August-September 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen.) A more accurate estimate matters morally and intensifies the political, diplomatic, and civic pressure to stop the killing and to compel the Israeli regime to fully allow sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza to help the starved, sick, and dying in this ravaged land. (See Dr. Feroze Sidhwa’s report, “The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”). The calculating media plays dumb.
4. The Democrats on Capitol Hill have been very willing to oust their colleagues accused of sexual harassment or assault. Pushed out were Congressman John Conyers in 2017, Senator Al Franken in 2018, and Congressman Eric Swalwell in 2026.
Yet when it comes to the far greater order of magnitude of offenses by the craven, sadistic, sexual abuser of women (over 60 women have dared to provide credible experiences of Trump’s abuses, and one woman has won a tort lawsuit against him). Since 2016, the congressional Democrats have largely looked away.
In early 2020, I delivered personally to over 100 Democratic members of Congress, most of them women, a lengthy letter detailing the case for congressional hearings on Trump’s felonious aggressions (See the OPEN LETTER TO THE WOMEN IN CONGRESS, February 24, 2020). I met staff who agreed that some action was necessary, but said it was up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi or that hearings would have little impact on Teflon Trump and be ineffective. Suffice it to say that only two members of Congress formally acknowledged receipt of the letter without comment. The rest ignored the letter, as did several women’s groups known for focusing on sexual harassment and assault against women. No media coverage. No interest at all in this contradiction by reporters. Read the letter; your observations are welcome.
5. With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed. Fast-rising tides could occur were the retired presidents, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even G.W. Bush, to come out of their luxurious lairs and mobilize pressure to impeach Trump. The serious entry into this struggle to save the Republic and the Constitution for which it stands would electrify the mainstream media and the frustrated citizenry. Such an effort could quickly and easily attract the requisite funds needed to mobilize such an effort to every congressional district. Feeling the heat, Democrats in Congress would commence publicizing “shadow hearings” and further splinter the once iron-clad sycophancy for Trump by the GOP, who are terrified by their prospects in November.
Trump himself daily provides more vivid evidence of impeachable offenses. (See, H.Res. 1155). He can’t help himself, believing he can continue to get away with everything he does, no matter how extreme.
We know why there is reluctance by the ex-presidents. They would be assailed by Trump and the Trumpsters. They would be accused of having committed many of the same or similar crimes when they were in the White House. True for G.W. Bush in Iraq and Joe Biden in Gaza, for starters. However, this is an occasion for declared regrets and redemption as they pursue the removal from office of Donald Trump, a dangerously unstable, megalomaniacal tyrant who is perilously wrecking, endangering, and weakening our country. MOREOVER, WITH TRUMP, THE WORSE IS YET TO COME, MUCH WORSE AND SOON.
Do the former presidents want to stay on the sidelines and have their inaction on their conscience for historians to record? The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said wisely: “Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events.”
Why don’t the reporters ask the former presidents the obvious questions? How about some editorials? Or op-eds?
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When Covering Trump, Pay More Attention to the Team Behind the Curtain
While we’re kept dizzy and disoriented by Trump's onslaught, a behind-the-scenes team, which consists of players like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the tech broletariat, are quietly busy with the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
May 06, 2026
I’m old enough to have been politically cognizant, admittedly less so for a couple of the earliest, of 13 presidents (14 if you count one of them twice). Through all of those decades and all of those administrations nothing comes close to the way the current regime takes up ALL THE AIR IN THE ROOM! In fact, dare I say, no one has ever seen anything like it. The fire hose is so voluminous, ubiquitous, and inescapable that it literally takes one’s breath away.
How is this gargantuan enterprise sustained? I have a theory that President Donald Trump (or whoever are the real masters puling the strings on the public puppet) has at least two teams at work constantly. One team is in charge of producing the daily (or hourly or minute-to-minute) outrage and distraction. This is the team that has given us the Gulf of America, the takeover of Greenland, the cancer-causing windmills, the never-ending toilet flushing and never-working showers, the fight with the pope, etc., and then the really crazy stuff like the current war.
While we’re kept dizzy and disoriented by this onslaught, the other team, which consists of players like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the tech broletariat, and other bastions of the oligarchic overlords, are quietly busy with the “deconstruction of the administrative state” (as Steve Bannon put it so aptly early on). At least those parts of the administrative state that serve the more general public interests. The parts that serve elite interests, however, like the military and their domestic adjuncts in the militarized police, the repressive courts and “justice” system, and the subservient elements of the media, are richly endowed and strengthened.
For just a moment, I’d like to dwell on the central role of the media (in its legacy and social forms) both in amplifying and downplaying the crazy as well as ignoring, minimizing, or trivializing the serious. Right now, both of these outcomes are accomplished through one certain mechanism, which I’ll name presently. One way that I try to keep up with the sometimes subtle changes in the inflections in the news cycle is by maintaining an evolving and revolving list of key words or phrases that become especially annoying, but through their (over)use capture an essential dominant characterization of events. Over the course of the past several months, and particularly at the height of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement invasions, the phrase du jour was “appears to contradict,” almost always in the circumstance of video footage putting the lie to the lies of administrative officials.
What might happen if serious journalists finally said enough is enough with the spectacle and distraction?
In a similar vein, and most often in the context of displaying the utter incompetence and buffoonery of administrative nominees or officials facing congressional “oversight,” we were repeatedly subjected to the slight variant phrase, “And he (or sometimes she) brought the receipts.” And finally, along these same lines, the now ubiquitous, “He (and again, sometimes she) said the quiet part out loud.”
What all of these anodyne formulations have in common is that they all highlight the crazy or horrendous without really calling them out explicitly. Which brings me to the current term of art, which because of its complete inadequacy is the most dangerous and enabling of all: sanewashing. This flaccid, hand-wringing, bland lament is now so easily deployed that those uttering it seem completely oblivious to its actual implications. Here the more “conscious” in the media have the opportunity to lodge a complaint against their less aware colleagues or competitors without themselves then having the obligation to call things out as they really are.
But do things have to be this way? I understand the exigencies that accompany access-requiring reporting, and I also understand the necessity for profit maximization for “news” organizations. But what might happen if serious journalists finally said enough is enough with the spectacle and distraction, and stopped covering the non-stop shit show that Team One puts out, and instead started to provide in-depth, relentless coverage of the activities of Team Two. The outrage and tantrums that would come from the main inhabitant of the White House at not being given constant attention, which could be covered as the lunacy they are, would produce enough controversy to guarantee viewer- and readership and healthy profits. And we could all use this breath of fresh air.
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Trump Continues to Falsely Claim He Eliminated Taxes on Social Security
The mainstream media need to highlight this deception.
May 05, 2026
At a campaign-like rally at The Villages, a retirement community near Orlando, Florida, President Donald Trump continued his campaign of deception about his record on Social Security. As he has many times in the last several months, Trump falsely claimed that his “One Big Beautiful Bill” eliminated taxes. This time however Trump took his campaign of deception to a higher level. The background for Trump included the words “Golden Age for Your Golden Years” and “No Tax on Social Security.”
Unfortunately, many in the mainstream media simply ignore Trump’s continued falsehoods on Social Security. Let’s look at the facts. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” did not eliminate taxes on Social Security. Indeed, the legislative process, “reconciliation,” which the Republicans used to pass the legislation, prohibits these types of changes in Social Security.
Rather than eliminate taxes on Social Security, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” according to CNN included some temporary tax cuts for certain Social Security beneficiaries:
Instead [of eliminating taxes on Social Security], the legislation will provide senior citizens with a $6,000 boost to their standard deduction from 2025 through 2028. The benefit will start to phase out for individuals with incomes of more than $75,000 and married couples with incomes of more than $150,000.Trump, GOP lawmakers, and administration officials have repeatedly claimed the package eliminates taxes on Social Security benefits. But that is not in the legislation, and the enhanced deduction would not be available to everyone who receives monthly payments from the agency—like people who elect to start receiving benefits at 62 but who are not yet 65.
The Bipartisan Policy Center points out that the Social Security changes in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will not help lower-income older Americans:
The additional $6,000 tax deduction for seniors will not benefit households with taxable income below the enhanced standard deduction. Because Social Security benefits—a major source of income for older Americans—are not counted in taxable income (see below) for approximately half of beneficiaries (and only partially counted in taxable income for the other half), the increased standard deduction in OBBB means that many older Americans with low income will not receive any benefit from the additional deduction.
While the benefits of the Social Security changes in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” have been grossly overestimated, not nearly enough attention has been focused on the damage it did to the Social Security program. The fact is that the bill increased Social Security’s fiscal problems. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reported last year that:
The Social Security and Medicare Trustees estimated in their 2025 annual reports on the programs that the retirement and hospital trust funds will become insolvent in 2033—only eight years from today. We estimate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) would accelerate Social Security and Medicare insolvency by a year, to 2032. That’s when today’s 60-year-olds reach the full retirement age and when today’s youngest retirees turn 69.
Social Security can be a difficult topic to cover. However, it is the federal program that impacts the most Americans. Literally millions of Americans depend on the program. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), “Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 39% of men and 44% of women receive 50% or more of their income from Social Security. and 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income.”
I understand the mainstream media’s reluctance to continually report on Trump’s continued falsehoods about Social Security. However, the media has an obligation to call out Trump when he gets it wrong on Social Security. Millions of older Americans and their families are counting on the media to hold Trump accountable. As citizens, we have an obligation to hold our elected officials accountable as well.
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