Media Profiles In Sycophancy and Cowardice:

Knowing The People & Institutions Falling Woefully Short Of Its Mission To Journalism & Investigative Reporting in the Trump Era

Feel free to check the past Biden Era archives and follow the editions to come in the Trump Era on Substack, Medium, and LinkedIn, including those on the 2024 Autopsy, Bench-Building, DOGE News, Project 2025 Authoritarianism, Progressive Populism, and more (First Come, First Serve!).

Graduation is over. Now back to work here.

Via Trustworthy Media

A quick news recap for this weekend:

Trump Cabinet members sold millions in stock before the tariff market crash

NC Republicans gained control of the state’s elections board in one of the most crucial swing states for 2026

Colorado’s Democratic Governor vetoed a bill to repeal right-to-work statewide

Gaza’s last hospital for cancer patients officially shuts down

Libraries cut back on services and staffing as Trump seeks the disbandment of the Institute of Museum and Library Services

Are Democrats getting ready to cave in and let Republicans pass a crypto bill that awards Trump and his rich buddies with foreign influence and crypto corruption? Tell your lawmakers to unequivocally vote NO on the GENIUS Act

The GOP’s budget resolution would remove the gun silencer tax, further handing out a bailout for the gun manufacturing industry. Seriously, who needs a silencer to defend him or herself?

The budget proposal also seeks to kill direct tax filing following a surge of lobbyists from Intuit, the owner of TurboTax.

The bill includes capital gains tax exemptions for wealthy donors who contribute to private schools and vouchers

The tax plan even features the nonprofit killer bill mentioned on this blog earlier this year which would effectively defund nonprofit organizations deemed as “extreme” or “terrorist” by the Treasury Secretary

Another provision the GOP wants to sneak into the bill includes a 10-year pause on state AI regulation efforts

And the Trump Administration is looking at a denaturalization campaign to send US citizens to El Salvador

It is no wonder then that not only hundreds of American political scientists and scholars say the US is rapidly descending towards autocracy, but that global perception of the US is actually worse than that of China

Now to the subject of the day very relevant to these news stories above.

Let me say for a preview disclaimer that when I call out those in the media who aren’t doing enough in this post, there are still those holding Trump’s feet to the fire in an effective, wholly factual manner.

There are plenty of journalists and reporters trying to hold President Trump and other politicians on both sides of the aisle accountable for their actions at such a critical juncture in our democracy: for example, Rachel Maddow and her team, Kaitlan Collins and her show, Anderson Cooper and his 360 team, Margaret Brennan and her staff at Face the Nation, David Muir and company at ABC News, the staff at PBS and NPR currently under siege, the Associated Press, Reuters, and more.

Some, of course, have more room for improvement than others. For example, in not going after every single shiny object on Trump and keeping the focus on the campaign promises of 2024. We need the press to act like the press—not tabloids or the paparazzi.

However, what I really want to chronicle here—for the eyes of history—are those who capitulated and gave up, knowing what they’re doing is wrong and otherwise need to grow a spine.

John F. Kennedy wrote about Profiles in Courage. Today, I write about Profiles in Cowardice & Sycophancy to the Trump Regime:

Jake Tapper: Once one of the fiercest critics of Donald Trump, Jake Tapper all but surrendered to the idea that what Trump has done is equivalent to traditional politics and business-as-usual. In fact, if you were a mainstream media detractor, you would probably have called Jake Tapper a Trump alarmist throughout Trump’s entire first term.

But now, as I wrote about in a past paid subscribers post, he makes excuses for Trump and plays by the new strongman’s rules. Whether it’s hawking his book on Joe Biden’s “cognitive decline” every night for months (where have you gone Cronkite, Brinkley, and Koppel?), obeying the “Gulf of America” censorship employed by the White House, claiming Trump had “legitimate grievances” against the judicial system, and sounding the melodrama on Democrats’ 2024 aftermath ad-nauseum.

It’s one thing to do actual reporting on Biden’s aging over time, as Carl Bernstein did last year. It’s another to try to hawk a book off of information already widely reported and disseminated to the public. His tales are nothing more than an overly-hyped nothing burger.

One might say Jake Tapper is playing political footsie trying to please everyone by taking the side of popular public opinion; anti-Trump in the first term, and more Trump-friendly in the second. Hardly a model journalist for young people to emulate.

David Zaslav: David Zaslav represents exactly why corporate executives should not have control over Big Media (owning the company that runs CNN). This is the guy who desired a presidential administration—AKA not Biden—who would allow more mergers & acquisitions. He said after Election Day 2024 that Trump would be great for allowing more business consolidation in the media world.

He even considered a bid to have Donald Trump Jr. host his own show before it was knocked down in Warner Bros. A total stain to the media ethic. By the way, this guy makes $50 million at least for doing nothing besides overseeing a failed media empire with staffing layoffs and shakeups on a regular basis.

Mark Thompson: An underling of David Zaslav, this CNN head reportedly pressured anchors such as Anderson Cooper and Dana Bash on Inauguration Day not to go hard on Donald Trump negatively. No wonder John King has been sent to Media Siberia.

And Mark is still at it, telling CNN to not “throw punches” at Donald Trump. Like investigative journalism has ever been handled with kiddy gloves before.

Scott Jennings: Scott Jennings is not a journalist, but he has a megaphone merely to spew out the usual hackneyed and trite MAGA slogans and “arguments” at will. This guy lambasted Trump on everything from January 6, to his attacks on Mitch McConnell, to 2020 election denial, and personal attacks generally. But now, he has become the biggest suck-up to Trump outside of conservative media, in which he incites outrage and controversy at every possible opportunity.

This, from the same guy who received a pay raise as a CNN commentator while reporters and producers are being laid off. Wow.

Scott Jennings is no Robert Novak, George Will, or even Shermichael Singleton, that’s for sure.

ABC News Executives: ABC News management facilitated the shaky pattern of media shakedowns and capitulation by settling with Donald Trump over a defamation lawsuit—a classic tactic of Don Trumpeone—which now extends to lawsuits against CBS News and the Des Moines Register pollster.

Shari Redstone: As the CEO of Paramount, which owns CBS News, Redstone owes herself an obligation to defend the media’s integrity and commitment to investigative reporting. But her influence of 60 Minutes is the best example of why media distrust peaks at an all time high.

In 2023, she attended a “summer’s camp for billionaires” in Sun Valley, Idaho which featured then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as a fellow attendee. Raimondo would then be interviewed by 60 Minutes’ correspondent Lesley Stahl 3 months afterwards. All the while, as early as the 2000s up to the 2010s and 2020s, Redstone donated to RI Democrats running for state office, done business in Rhode Island for the entertainment industry, and was even scrutinized in 2024 by the Employees’ Retirement System of RI for concern over their pension assets.

I think I just found a weak link behind why a tougher segment on Raimondo was never aired.

Now, in 2025, Redstone extended similar overreach to the 60 Minutes team, pressuring correspondents to “delay sensitive stories about Trump” until Paramount completed its merger with Skydance. Then, she ran out the longtime executive producer after interfering in his editorial decisions scrutinizing the Trump-Vance White House.

Redstone is reserving herself a special place with Zaslav in the Media Wall of Shame.

The Washington Post: The Washington Post must be ashamed of its ownership in Jeff Bezos, who decided to muzzle criticism of Donald Trump within the newspapers. This year, it was the editorial pages. Who knows what will go next.

Only under Bezos’s recent management could The Washington Post face such a massive level of staff exodus, low morale, and declining subscriptions. And maybe that is the ultimate goal of Bezos on behalf of Trump.

The New York Times Editors: For those who looked at the New York Times election coverage in 2024, you will be sorely disappointed by how they covered (for) Donald Trump in their sane washing. Instead of quoting his remarks, they paraphrase Trump and his 1st grade-vocabulary with summaries like “Donald Trump invoked his long-held fascination with genes & genetics” (this was an article about Donald Trump saying immigrants “poison the blood” of the country). Seriously one of their headlines.

Some of the editorial decisions on titles and paraphrasing are dreadful so far; and their own reporters and correspondents notice its bad reception.

Lifestyle Coverage: For those who think we should move to lifestyle coverage now that Donald Trump was inaugurated President after blistering the airwaves with Trump 2024 campaign rally clips, shame on you. This is no time to let up on the scrutiny; it is the time to double down on it.

The Media Generally: The media as a whole has a lot of work to do in focusing on the issues that matter to people; not just getting the clicks and likes to a headline. Corporate media is too focused on the interests and voices of Wall Street, leaving out important voices in the process.

I mean, take this as an example. When have media outlets talked about corporate greed on a regular basis? How about the position of unions as a result of bad free trade agreements? How about consolidation in the media business, as well as in agriculture? How about just saying the simple words “inequality” and “oligarchy?” The media can do a far better job covering these issues that gave rise to Donald Trump than they have up to this point.

Yes, the media has a long way to go in model reporting for the Trump era and the Second Gilded Age. Don’t hold your breath for it though. Uncompromised Democrats, for now, are the one of the few real guardrails left between American democracy holding and full-blown right-wing oligarchy and authoritarianism prevailing.

But can we dare to hope for the media—new forms and old—to rise to the challenge and eventually hold Trump accountable before it is too late? We can and we must. As the Washington Post has said in its better days, “democracy dies in darkness.” And a free press is that light shining in the darkness.

And if you have any other observations or comments, leave them down below this post.