Category: Media

Court Coverage – From “The Front Page” To The Internet

In the fast-paced media environment of 2025, how has news coverage of the courts evolved since the classic portrayal of “The Front Page”? The Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur drama in the 1920s was set in the press room of Chicago’s criminal courts building, where cigar-chomping, card-playing reporters phoned in sensational stories about local crime cases. Things…

FCC investigations under Trump could hurt broadcasters

President Donald Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr has begun multifaceted investigations of national news organizations for reasons ranging from “news distortion,” running commercial ads on noncommercial public broadcast stations, and DEI programs. The first of these investigations began two days after Trump’s inauguration.  Carr reinstated news distortion complaints against NBC, ABC and…

AP’s last correspondent in St. Louis takes buyout, cutting back on wire service’s continuous presence since before Civil War

 An important cog in the news-making machinery of St. Louis has quietly slipped out of service with the departure of veteran Associated Press Correspondent Jim Salter. For 31 years, Salter supplied the global wire service with a steady diet of hard news, sports and features from eastern Missouri. In 2011 he was part of a…

News Analysis: Media corporations surrender legal protections to Trump

National news organizations embolden President Donald Trump to sue them when they pay out million dollar settlements to Trump when his legal claims are weak and probably would fail in court. That is the consensus of media lawyers and scholars. The media organizations are surrendering the legal protections that New York Times v. Sullivan offers…

Media trends complicate Democrats’ goal to win statewide races

Democrats hoping to break the Republican lock on Missouri statewide races are likely to face a daunting media landscape of news silos, “news deserts” and a decline in newspaper endorsements in the years ahead. In November, every statewide Democratic candidate lost by a substantial margin to his or her Republican opponent – even though the…