You never know who’s reading…
“Every once in a while a story you write as a journalist changes someone’s life.”
New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote those words as she shared the story of Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 28-year-old Christian convert who fled religious persecution in Iran; paid a smuggler to sneak her across the southern border; and was flown from the US to Panama in an early demonstration of President Trump’s deportation agenda.
Fassihi and a colleague profiled Ghasemzadeh in February 2025. A Canadian couple read the piece and wanted to help. “They mobilized, against all odds, and brought her to Canada,” Fassihi wrote on X this week.
Fassihi wrote this follow-up story about the “happy bookend” to her earlier work. It’s an excellent reminder that you never know who’s reading or watching, and a rejoinder to the cynicism that sometimes accompanies journalism.
Liam Reilly writes: The three Stars and Stripes staffers fired by the Pentagon last week are mounting a First Amendment challenge to their ouster.
Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer and reporter Lara Korte sued the Defense Department yesterday, alleging they were unlawfully pushed out for publicly defending the outlet’s editorial independence — and in retaliation for recent reporting on the deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The trio is seeking to block their terminations and overturn the Pentagon’s repeal of longstanding rules protecting Stars and Stripes’ independence. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment. Read my full story here…
Trump “took aim at Fox News correspondent Jonathan Hunt on Thursday, slamming the reporter’s recent coverage of the Iran War as ‘inaccurate,’” TheWrap’s Alyssa Ray recapped here.
Trump posted the message while apparently watching Bret Baier’s “Special Report.” He wrote that Baier “should straighten out his flunkies, for a change!”
What happened next was unusual: Baier responded to Trump live on “Special Report,” defended Hunt, and corrected Trump’s post on-air. Here’s the 57-second clip on X.
Trump signed an executive order yesterday renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” his latest escalation in a trade war with Canada. My first thought as a media observer was: Here we go again.
When Trump rebranded the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” last year, it kickstarted a press-freedom fight in which the Trump White House punished The Associated Press for refusing to adopt the new name, prompting a (still ongoing) First Amendment lawsuit.
So now does the White House demand the AP call it “Lake America”? Does it threaten access again? And what do other news organizations do? From what I’ve seen so far, most outlets are putting “Lake America” in quote marks…
Andrew Kirell writes: One of this week’s most interesting media-related stories might also be the hardest to follow. So let me try to explain.
The Bulwark’s Will Sommer first chronicled the bizarre saga of Sarah B. Rogers — a senior State Department official and Trump’s nominee to replace Kari Lake atop the USAGM — trying to feed MAGA influencer Jennica Pounds, aka “Data Republican,” official documents for an exposé.
Pounds, who was credentialed as part of the Pentagon’s new anti-press “press corps,” apparently misunderstood this basic sourcing arrangement and publicly accused Rogers of trying to entrap her into “treason,” triggering what Sommer branded a “MAGA propaganda circular firing squad,” with pro-Trump allies accusing each other of “deep state” treachery.
But the fiasco yielded a bigger revelation: The Pentagon confirmed to Sommer that Pounds has also been quietly working there since July as a “special government employee.”
Rogers’ documents were supposed to prove a Biden-era “censorship-industrial complex” the State Department had spent 17 months promising to expose, MS NOW’s Brandy Zadrozny reported. Instead, Zadrozny wrote, they “proved nothing.” Even Pounds agreed, writing that “the actual documents were nothingburgers.”
>> Sommer wrote yesterday that Pounds appears to be part of a wider “Pentagon troll army.” She and at least three other MAGA influencers who’ve worked for, sought jobs or developed ties with the Pentagon have “come to serve as reliable online allies” for Pete Hegseth…
Fears about Trump’s wrath “loomed large” over a nonprofit’s decision not to license a Robert Mapplethorpe portrait of Roy Cohn for the cover of a new biography, NYT’s Michael Grynbaum reports.
For “American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump,” out next week, author Kai Bird wanted to use a striking 1981 photo of Cohn, the notorious NYC fixer and Trump mentor. But the late photographer’s foundation declined, Grynbaum reports, because “the board was concerned that the photo’s inclusion could be construed as a kind of political act,” according to people familiar with the decision.
The story, Grynbaum adds, is “a small but telling illustration of the anxiety that has taken root in the nonprofit world because of Mr. Cohn’s most famed protégé, an ambitious real estate developer now serving his second term as president.”
There was some hubbub yesterday over a Daily Mail report that Karoline Leavitt was “secretly in talks” to “join” ABC’s “The View.” The reality is considerably less dramatic: ABC has indeed invited the now-former White House press secretary to appear on the show — but just as a guest, not as anything more. All the show’s hosts are returning for the new season next month. Here’s my full story. The booking attempt is still notable given the Trump administration’s ongoing battle with ABC…
>> Speaking of “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin “has licensed her name and likeness to the AI startup Fountain 0, becoming one of the most high-profile figures to provide her image for use in AI-generated films and television shows,” Corbin Bolies reports for Variety.
Zohreen Shah, an ABC News correspondent for the past seven years, is leaving the network and launching a newsletter, The Donor Class, about “the biggest driving force in American politics: money — and the donors behind it.”
“Nothing would get me more excited than covering political donors — I think they are the single most powerful force in American politics. And they are a beat that legacy media often misses,” Shah wrote in Wednesday’s announcement.
Thanks to the efforts of a media coalition — The AP, Reuters, CNN, NPR, ABC, The New York Times and The Washington Post — the public is learning more about Rupert Murdoch’s previously secret succession fight in Nevada.
Newly unsealed court documents offer a “rare glimpse into the family’s clashes before the decision,” The Guardian’s Luca Ittimani reports here. According to the newly released correspondence, Murdoch “said it would be a disaster if the assets fell into the ‘wrong hands’ and that Fox and News Corp’s voice were ‘essential for democracies.’”
Speaking of the Murdochs…
Danny Boyle’s upcoming Rupert Murdoch film, “Ink,” will hold the audience accountable for tabloid culture while taking the media mogul to task. That’s according to Daniel D’Addario’s new cover story for Variety featuring Jack O’Connell, who plays tabloid editor Larry Lamb in the film, which will open the Venice Film Festival next Wednesday.
“The movie is chilling in what it tells us about how we got here, but it’s not intended as a hit piece,” D’Addario writes.
“One of the dangers with doing anything about Rupert Murdoch is that everybody monster-izes him,” Boyle told D’Addario, noting it’s “as though he’s forced everybody to read The Sun! We are all responsible for this.”
The real Chris Hansen “has purchased preshow advertising on every screen” showing “Primetime,” the forthcoming A24 film with Robert Pattinson playing Hansen.
THR’s Seth Abramovitch reports that Hansen’s ads will direct audiences “to TruBlu, his streaming network devoted to the same kind of predator investigations that made him famous.” Low-key brilliant, right?
The Block the Merger Coalition launched a public-facing petition yesterday urging the 12 state AGs suing to block the Paramount–WBD merger to “hold strong” and not agree to any concessions.
“We have them on the ropes,” the coalition wrote, accusing Larry and David Ellison of using their “vast wealth and influence” to pressure the AGs into a settlement. “Let the AGs, who work for the people, have their day in court,” the petition stated. “Let the Judge decide.”
>> Christopher Byrd visited Rockstar North HQ for a deep dive on “the grand ambitions of ‘Grand Theft Auto VI.’” (NYT)
>> Gene Park was wowed by the “GTA VI” preview yesterday: “Seeing this footage called to mind the same electricity I felt when I first saw the jump from PlayStation 1 to 2. I haven’t felt that in more than a decade.” (WaPo)
>> Ashley Carman detailed how “executives have cycled through the doors while workplace morale is cratering” at Ashley Flowers’ true-crime podcast empire. (Bloomberg)
>> Caroline Haskins sat down with four teachers to discuss “becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content — and how difficult it was to find accountability.” (WIRED)
>> Harmeet Kaur looked at why Silicon Valley types are casting data center opposition as a “psyop.” (CNN)
>> Emma Goldberg talked with Jonathan Haidt about the Meta settlement and more. “We’re putting the cat back in the bag,” Haidt said. “We’re going through a historic turning point from techno optimism to techno skepticism.” (NYT)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.