‘Journalism is on notice’
‘If the press does not defend its freedom now, it will lose it’
Georgia Fort at Newsweek
The White House “recently launched a new webpage on its official government website titled ‘Media Offenders,’” but this is “not routine media criticism,” says Georgia Fort. It is “government intimidation without oversight, and it should set off alarms in every newsroom in the country.” This is a “code red moment. The warning signs have been building for years.” Flagging “journalists as ‘offenders’ creates a pipeline for harassment and targeting.” What the “press does next will determine our freedom.”
‘For Bass and LAFD, there’s no watering down how bad 2025 has been’
Steve Lopez at the Los Angeles Times
The “year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass,” but an “investigation found that the fire department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps,” says Steve Lopez. There was a “blatant attempt to mislead the public,” and “these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history.” The “story is likely to smolder into the new year.”
‘A lesson from 1914: living as if every day is Christmas’
Michael Coren at the Toronto Star
It has “become fashionable in historical circles to revise, or even doubt, the 1914 ‘Christmas Truce,’” but it is “tragic, in fact, that the Christmas of 1914 could not have become the norm, and smashed the grip of violence that would leave such devastation,” says Michael Coren. It’s “that cycle that Christmas shatters, or is supposed to shatter.” Christmas is a “time to be with family, to enjoy and be happy, whatever we believe, but it’s so much more than that.”
‘HUD funding shift would disregard proven solutions to homelessness and destabilize programs’
Donna Bullock at The Philadelphia Inquirer
Homelessness organizations were “thrown into crisis mode last month when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced an extreme shift in funding priorities,” says Donna Bullock. This “offered a stark preview of an administration willing to gamble with the futures of our most vulnerable neighbors and the crippling changes that could still be coming.” The “changes would disregard proven solutions and could destabilize established programs, putting people’s homes — and their lives — in jeopardy.”