NPR
PBS
NPR and other public radio stations filed a lawsuit in Washington, DC calling the Trump administration’s executive order to cut funding for NPR and PBS a violation of constitutional free speech protections. Days later, PBS and a public station in Minnesota filed a separate suit in a DC district court, citing the order’s “blant viewpoint discrimination” in targeting “content of speech.” The Executive Order demands that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting stop providing the roughly $500 million it spends annual on public media.
“60 Minutes”
CBS News
Paramount
“The past few months have been challenging. It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.” With that message, written in an internal memo, Wendy McMahon stepped down as CBS News chief as it reels from a scandal around a lawsuit by President Trump.
The suit stems from what Trump deemed misleading editing of an October 2024 interview with then-VP Kamala Harris in the final stretch of the presidential campaign. CBS News offered $15 million to settle the matter, to the chagrin of many staffers and a rejection by Trump. All of this unfolds as CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, hopes for FCC approval of its merger with Skydance Media.
McMahon’s departure followed by a few weeks that of veteran “60 Minutes” producer Bill Owens. The California State Senate has voted both of them to an upcoming hearing on whether Paramount in its attempt to settle broke state laws against bribery and unfair competition.
The Impartial Reporter
The third oldest paper in Ireland, and at 200 among the oldest throughout the United Kingdom, was one of just five UK weeklies to shed fewer than 3% of readers last year. The Northern Irish outlet, based in the same County Fermanagh newsroom since its 1825 founding, has seen smaller circulation erosion than most of its local news peers by embracing technology–the Reporter is renowned for its drone photography chops.
But it’s also made a mark with old-fashion investigative reporting, like a recent expose of school sexual abuse. And its steadiness reflects a broader, perhaps surprising truth: even now, 80% of UK adults read local news in print and online at least once a month.
The New York Times
Amazon
Two years after suing OpenAI and Microsoft for improperly using its content to train large language models, the NYT inked a deal with Amazon permitting the tech behemoth to do just that, albeit only with summaries of news articles and cooking recipes. It’s the first time the Paper of Record has allowed a technology company to train AI products with its journalism.
Axel Springer, the Financial Times and NewsCorp last year made a similar deal with OpenAI that’s said to have raked in “tens of millions of dollars.” However, the FT noted that those agreements are seen as stopgap measures as legal frameworks around AI take shape.
Broadway
CNN
A music-free, dialogue-heavy play about a journalist who died in 1965 is not the type of production Broadway insiders expect to set the box office on fire. But George Clooney’s involvement has helped “Good Night, and Good Luck” become the sensation of the season. In early May it became the first play to gross over $4 million in a single week and, at the same time, broke its own record as the highest-grossing play ever.
Next week, one of its final performances will be broadcast live on CNN on June 7. It’s encouraging news for straight drama on Broadway, even if its earnings come in large part thanks to an average ticket price of $305 million. Clooney conceded it was a pricey night out, and that the TV showing is meant to democratize access. In any event, the production’s celebration of a free press is resonating with a broad swath of audiences.
C-SPAN
The famously staid network, a favorite of hardcore politics junkies with intact attention spans, will debut its first new primetime show in 20 years. Called “Ceasefire” in a wry nod to cable news offerings hoping to spur Democratic and Republican guests to battle, the program will instead seek common ground between invitees from different sides of the aisle.
