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Video: News media and the politics of truth

News Media and the Politics of Truth with Eric Alterman

Eric Alterman speaks to the role of media with an increasing campaign of misinformation.

Eric Alterman is Distinguished Professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York. From 1995 to 2020, he was The Nation’s “Liberal Media” columnist and is now a contributing writer to the magazine and also to The American Prospect, where he writes the weekly “Altercation” newsletter. In the past, he has been a senior fellow of the Center for American Progress, the World Policy Institute and The Nation Institute, a columnist for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Forward, Moment, and the Sunday Express (London) and a contributed to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Le Monde Diplomatique, among other publications.


He has also been named a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a Schusterman Foundation Fellow at Brandeis University, a Fellow of the Society of American Historians, and a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

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Project 2025, Phase II: “Onward”

U.S. President Ronald Reagan shakes hands with real estate developer Donald Trump in a reception line in the White House's Blue Room, Washington, D.C. on November 3, 1987.

Getty Images, PhotoQuest

Project 2025, Phase II: “Onward”

Last spring and summer, The Fulcrum published a 30-part series on Project 2025. Now that Donald Trump’s second term has started, Part 2 of the series has commenced.

Presidents are generally confident fellows. They should be. Projecting confidence can be a powerful punch in the political boxing ring. Barack Obama certainly projected confidence; George W. Bush did too. During his presidency, Ronald Reagan was the standard-bearer for projecting presidential self-confidence. And yet, no president in my lifetime acts as confidently as Donald Trump.

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Voter’s remorse? Not much, but give it time

CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Voter’s remorse? Not much, but give it time

Colorful billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk sparked quite a reaction at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington last week when he leaped around the stage waving a chainsaw.

“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. CHAINSAAAW!” he exclaimed. "Uwaaauwaargh!"

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Where is the Democratic Party’s Ronald Reagan?

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump arrive for the inauguration ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Getty Images/TCA, Melina Mara/POOL/AFP

Where is the Democratic Party’s Ronald Reagan?

With all the attention deservedly on President Trump and what he intends to do with his defiant return to the White House, there’s a more than good chance we’ll spend the next four years consumed once again by all things Trump.

There’s already been a dizzying amount: a giant raft of executive orders; attacks on a constitutional amendment; his threats to invade sovereign nations; a seeming Nazi salute from one of his biggest surrogates; his sweeping Jan. 6 pardons; his beef with a bishop; his TikTok flip-flop; his billion-dollar meme coin controversy; scathing new allegations against one of his Cabinet picks; unilaterally renaming a body of water; a federal crackdown on DEI; promises of immigration raids across major cities. All this in just the first three days of Trump’s second term.

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Rioters breaking into the Capitol
Rioters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

From Trump’s pardoned fans, intimidation, and bomb threats

There were 14 Missourians, me among them, who were negatively impacted recently by President Donald Trump’s pardons to the approximately 1,500 individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. We all saw a demonstration in real time about just what kind of people are part of that group that has now been set free to continue spreading fear on behalf of this president.

Trump granted “full, complete and unconditional” clemency to the Jan. 6 rioters. Among them was Henry "Enrique" Tarrio. From 2018 to 2021, Tarrio was the head of the Proud Boys, a far-right, neo-fascist organization which promotes political violence.

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