Notices by Dan Gillmor (dangillmor@mastodon.social), page 4

Trump is -- and always has been -- a vile racist. But journalists do -- and always have done -- keep publishing his denials that he is a racist, in the face of the obvious.

Hungary's fascist leader, Viktor Orbán, didn't have as easy a time bringing media under his control as Trump is doing in America -- but he also didn't have a few massive technology oligarchs on his side.

Not a hint on the Washington Post's homepage that it just gutted key parts of its news staff.

An example of why I've come to despise Big Journalism:

This NBC News story -- Trump saying he's not involved in Warner Bros. Discovery takeover contest -- is pure stenography. It never mentions that Trump lies about absolutely everything, or that he's already been involved.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/media/trump-netflix-paramount-fight-warner-bros-rcna257476

Cory Doctorow: "America is not great. It has been gutted by the Epstein class, who robbed us blind, raped our kids, and are now selling us shitcoins and chatbots and the spectacle of protesters being shot in the streets."

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/02/corprophagia/#that-makes-me-smart

Yet another blatantly obvious coverup from the Trump regime, this time in DHS's shape-shifting story about prison videos it now claims never to have recorded.

Remember: You should always presume these people are lying.

https://www.404media.co/dhs-says-critical-ice-surveillance-footage-from-abuse-case-was-actually-never-recorded-doesnt-matter

Please note that the Trump regime continues to flagrantly, illegally withhold the Epstein documents and plainly has no intention of releasing them (at least until the apparatchiks can destroy/doctor the incriminating stuff).

Pathetic Democratic leadership tells members of Congress to be chickenshits and not go to Minneapolis to support the people standing up to Trump's fascist goons.

https://archive.ph/jQH9B

The new head of the Ellison family's CBS "News" is adding more commentators (mostly from the right wing, it seems) and firing actual journalists.

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689849/after-rocky-start-bari-weiss-to-cut-staff-add-commentators-at-cbs-news

Sad to watch a once-fine organization sliding into the same category as the Murdoch family's odious Fox "News" --

You'd think that every news report of Trump's dispatch of Tom Homan to Minnesota would prominently remind people that Homan was caught on video taking $50,000 in cash, plainly an intended bribe.

Sadly, you would be wrong. I'm still looking for any mention of it.

Reminder: https://newrepublic.com/post/200788/tom-homan-50k-cash-bribe

At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall has more must-read context re the invasion of American cities by Trump's militarized, brutal, and (so far) unaccountable forces.

They are military in every way but what the government calls them. This has profound implications.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/remembering-the-boston-massacre-as-minneapolis-writhes-under-occupation/sharetoken/4308ee43-2a79-490f-bbf6-c127f7f23bb1

Canada Prime Minister Carney's Davos speech was the wakeup call the free world needed. Trump's response was beyond contemptuous, thereby proving Carney's point.

https://www.nationalmemo.com/mark-carney-davos

Yet another reminder that when it comes to data privacy, Microsoft cannot be trusted -- and, worse, its management is an eager ally of the fascists who run our government.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/23/microsoft-gave-fbi-a-set-of-bitlocker-encryption-keys-to-unlock-suspects-laptops-reports/

Trump's secret police says it will invade your home without a judge-signed warrant. https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-trump-00d0ab0338e82341fd91b160758aeb2d

Any doubt that the corrupt Roberts court will rubber-stamp this?

(Never mind Congress, where the majority party utterly loathes the Bill of Rights, except the Second Amendment.)

So-called "mainstream" (legacy) journalism is so mired in cowardice and irrelevant tradition that even now it refuses to call things what they are. That's why we so desperately need to follow the work of people like Garrett Graff. Example:

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/ice-101-how-trump-changed-ice-and-cbp-into-a-fascist-secret-police

Mozilla is asking for your opinion about what it's doing, and the survey appears to be aimed at getting you used to the idea that "AI" will become an integral focus area.

I told them that I want Mozilla to focus SOLELY on improving Firefox and Thunderbird, with zero AI in the product.

https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201

All corruption, all the time in Trump world, Exhibit 64,704:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/17/business/trump-financial-disclosure-netflix-warner-bros

And as usual, Big Journalism tiptoes around it, using the standard "concerns" and "raises questions" hedges to avoid stating the blatantly obvious reality. Pathetic, but that's the norm.

US Big Tech is conspiring with European (and American) fascists to wreck the EU's ability to even modestly regulate this rogue industry, which has unparalleled -- and growing -- power over people's lives.

Fascism and tech are an unholy, and maybe unstoppable, alliance.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying-with-european-far-right-to-strip-back-eu-rules

We need to stop calling techlords like Mark Zuckerberg (and Tim Cook, et al) "cowards" for their nuzzling up to Trump.

Call them what they are: supporters of America's metastasizing fascism. And for god's sake, stop supporting their businesses.

https://apnews.com/article/meta-dina-powell-mccormick-trump-adviser-bce6b207f1754284f9b922b0ea8ec7bf

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) implores non-US governments to understand that they can fight Trump's wave of economic destruction -- and help average Americans in the process -- by repealing insane laws that enforce technology lock-in and reward Big Tech:

See this in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/10/trump-beginning-of-end-enshittification-make-tech-good-again

"We are far past the stage of permissiveness with white-supremacist violence inside DHS. We are at the stage of active, enthusiastic commission of it."

Big Journalism doesn't get it, because it doesn't want to. So we have to rely on independent reporting that does.

https://www.forever-wars.com/either-ice-is-abolished-or-it-will-kill-many-more-renee-goods/?ref=forever-wars-newsletter