The White House vs. Media, Ratings Records and a Local News Boost: February Media News Recap

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s roundup of media news stories from the month.

February was a whirlwind of media industry news. The White House’s ongoing battle with the media dominated headlines, but other stories also broke through. From initiatives to boost local journalism to newsrooms’ adoption of AI, social media shifts and more, there were plenty of big updates to keep media watchers hooked this month.

In this post, we dive into this month’s top stories.

Jump to a topic:

• Trump vs. AP
• Broadcast Ratings Record
• $25M for Local News
• New York Times Embraces AI
• BuzzFeed to Launch Social Media App
• ICYMI: Bonus Stories

The AP kept the name Gulf of Mexico; White House barred reporters from events over it

It’s hard to believe that President Trump’s second term is less than two months in. A nonstop wave of executive orders, cabinet confirmations, government layoffs and more has kept journalists busy. One of the biggest, and most concerning, media stories in February came when the White House barred the Associated Press from several events after the wire service announced it would keep using the name Gulf of Mexico, rather than adopting Gulf of America – a switch that was announced in an executive order on Jan. 20.

The AP’s decision is a nod to its global user base and more than 400 years of precedent. AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said in a statement: “It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”

In its own response to the decision, the White House Correspondents Association said, “The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions.” (Poynter)

The fallout: Last week, 40 news organizations, including CNN, The Washington Post and Fox News, wrote a letter urging the administration to lift the ban. “The First Amendment prohibits the government from asserting control over how news organizations make editorial decisions,” the letter said. “Any attempt to punish journalists for those decisions is a serious breach of this constitutional protection.” The next day, news broke that the AP was suing three Trump administration officials in federal court, arguing that the ban violates the First Amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. This Monday, a judge rejected the AP’s emergency motion to immediately rescind the ban, saying more details are needed.

Among the wave of headlines this month tied to the media and the White House:

• Pentagon: It was a month of reshuffling inside the Pentagon.
  • The administration removed The New York Times, NBC News, NPR and Politico from their dedicated office space in the Pentagon. (New York Times)
  • Later, it added CNN, the Washington Post, The Hill and The War Zone to the list of outlets booted from their office spaces. (Reuters)
  • A Pentagon spokesperson hinted at an invite for The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show to host its radio show from the military building. (Barrett Media)
• DEI:
  • PBS closed its diversity, equity and inclusion office to comply with an executive order. (Hollywood Reporter)
  • Ziff Davis, which owns IGN, CNET, PCMag and dozens more outlets and properties, quietly removed DEI language from its websites. (404 Media)
  • FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered an investigation into the DEI programs at Comcast. (New York Times)
• Other News:
  • The White House announced it would start deciding which outlets are allowed into the press pool covering the president, a responsibility usually handled by the White House Correspondents’ Association. (The Hill)
  • The Washington Post scrapped an upcoming print ad calling for the firing of Elon Musk as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). (CNN)
  • There are reports that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, is in the process of launching a new MAGA-leaning digital news service. (New York Post)
  • The state department ordered its outposts to cancel all subscriptions to news and media outlets that are “non-mission critical.” The order impacts subscriptions to the Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press and Reuters. (The Guardian)
  • Wikipedia is preparing for threats against its editors by building new tools to help them stay anonymous – a tactic that it’s used in countries with authoritarian governments and where editing Wikipedia is illegal or extremely dangerous. (404 Media)

Super Bowl scores record ratings — again

The Big Game registered record ratings for the second year in a row, averaging 127.7 million viewers across all platforms, including broadcast TV, streaming and apps. The viewership was a 3% increase from last year’s record-setting game.

Fox said the game peaked in the second quarter when 137.7 million people were tuned in. Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show earned an average of 133.5 million viewers, making it the “most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance in history,” Fox said.

The record ratings show that the NFL is still a magnet for viewers, with football games regularly out-rating anything else on TV during the year. Next year’s championship game will air on NBC and Peacock, just two days after the Winter Olympics begin on the same network. (CNN)

In other broadcast and streaming news:

• Fox announced its plans to launch a subscription streaming service by the end of the year. (CNBC)
• NBC’s SNL50: The Anniversary Special drew 14.8 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, making it the network’s biggest primetime entertainment telecast in five years. (Hollywood Reporter)
• Lester Holt announced he’ll be stepping down as host of “NBC Nightly News” and will expand his role at “Dateline.” (New York Times)
• After a four-month standoff, Paramount announced a multiyear measurement agreement with Nielsen. (Axios)
• ESPN is opting out of the final three years of its contract with Major League Baseball. (MediaPost)
• MSNBC canceled Joy Reid’s evening news show as part of the network’s overhaul under the new presidential administration. (The Hill)

Knight Foundation invests $25M in American Journalism Project

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced a $25 million investment in the American Journalism Project (AJP), a venture philanthropy dedicated to local news. It’s AJP’s largest grant ever and one of the largest grants to a single organization in the Knight Foundation’s history.

AJP will use the money to increase its reach from supporting 50 local newsrooms today to 60 over the next three years. It will also be used to build a new unit within AJP called the Knight Resiliency Lab, which will focus training and resources on areas such as audience development, major donor fundraising, building membership models and revenue diversification.

AJP’s unique model provides long-term operational support for its partner newsrooms in addition to growth capital, which has led to demonstrably stronger local journalism that’s been awarded Pulitzer Prizes and growing local newsroom staffs.

The local news infusion comes at a critical time – recent closures have left more than half of the nation’s counties with just one or no local news sources. (Axios)

In related news:

• The AP announced plans to launch a Local Investigative Reporting Program. (AP)
• One of NBC’s top political reporters, Alex Seitz-Wald, is leaving to help build the Midcoast Villager, a new roll-up of four legacy newspapers in Maine. (Semafor)
• During the first few weeks of the Trump administration, small news publishers that specialize in the federal workforce landed big scoops and saw big traffic gains. (CNN)
• Prominent New York journalists Lachlan Cartwright and Ravi Somaiya launched Breaker Media, rooted in “downtown New York, where all the best stories break.” (Semafor)

New York Times goes all-in on internal AI tools

The New York Times announced its approval of the use of AI for its product and editorial staff. In addition to new AI training for the newsroom, it debuted a new internal AI tool called Echo, an in-house beta summarization tool.

“Generative AI can assist our journalists in uncovering the truth and helping more people understand the world. Machine learning already helps us report stories we couldn’t otherwise, and generative AI has the potential to bolster our journalistic capabilities even more,” the company’s editorial guidelines said.

GitHub Copilot programming assistant for coding, Google’s Vertex AI for product development, NotebookLM, the NYT’s ChatExplorer, some Amazon AI products, and OpenAI’s non-ChatGPT API have all been approved for editorial and product staff. The paper encouraged staff to use the tools for tasks ranging from generating SEO headlines to suggesting edits, engaging in research, and developing news quizzes and FAQs.

As part of the announcement, the Times provided a list of editorial do’s and don’ts for using AI, noting potential risks for copyright infringement and exposure of sources. Not all staffers are enthusiastic about using AI and worry it could inspire laziness or provide inaccurate information. (Semafor)

Here are some more AI headlines from the month:

• OpenAI announced a new AI “agent” designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research. (TechCrunch)
• A writer investigated how DeepSeek performs against its competitors when citing publishers. (Nieman Lab)
• Thomson Reuters won the first major AI copyright case in the United States. (Wired)
• The Atlantic, Politico, Vox and other major publishers are suing Canadian AI startup Cohere for copyright and trademark infringement. (Wall Street Journal)

BuzzFeed to launch new social media platform called BF Island

BuzzFeed announced plans to branch out as “a new kind of social media company” by launching its own social media platform. BF Island will allow users to use AI to create and share content around their interests and aims to be a joyful alternative to the current addictive social media feeds.

CEO Jonah Peretti says current social media algorithms maximize usage over quality, proliferating what he calls “SNARF” content (stakes, novelty, anger, retention, and fear). “They manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding information and promising a payoff at the end of a video. And they provoke fear to make people focus with urgency on their content,” he wrote in a memo announcing the new app.

He says BF Island will be “built specifically to spread joy and enable playful creative expression.” A team of existing BuzzFeed employees is currently building the app, which will have a freemium model. It will begin as a private beta this year. (Axios)

Catch up on more social media news from the past few weeks:

• A group of experienced foreign correspondents is launching Noosphere, a mobile-first TikTok-like news platform. (Semafor)
• LinkedIn is testing a new full-screen vertical video display for users on both mobile and web. (MediaPost)
• Flashes, an Instagram alternative built on top of the Bluesky social network, is now open to beta testers. (TechCrunch)
• In TikTok acquisition news, President Trump signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund, saying it could potentially buy the app. (Reuters)
• A report from Buffer found that Threads is attracting more users, more advertisers and driving higher engagement than X. (MediaPost)

ICYMI

Here are a few other notable media headlines from the month:

• Axel Springer went from majority shareholder to sole owner of Morning Brew Inc. (Editor & Publisher)
• MSNBC’s Rebecca Kutler officially took over as network president. (Hollywood Reporter)
• A Mississippi judge ordered a newspaper to remove an editorial, outraging press advocates. (AP)
• The New York Editorial Board is picking up where The New York Times left off. (Nieman Lab)
• The Washington Post opinion editor, David Shipley, is leaving the paper after it was announced the section would narrow its focus to defend “personal liberties and free markets.” (New York Times)

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