The Gaslight Gazette, a biweekly dispatch from the front lines of the information war, uses a critical media lens to examine stories and narratives in the news. The goal? To demonstrate what news literacy looks like when applied to current headlines—and to spotlight the falsehoods and propaganda that shape discourse in American media. Think of it as your BS firewall: a no-spin zone where lies get torched and truth takes the mic.
💀FAKE NEWS
This section chronicles some of the most pressing examples of disinformation and fake news from the previous two weeks. I define fake news as information that appears to be real news but is baseless, inaccurate, misleading, or false.
Truth Is What Trump Says It Is
If Trump’s first presidency blurred the line between fact and fiction, his second has obliterated it. In “Trump 2.0,” reality is whatever the president wants it to be. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing a sluggish economy, Trump simply fired its director and declared the “real numbers” were whatever he said they were.
This habit of silencing facts extends across the administration. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, ousted officials and suppressed reports that contradicted her narrative portraying Venezuela’s government as collaborating with the Tren de Aragua drug cartel. The purge occurred before the administration escalated military operations by striking a boat in Venezuelan waters in September 2025, claiming the vessel was linked to the Tren de Aragua drug trade. The evidence appeared carefully shaped to justify the attack.
Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). In his short time at HHS, Kennedy has forced out staff who refused to rewrite reports to suit what they described as pre-determined and unsubstantiated conclusions. This is not surprising as his record is littered with falsehoods: suggesting measles outbreaks were “not unusual,” allowing bird flu to spread as a strategy for protecting humans, claiming chemicals cause gender dysphoria, and floating the baseless idea that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jews and Chinese people. On that last claim, he later claimed he never "suggested that the Covid-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews." Instead, proving that sometimes the explanation is worse than the original claim, he explained that he was merely summarizing a study that "serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons."
At a recent congressional hearing, Kennedy denied that vaccine skeptic David Geier was ever hired to study autism links—contradicting documented evidence. In his testimony, he claimed antidepressants fuel violent crime, evaded questions about Covid-19 deaths, and even praised Trump’s Operation Warp Speed despite once calling the Covid-19 vaccine the "deadliest vaccine ever made" and canceling funding to the mRNA research that made the vaccine possible. The hypocrisy was so glaring that even the Trump-friendly New York Post mocked him as “a paranoid kook connecting red strings on a whiteboard.”
Seven Days of Fake
In late August 2025, social media lit up with speculation that President Donald Trump had vanished from public view. His absence, paired with bruises on his hands and swollen ankles, sparked rumors of grave health problems—or even death. Supporters like Alex Jones warned Trump was pushing himself toward collapse, while some online critics gleefully pronounced him dead. Yet Trump is very much alive. The frenzy turned out to be an unholy cocktail of liberal fantasy, conservative paranoia, and Trump’s own erratic behavior. In other words: another week.
A Murder, a Narrative, and a Manufactured Outrage
In August 2025, tragedy struck in Charlotte, North Carolina, when 26-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was fatally stabbed on a light-rail train. The accused killer, Decarlos Brown Jr., reportedly suffers from severe mental illness and told his family he believed Zarutska was reading his mind.
What could have been seen as a horrific, though sadly not unusual, act of random violence quickly became politicized. President Trump blamed Democrats for creating the conditions that led to the crime. Right-wing outlets accused the legacy media of a cover-up and highlighted debates among Wikipedia editors over whether to delete a page about Zarutska’s death (the page remains online).
A common meme in right-wing media claimed that The Associated Press (AP) ran 74,221 stories on George Floyd but none on Zarutska. A quick search shows that AP did, in fact, report on Zarutska, though far less extensively and several days after the murder. For context, thousands of murders occur in the U.S. each year, and AP, as an international news organization, does not cover every single case. There is no evidence that the AP sought to suppress coverage of Zarutska’s murder. Nevertheless, billionaire Elon Musk—who has publicly expressed ambitions of becoming a trillionaire—fueled the controversy, criticizing the media for allegedly ignoring the story before offering $1 million toward a memorial for Zarutska.
Critics argue that conservatives amplified the story not out of genuine concern, but because it fit a racially charged narrative—a Black man killing a white woman—that could stoke outrage. Thousands of other murders go unreported by AP, yet this one drew intense conservative attention. This aligns with a long-standing, baseless conservative belief that American news media conceals “black-on-white” crime. Recently deceased right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk captured this sentiment, saying, “If a random white person stabbed a Black person, it would be an apocalyptically huge national story.” Social media users quickly pointed out, however, that white-on-Black murders have occurred and often received comparable attention. Meanwhile, anti-racists on the left note that Black people are disproportionately portrayed as criminals in news reporting.
The Epstein Files: Bombshells, Backpedals, and Broken Lies
The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt Trump and his allies. In early September, Senate Republicans—except Rand Paul and Josh Hawley—blocked a Democratic measure to release Epstein’s files. The House is now just one vote away from forcing their publication.
Still, pieces are trickling out. The House Oversight Committee released Epstein’s “birthday book,” a disturbing collection of notes, drawings, and greetings from high-profile figures including Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and former British diplomat Peter Mandelson. One particularly damning note allegedly shows Trump sending Epstein a birthday card adorned with a drawing of a prepubescent girl and references to a shared “secret.”
Trump has denied the letter’s authenticity, referring to it as part of the Epstein “hoax,” and even suing Wall Street Journal for referencing the letter in an article last month.
Others were less dismissive. For example, following the release the United Kingdom swiftly removed Mandelson as ambassador to the U.S. over his ties to Epstein. Meanwhile, survivors are compiling their own list of names as the government dithers over what to release.
The mental gymnastics to defend Trump are dizzying. House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that Trump was an FBI informant who helped expose Epstein. Presidents serving as intelligence sources isn’t unprecedented—Ronald Reagan reportedly did so, and George H.W. Bush once led the CIA, while rumors have long circulated that Bill Clinton worked with intelligence during his time as Arkansas governor. Still, Johnson’s claim was so outlandish he later had to walk it back. Was his initial statement a lie, or was the retraction the lie? Either way, the truth is buried under a mountain of spin.
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🔪 Character Assassination
This section chronicles some of the most pressing examples of character assassination from the previous two weeks. The Lab for Character Assassination and Reputation Politics (CARP) at George Mason University defines character assassination as "the deliberate destruction of an individual's reputation or credibility through character attacks."
Epstein Survivors vs. Trump’s Digital Defenders
When Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors grew frustrated with President Donald Trump’s administration for stalling on releasing names of alleged abusers, they threatened to publish their own list of the people they accuse of sex crimes. Instead of transparency, Trump’s defenders smeared the accusers’ charachter. Pro-Trump influencer Jessica Reed Kraus accused survivors of being paid escorts who later “collected millions after therapy convinced them they were victims of rape.” With one viral post, credibility was cast as corruption—evidence be damned.
Liberals Eating Their Own: The Chorus Controversy
President Lyndon B. Johnson once joked, “Cannibals only eat their enemies. Liberals eat their own.” That quip came alive in August 2025, when Taylor Lorenz reported in Wired that a nonprofit called Chorus—funded by the Democratic-aligned Sixteen Thirty Fund—was paying progressive creators like David Pakman and Brian Tyler Cohen up to $8,000 a month. Instead of debating transparency, critics went for character. Pakman and Cohen were branded sellouts, accused of avoiding divisive issues like Israel after meeting with Joe Biden. Whether or not money shaped content, their reputations took the hit.
The smears then shifted to Lorenz herself. Lorenz – who has been accused of fabricating sources and lying to editors (both of which she denies) - was falsely accused of secretly taking money from the very fund she exposed. Lorenz clarified that she did take money from the same source, but the difference is that she disclosed it. But the narrative stuck: her character, not her reporting, became the story. Meanwhile, Pakman hinted at lawsuits, while detractors dismissed her “dark money” claims outright. The leftist character-assassination battle royal will no doubt continue in the weeks ahead.
🚫Censorship
This section chronicles some of the most pressing examples of censorship from the previous two weeks. Project Censored defines censorship as “the suppression of information, whether purposeful or not, by any method—including bias, omission, underreporting, or self-censorship—that prevents the public from fully knowing what is happening in society.”
CBS Under Siege: How Trump-Friendly Pressure, Cancel Culture, and Ideology Are Silencing Newsrooms
Censorship isn’t always overt—sometimes it comes dressed as “moderation” or “legal settlement.” CBS has shown how easily corporate news can be bent under political pressure. In September 2025, the network signaled a pivot toward Trump-friendly personalities, reportedly considering hiring Bari Weiss and buying her digital outlet, The Free Press, for $200 million—a sum many view as inflated to court pro-Trump media figures.
Weiss, a vocal critic of cancel culture, has promoted free speech on college campuses, yet her past includes a campaign to intimidate Arab scholars and professors dating back to her time as a student—highlighting a stark contradiction. She is also a staunch supporter of Israel, at times offering controversial explanations for the deaths of children in Gaza, framing them as complications rather than the consequences of starvation, a position widely criticized as justifying Israeli actions under false pretenses.
This comes after a months-long legal battle with Trump, who sued CBS over an allegedly edited 60 Minutes interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. While editing is standard practice, Paramount, CBS’ parent company, settled in July 2025 for $16 million just before the federal government approved the Paramount-Skydance merger. Veteran CBS staff, including 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and CEO Wendy McMahon, resigned over Trump’s influence at CBS, while Dan Rather called the settlement a “sellout to extortion by the president.”
Further consolidating ideological influence, in September 2025, CBS announced a new ombudsman position filled by former Trump ambassador Kenneth Weinstein. The position was created as part of Paramount’s settlement with Trump. Face the Nation also announced it would stop editing guest statements after Secretary Kristi Noem complained that they had “shamefully edited” her interview.
This isn’t about journalistic improvement—it’s censorship amplified by selective cancel culture, fear, and political calculation. When lawsuits, ideology, and intimidation shape editorial choices, press freedom becomes a bargaining chip, and newsrooms risk becoming mouthpieces rather than watchdogs.
🔥 Cut Through the Noise – The Disinfo Detox Podcast
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Recent Media Appearances
“‘Recklessness’: Kamala Harris Turns on Joe Biden” – Nolan Higdon discusses Harris’ comments on ABC7 News Bay Area
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Analysis: Shooting Death of Charlie Kirk – Nolan Higdon discusses Kirk’s death on KTVU Fox 2
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Demystifying and Critiquing AI – Nolan Higdon joins Mickey Huff of Project Censored to discuss AI
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🎓What are Some Trustworthy Media Literacy Organizations and Resources?
For those who want more information and resources, the US is home to many thriving media literacy organizations.
Click here to access recommended media literacy organizations and resources from NolanHigdon.com.
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