Journalists are pushing back on a partnership between USA Today Co. and Palantir, raising concerns about how collected audience data will be used and how it will impact journalists’ credibility in local communities, especially among migrants.

Tech and media company partnerships, especially since the advent of generative AI in 2022, are hardly new. But Palantir is hardly any tech company. Since the 2010s, the enigmatic data analytics firm has been providing its technology to the U.S. government and military, and its technology has helped prop up Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Also: When newsrooms moved remote at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, disabled journalists thought there was a chance access needs like remote work would finally be taken seriously. But six years later, they say journalism has made only piecemeal changes in how it thinks about disability — both in newsroom culture and coverage.

Read on for more, and find an abbreviated version of our media links on Instagram each week. (Here’s an example from last week.)

—James Salanga

Nearly 800 workers at newspapers owned by USA Today Co., the U.S.’s largest newspaper publisher, are demanding the company end its newly-announced partnership with Palantir, whose software has been used by the U.S. government to track immigrants and to map people targeted by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

“Not only does partnering with Palantir, a major player in the news we cover, create an inherent conflict of interest, but it fails the journalists who have been assaulted and falsely arrested while covering immigration enforcement actions and protests,” a statement released on Monday and signed by 31 USA Today Co. guilds said. 

The guilds represent newspapers in 18 states throughout the U.S., including border states like Arizona, where local police carried out the first “model” of immigration raids, and New Jersey, the first place with a township voting to ban construction of AI data centers and ICE jails.

Read the full story.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many access needs — like remote and hybrid work, which disabled people had been long asking for — became the norm across journalism and other industries.

Cara Reedy, executive director of the Disabled Journalists Association, told The Objective that the number of people working from home in 2020 made “the things that disabled people have been asking for became norms, because non-disabled people needed them.” 

“Which is great for disabled people, but it should have always kind of been that way,” she said.

But six years later, newsrooms have sought to return to pre-pandemic policies. The second Trump administration is taking aim at independent living policies securing disabled people’s autonomy, which disability scholars and advocates have contextualized as an echo of eugenics, making accurate reporting on disability more necessary than ever. So The Objective spoke with several disabled journalists who reflected on how the advent of COVID-19 has changed reporting norms on disability and broader newsroom culture.

Read the full story.

‼️ Another journalist has been detained by ICE officers in a Trump administration immigration raid. Wilmer Solano Dávila, a Venezuelan journalist working in the U.S., was arrested and detained at the end of July. Jem Barthomew writes for Columbia Journalism Review that this continues two themes: the Trump administration’s efforts to get rid of people it deems undesirable and to punish and deter journalists reporting on its brutal immigration policies.

🇵🇸 Gaza’s journalists remember their fallen colleagues in Living Record, a new oral history archive compiled by Writers Against the War on Gaza as part of its New York War Crimes editorial collective. Between now and October 7, 2026, they will publish the rest of the 50 testimonies collected so far. “As Hazem Rajab says of his brothers in the field, those who depart as martyrs stay alive in our hearts.”

🌎 “Our ultimate goal is to produce reporting that answers to Indigenous readers on their own terms.” Grist, the only climate-focused newsroom with a dedicated Indigenous affairs desk, is partnering with The Intercept to fund a year of short-form and investigative Indigenous affairs reporting. The stories will be free to republish.

🗣️ No artificial intelligence and everyone has a voice: some of the most stand-out proposed changes to the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics code, with the first draft of revisions now available to SPJ members. The SPJ committee members decided not to name AI in their revised code given how quickly technology and newsroom guidelines are shifting, and proposed striking the oft-maligned “give voice to the voiceless” line. The proposed replacement: “Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Counter the unfair marginalization of those with less power.”

📺 In news consolidation news … the Federal Communications Committee has struck down a rule that prevented a single television station owner from reaching 39% of U.S. households. But there is already one legal challenge from media and technology advocacy group Free Press focused on whether the FCC has the authority to change the rule.

🎙️ “One of our tasks is to put journalism into places that are more tied to the ground and more explicitly dedicated to material outcomes in people’s lives.” News Futures co-founder Darryl Holliday on the new directions journalism can go when expanding beyond “content” and building organizations that can give back to the shared commons.

Have a story you think we should include in this section of next week’s newsletter? Let us know here or by responding to this email.

This issue was written by Marlee Baldridge and James Salanga. Thanks for reading. We’ll have more for you next week.

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