Journalists Are Under Strain

 

[As I avowed in my last post on Rick On Theater, “Woke Art Labeled ‘Aesthetically Terrifying’“ (30 August 2026), I’m virtually a First Amendment absolutist.  I entirely believe in a free press, unfettered, uncensored, unimpeded.  In support of that position, I’m republishing the article below, “Real Life In Real Time,” a collection of short reports by actual journalists in the field about some of the difficulties they’re facing in these uncertain times. 

[The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union that represents film and television actors, journalists, radio personalities, recording artists, singers, voice actors, and other media professionals worldwide, which publishes the magazine SAG-AFTRA, from which this article is drawn, is dominated by actors.  It was formed by a merger in 2012 of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

[All of SAG’s membership and most of AFTRA’s were actors, so the magazine’s coverage is also most often about actors and their concerns (such as AI and intimacy coordinators), even after the merger made on-air journalists and spokespeople our brothers and sisters.  The image of the union (and therefore the magazine—which used to be called Screen Actor) is inevitably actors in movies, TV, radio, and other media. 

[“Real Life In Real Time” stood out for me because it wasn’t about actors or acting, since the journalists are our colleagues—and in jeopardy.  (The union may be dominated by the actor-members, but we’re not spotlighted in the Constitution.  The journalists are.  They’re there explicitly; were only there implicitly!)

[Let’s also not forget that while the news may report on theater-movies-TV/radio, theater-movies-TV/radio is often drawn from the news (like Good Night, and Good Luck and All the President’s Men—and even the comedies like The Front Page).

[There is a long history of artists, including theater and film artists, lending their skills and power in defense of reporters’, anchors’, and editors’ freedom to do their work and to assure their safety while doing it.  In 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee began its witch-hunts, Hollywood icons Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, and Gene Kelly formed the Committee for the First Amendment.  HUAC didn’t just target Hollywood screenwriters—it threatened the editorial independence of newsrooms and journalists nationwide.

[The Hollywood stars famously flew to Washington, D.C., to protest the hearings, acting as an elite shield of artistic prestige to defend the broader, fundamental right of journalists and citizens to speak and report without government persecution.

[Before All the President’s Men (1976) was a classic film, Robert Redford made a personal mission of the defense of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s reporting.  Redford bought the film rights to the story before the Watergate investigation was even finished or universally validated.

[At a time when the Richard Nixon administration (1969-74) was actively trying to discredit and legally crush the Washington Post, Redford used his massive Hollywood capital to legitimize, fund, and protect the narrative of investigative journalism.  He consciously used his status as an artist to build a cultural fortress around the integrity of the free press.

[As a fierce defender of free speech, former president of PEN International, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, for PEN and the Helsinki Watch Committee in 1985 alongside fellow playwright (and future Nobel Laureate) Harold Pinter to investigate allegations of the military junta’s torture and persecution of writers, journalists, and political dissidents.

[The two writers held a defiant press conference at the Turkish Journalists Association headquarters which the Turkish government had authorized.  Immediately after the meeting, however, the authorities prohibited the press to report it.  Learning later that a military warrant had been issued for their arrest in Istanbul, the two dramatists rushed to the airport and flew out precipitously.

[In 1997, the Creative Coalition, an advocacy group that encourages increased support of the arts and other causes, established the Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award, given regularly to prominent figures, including journalists, who fight against censorship and defend human expression. Reeve had taken a high-profile international stand for free expression in Santiago, Chile, in 1987 at the height of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

[It’s the cross-over that makes this coverage significant to me: artists standing in defense of reporters, rather than artists standing for other artists.  The amalgamation of SAG and AFTRA has concretized a symbiotic relationship that has always existed.  Protecting the truth-tellers is the only way to protect the storytellers.  It’s just like Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came” (see “Manifesto” in “Helen Katz Kaye Eleasari (1934-2020)“ [22 April 2022]).    

[That famous poem perfectly captures the danger of a fragmented creative community failing to see that if we don’t speak out when there’s an attack on the press, when there’s an attack on the arts, there may be no one left to speak out!]

“A LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT”
by Linda Powell

[Below is a message-cum-editorial by the Executive Vice President of SAG-AFTRA.  Published in the Spring 2026 issue (Volume 15, Number 2) of SAG-AFTRA, the union’s membership publication, it serves as a preface to the article that follows.  (Both Powell’s letter and the article, “Real Life In Real Time,” are posted in the online edition of Spring 2026.)]

“Journalists are under strain — facing regulatory uncertainty, disrespect and shrinking newsroom resources.”

Dear Member,

I’ve sat down to write this magazine letter more than once and walked away from it. Not for lack of an idea or a point of view. I know exactly the challenge I want to explore. The obstacle is that I don’t have a solution to offer. The obstacle is the obstacles.

Our world is in transition. Transitioning to who or what and when is a mystery. I spend a lot of time representing members in rooms where the dizzying changes brought on by technology, by corporate consolidation, by the fragmentation of our media sources and by the shifting political landscape are the focus of conversation. That’s true both within our union and among the wider family of labor where SAG-AFTRA gathers with siblings around the country — and around the world. These issues are universal, and while individual challenges differ, the threats are the same: threats to our wages, to our working conditions, to our benefits, to our stability, to our jobs and to unions themselves.

I am going to date myself with this: I am a radio listener. Sometimes it’s streamed (I’m not that old), but radio — especially morning radio — is my jam. Which is why, recently, when Paramount Skydance made the decision to shut down CBS News Radio, I was taken aback. [Paramount Skydance is the multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that owns, among other properties, Paramount Motion Picture Group and CBS Entertainment Group.]

CBS News Radio has been a standard bearer for nearly a century. It was the home of Edward R. Murrow [1908-65] — a legendary broadcaster who exemplified journalism grounded in verification, independence and public trust.

Change is the only constant, yes. I don’t expect the radio of my grandparents to exist forever. Businesses will adjust and changes will be inevitable. As distribution evolves, audiences shift. I know all too well that the members facing layoffs at CBS are not alone. Our broadcasters have become all too familiar with this pattern. We often talk about the importance of belonging to a union in terms of wages and working conditions and benefits. Just as important are the advocacy and protections that come into play when work is abruptly terminated.

But what we are witnessing goes beyond job loss. It reaches the core of how information is produced and received.

Journalists are under strain — facing regulatory uncertainty, disrespect and shrinking newsroom resources. Meanwhile, algorithms in our “news feeds” reward speed, volume and reaction over verification. In that environment, credibility becomes harder to build and easier to erode. And truth becomes hard to agree on.

Corporations once prided themselves on their news divisions. Profit was not ignored, but it was not driven at the expense of product. Today, headlines often bear no relationship to the story below the fold. In our social media environment, the news I’m seeing often bears no relationship to the news that you are seeing. Outrage bait increasingly drives our cultural conversations.

The broadcasters I stand next to have not changed; they are mission-driven and committed to hold power to account and serve the public with verified reporting. But the headwinds they face are growing stronger.

Circling back to where I started — I don’t have the answers to these obstacles. But I do know that, in this moment, supporting broadcast journalists with strong contracts, advocacy, resources and funding is not only crucial to our strength as a union, it is crucial to the health of our democracy.

In solidarity,

/s/ Linda Powell

[Linda Powell is the current Executive Vice President of SAG-AFTRA and also serves as a trustee of the SAG-AFTRA Health and SAG Pension plans.  She’s a New York-based actress who’s appeared on Broadway and off and has been seen on screen in such shows as Dopesick (miniseries; Disney+. 2021), House of Cards (TV series; Netflix, 2013-18), Chicago Fire (TV Series; NBC, 2012-present), Madam Secretary (CBS; TV series; 2014-19), Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (TV series; NBC, 1999-present), and films including The Report (Amazon Studios, 2019), I Think I Love My Wife (Fox Searchlight, 2007), and American Gangster (Universal, 2007). 

[Powell’s a proud member of Actors Equity Association and most recently enjoyed a long run as Neil Diamond’s therapist in the Broadway bio-musical A Beautiful Noise (Broadhurst Theatre, 2022-23).  

[She was a Vice Chair of the negotiating committee for SAG-AFTRA’s recently ratified TV/Theatrical contract and is Chair of the board of advisors for the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York.  (Linda Powell is the daughter of Alma and Colin Powell, the former United States National Security Advisor [1987-89], Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [1989-93], and Secretary of State [2001-05].)]

*  *  *  *
“REAL LIFE IN REAL TIME”

[Like the letter from Linda Powell posted above, the article below is from SAG-AFTRA Volume 15, Number 2 (Spring 2026).]

SAG-AFTRA BROADCASTERS PRIORITIZE SAFETY IN THE FIELD

Reporting the news doesn’t come without its obstacles. For SAG-AFTRA broadcasters who find themselves in the field reporting breaking stories live, getting the right angle or an eyewitness’s interview brings a level of personal risk — particularly during and these perilous times. 

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a database established in 2017 to collect and analyze incidents in the field, reported January and February had the highest number of press freedom violations for the first two months of any year. Equipment searches and detainment by law enforcement, as well as physical assaults, are some of the tense situations news reporters experience. But other situations, such as natural disasters or standoffs involving law enforcement, can expose reporters to dangers to life and limb.

Truth-telling requires persevering in adverse circumstances. Today’s increasingly tense and volatile social and political climate has made broadcast reporting in the United States a more dangerous job than perhaps it has ever been. Here are accounts from five SAG-AFTRA broadcasters of how they stay safe — physically and mentally — so they can continue the important work of informing the public.

ALWAYS STAY READY
Anar Virji, Field Producer for Al Jazeera English 

“When I think of safety, I think about what that means for all of us working together. I encourage colleagues to speak up if they have a concern, and I plan as much as I can before we go out. That means advocating for safety and first aid training at work, and then using that to organize before you go on assignment.

“Things that I keep in my travel gear include a medical kit, a headlamp in case we lose electricity, and backup batteries to charge electronics. Then I try to think site-specific: Are we going into protests? Is it a hurricane or other weather event? What sort of access will we have to food, water and bathrooms? Will we have cellphone service? These answers come from [having] experience, talking to colleagues and speaking to people in the area.

“For protests, I’ve found that gas masks are incredibly useful safety gear. I also pack an extra foldable duffle bag to put my clothes in if I’m tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed.

“For feature stories I’ve produced, I’ve traveled to Native Alaskan and Native American villages without hotels and have slept in a school or camped. In those situations, we were also without regular cellphone service, which meant speaking with editors about when we expected to be back in range, something also essential in natural disasters.

“My strategy is always to think long-term and collectively about safety. That makes it easier, rather than thinking of it only when stories [are unfolding].”

BRINGING IN THE CAVALRY
Chip Mitchell, Reporter for WBEZ Chicago 

“I’ve had my share of hazardous reporting assignments over the years. I’ve traveled along rural Colombian highways when kidnapping for ransom was a threat. I’ve been up close to NATO summit protesters clashing with police in downtown Chicago, and on the South Side, I had reported on the city’s first widespread looting and gun violence after George Floyd’s killing [25 May 2020].

“Then, one Friday evening last September, my bosses sent me to an ICE processing facility, just west of Chicago, as President Trump’s deportation blitz was hitting high gear. A couple hundred protesters were chanting and jeering at ICE and U.S. Border Patrol agents. I saw feds responding with pepper balls, tear gas, chemical sprays and stun grenades. ‘Stinger’ [a tactical, “less-lethal” crowd-control weapon explicitly designed to explode and spray dozens of small rubber projectiles] detonations showered the crowd with rubber pellets.

“My employer, a nonprofit that owns a public radio station and major newspaper, was starting to outfit its reporters and photographers with gas masks, goggles, helmets, vests, decontamination wipes and so on. I had what I needed that night. I knew [when] to step back and avoid getting caught between the protesters and agents.

“But I faced a safety challenge the equipment and positioning could not address. Once the agents started using the riot-control weapons, the event became big news. I was expected to supply reports to the radio station, its national network, the newspaper, two websites and a live blog. That would be challenging under the best of circumstances, but especially on a night when [there weren’t] many editors on duty. So, I didn’t get much help prioritizing the news outlets and deadlines — not to mention making decisions about sourcing and safety risks.

“I had to spend a lot of time thumbing around on my phone, trying to rustle up off-duty editors and begging for coordination. The phone work required looking down at the device when I should have been looking up and devoting my full attention to things like protester arrests and teargas canisters.

“I didn’t get hurt. Over the next few days, though, I let newsroom managers know they had dropped the ball on editor staffing that night, that it hurt our coverage and that it could have jeopardized my safety.

“One thing I appreciated was having a union. We had organized a SAG-AFTRA unit at the radio station a decade earlier. During those conversations with bosses, I knew that the union would have my back if I needed it. That support strengthened my confidence to communicate clearly with management.”

[WBEZ is a non-commercial educational radio station in Chicago.  It’s the National Public Radio news outlet in the city.]

SAFETY IS MORE THAN A WORD
Frankie McLister, Reporter for WCCO-TV, CBS News Minnesota

“‘Safety is the No. 1 priority’ sounds quite cliché — but to me, it’s cliché for a reason. As a reporter in Minneapolis, I’ve been tested to keep this phrase at the forefront of my mind, especially throughout our coverage of Operation Metro Surge, the nearly two-month-long surge of 3,000 federal agents to the state [4 December 2025-12 February 2026].

“At all times, I have the proper gear. This includes pepper spray in every bag I keep handy, in the side compartment of my vehicle and, sometimes, right in my pocket during a live shot. Additionally, I often find myself communicating with my photojournalist and security guard (if one is provided — though in general, we’ve had a lot of security assistance during large-scale news events). I tell them I’m watching their backs, and this prompts them to keep safety at the forefront and reinforces that I view [the work] as a team effort.

“When I say I’m always watching — I’m truly always watching. And I think it’s important to communicate that. My badge is on hand, and I’m also mindful of what I’m wearing and where I’m wearing it. For example, if I’m in a part of town with a higher crime rate, I might choose not to wear my shiny watch.

“Once you keep the lines of communication open and make safety your first priority, it becomes natural. My goggles were already around my neck while covering several events involving tear gas — and that’s when I knew it was no longer a second thought, just like a seatbelt in the car.”

TEAMWORK REMAINS WHEN TRAGEDY ENDS
Annie Rose Ramos, General Assignment Reporter for KTLA 5 News

“In Los Angeles, SAG-AFTRA members at KTLA [television station in Los Angeles, California] have partnered with station management to address field safety concerns during contract negotiations with Nexstar [multimedia conglomerate founded in 1996, the largest television broadcasting company in the United States, owning 265 television stations]. In the aftermath of the devastating wildfires in 2025 [7-31 January] . . . conditions were unpredictable in the field.

“For days, the ground was still smouldering [sic; British spelling]. In the weeks [afterward], the air was difficult to breathe. For months, toxic debris lay on the ground. As field teams, we wanted to ensure we were being mindful of the health impacts, working with our station to create kits that included hazmat suits, goggles, masks and water.

“We continued to remain proactive when it concerned the hazardous area so many neighborhoods had become in the wake of the wildfires. Backyards had broken branches. Power lines were down and snaked along the streets. Electric car batteries were melted into the ashes and rubble. It was about watching where you walked, where you turned, what you touched. Managers at our station knew that, too. They kept a watchful eye, and if we didn’t see something that could pose a risk, they did — they called us and advised us to move locations. It was about teamwork, and continues to be, to ensure safety.”

CLARITY, DOCUMENTATION AND DISCIPLINE
JJ Green, National Security Correspondent for WTOP

“Disinformation is not abstract. It is kinetic.

“In heated political seasons, lies do not simply distort facts, they weaponize audiences. When a journalist is falsely labeled a traitor, partisan operative, foreign agent or enemy of the people, that narrative does not stay online. It migrates. It hardens. It radicalizes. And eventually, it can show up in a parking lot, outside a home or at a crowded public event.

“We have seen the progression. Smear campaigns escalate into coordinated harassment. Harassment metastasizes into doxxing [publishing the private personal information of someone or revealing the identity of an online poster without the consent of that individual; also doxing]. Doxxing produces stalking. And stalking can become violence. The risk matrix for journalists now includes physical surveillance, targeted intimidation, online swatting [causing a SWAT team (from Special Weapons and Tactics, a military-like unit within U.S. police forces) to be deployed on an unsuspecting victim, especially a public figure or someone prominent on social media by falsifying a threat, often as a punishment or retaliation] attempts and threats amplified by algorithmic outrage cycles. Disinformation collapses the distinction between rhetoric and action.

“For national security reporters, especially those covering intelligence, war, extremism or political corruption, the danger compounds. False narratives are designed to delegitimize professional reporting. They seek to isolate the journalist from the public, to frame truth-telling as treachery, and to create a permissive environment for intimidation.

“The first countermeasure is narrowing the firehose [the massive, relentless, and overwhelming flood of false information and online provocations used by manipulators], refusing to react to every provocation and denying manipulators oxygen. The second is discipline and documentation, maintaining rigorous transparency in reporting to inoculate against narrative distortion. The third is threat awareness, monitoring online chatter patterns, recognizing coordinated amplification and understanding when rhetoric crosses into credible risk. Finally, resilience, both psychological and procedural. Calm is a defensive tool. Emotional reactivity is an exploitable vulnerability.

“Disinformation thrives on fear, anger and spectacle. My defense is clarity, documentation and discipline.

“Because in a season where lies travel faster than light, survival, professional and physical, depends on refusing to let them control the battlefield.”

[WTOP is an all-news radio station in Washington, D.C.]

MAKING CHANGE WHERE HISTORY IS TOLD
Bob Butler’s Story

Journalists have always faced challenges in the field, but safety has become a greater concern as public demonstrations became more commonplace, said SAG-AFTRA Vice President, Broadcasters, Bob Butler, a veteran reporter in radio and television. 

“I worked at KCBS Radio in San Francisco for 42 years,” said Butler, who retired in 2023. “As a reporter, I never had to worry about my personal safety until the Oscar Grant riots in 2010 [following the police shooting on 1 January 2009] and Occupy Wall Street Demonstrations in 2011 [17 September-15 November]. The most difficult times are during protests and demonstrations, especially when [people] start marching. The danger came mostly from being in crowds that were hit by police tear gas.”

In the field, Butler’s Golden Rule was to employ the buddy system with himself and his fellow crewmate, often a photographer, or, when working alone, to stay with other journalists in a group. In the newsroom, bringing attention to safety risks led to advocating for more safety precautions.    

“The AFTRA [nb: these events predate the 2012 SAG-AFTRA merger] local staff instituted safety briefings that included news reporter members, management, photographers, leadership from the technical unions and law enforcement. These meetings led to best practices designed to keep crews safe,” said Butler. “A couple of the steps that were taken here in San Francisco were for television stations to hire security guards for their news crew [and] purchase cameras with tracking devices.”

Still, Butler points to a need for the concern for broadcasters to be shared across the board. 

“Broadcast journalists face a number of challenges from political leaders, ambivalent managers and an increasingly skeptical electorate. Adding threats to our personal safety makes our job of providing information to keep the public informed even more difficult.”

Woke Art Labeled "Aesthetically Terrifying"

 

[I don’t often post about politics on Rick On Theater, with the exception of my advocacy for freedom of speech and expression, my support for funding the arts, and my belief in the importance of including the arts in the curricula of our elementary and secondary schools and our colleges and universities.  But now and then, something comes to my attention that offends my commitment to those positions. 

[This occurred just this week, as reported in the articles I’m reposting below.  I’m pretty sure readers will see what’s exercised me in this case.

[There are two grounds on which these reports, both covering the same event, have raised my hackles.  The first, I think is obvious in the context of my introductory comments above.  This is related to the suppression of the freedom of expression in the context of art.  I’ll circle back to this in a bit.

[The second reason this particular incident has gotten to me is probably less obvious to those who haven’t read my posts on ROT that recount my teen years when my father was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency in the Federal Republic of Germany (1962-67).

[USIA wasn’t very well known at home, so a little explanation is necessary.  Established in 1953 by President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; 34th President of the United States: 1953-61), USIA was the agency responsible for what was called “public diplomacy” (read “cultural propaganda”). 

[The agency brought art and cultural events, lectures, and political and historical information about the United States to countries all over the globe through libraries and other facilities and tours by performers and speakers.  The mission was to show the U.S. in the best possible light and emphasize our founding principles and it was part of my dad’s job to display the breadth of America’s artistic achievements—visual art, music, theater, and dance in all their forms—to the Germans in his area of responsibility. 

[Though the new Art in Embassies wasn’t a program of USIA, it was nevertheless a project that engaged my dad (who had been active with a prominent art gallery in Washington, D.C., in the years just before he arrived in Germany).

[Now, that connection to my feelings about freedom of expression. 

[I’ve said numerous times on this blog that I’m pretty much a First Amendment absolutist.  There are a few exceptions to my belief in total adherence to the principle of free speech and free expression—incitement to violence, slander or libel, falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater, true national security—but not liking someone’s words, having one’s feelings hurt, or politically opposing what someone says is not among these exceptions.

[Now, I also have to acknowledge that the person or agency that owns the hall, so to speak, has some right to regulate what’s said in it.  It’s different for a public space, and that covers embassies and consulates.  But it’s obvious, I think, that the government has some legitimate entitlement to regulate what is said or displayed in its facilities.  Obscenity or vulgarity probably would fall into this category—but not political opposition, no matter what label one puts on it.

[And that’s what woke is. 

[What woke actually means in 2026 is probably irrelevant in this discussion.  The word has many connotations, depending on who’s using it, who’s hearing it, and what the topic under discussion is, but fundamentally it means being aware of and actively attentive to issues of racial, gender, and social justice.

[When used pejoratively by political conservatives, woke generally functions as a catch-all term criticizing progressive or left-wing policies, culture, and ideology.  And that’s where the problem dealt with here arises.

[Basically, it’s a label for anything the MAGA people don’t like.  That pretty much is the definition of “political opposition.”  And that’s exactly what our democratic government is not supposed to suppress.  Even if you label the ideas socialism—or, worse, communism—Americans are supposed to be allowed to speak them.

[Or draw them, sculpt them, or project them.  The First Amendment declares so.  It’s a founding principle of our Democracy.  Our powerful government isn’t supposed to erase, obliterate, cover up, suppress, censor, or delete what it doesn’t like or opposes.  The Constitution says not.  That’s the 237-year-old document whose semiquincentennial is coming up next.]

“BIG PICTURE ON POLITICS OF ‘WOKE’”
by Jason Farago 

[The report on the Trump State Department’s removal of a painting from the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, was published in the New York Times on 29 August 2026 in Section C (“Arts”).  It was posted as “When Kehinde Wiley’s Painting Was Removed, It Wasn’t About Art” on the paper’s website on 27 August 2026.]

During the Cold War [1947-91], the State Department maintained a robust program of American cultural diplomacy, sending the New York Philharmonic to the Soviet Union and Duke Ellington’s orchestra to the Middle East. There is not much left of this policy, but the program [launched officially by President John F. Kennedy (1917-63); 35th President of the United States: 1961-63) in 1963; still operational], established during the Kennedy administration, manages a collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs and helps organize art displays in 190-odd embassies and consulates abroad. It is led by Erin Scavino [b. 1978; attorney, former model, reality show contestant, and political activist; Director of Art in Embassies: 2025-present], a contestant fired in Week 9 of Season 3 [2005] of “The Apprentice.” [The Apprentice ran on NBC from 2004 to 2017; Donald Trump (b. 1946; politician, media personality, and businessman; 45th President of the United States: 2017-21 and 47th President of the United States: 2025-present) was co-producer and host from 2003 to 2015.]

This month, at the American embassy in the Dominican Republic, one painting from the program was taken down with the help of a cherry picker [see following article]. It was made by the artist Kehinde Wiley [b. 1977], who painted the official presidential portrait of Barack Obama [2018; National Portrait Gallery], but who shares with President Trump a taste for gilded ornament. Scavino explained in a podcast interview that her office intervened to remove the picture.

“It was very woke,” Scavino explained. “It was by the gentleman who did Obama’s portrait. And it was aesthetically terrifying.”

Strong words for a group portrait of four fully dressed, largely expressionless sitters in front of a background adorned with flowers. But aesthetic terror is a good place to start. Whether you find the work terrifying or otherwise, the meaning of this removal lies in psychology, rather than in painting.

[A section of this article that’s included in the online edition but not included in the print version is as follows:

The removed painting is called “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960” [2015], and the sitters are four Dominican artists that Mr. Wiley met in the Caribbean country, floating as usual against a highly decorative background.

Two women are standing; they look out from the picture with authority, and their skin has a waxen photorealism.

Two men are sitting; one wears a T-shirt with the logo of an evangelical children’s camp.

Against the teal background is a repeated pattern of sunflowers, peonies and tulips, which is as flat as wallpaper in most areas . . .

[I touch on “photorealism” in visual art in my post “Hyperreal Theater” (16 January 2021).]

For 25 years, Wiley has painted in this consistent format: young figures, mostly but not always Black, posed flatly in positions nodding to western European history painting (with large portions churned out by studio assistants in China and elsewhere). This was enough for a lot of people before November 2016. As the critic Rachel Hunter Himes persuasively argued last year, Wiley’s art became “a kind of court style for the Obama era,” and his one-by-one insertions of Black sitters in royal or imperial frames, not to mention his gift for business and taste for luxury, perfectly fulfilled that era’s individualist mandate.

Wiley’s rise from queer downtown New York to the State Department, Himes went on, “dovetailed with the emergence of a political culture that saw the presence of black faces in the halls of power as inherently progressive and black economic advancement under capitalism as anti-racist.”

Wiley’s formulaic glorifications were emblematic of the lapsed age now called “Woke 1,” though I do not think that Scavino — the wife of Dan Scavino [b. 1976], the president’s deputy chief of staff — is objecting on quite those grounds. But that is the bitter irony here: If she could look past the Black president whose administration commissioned the painting (and accept the Black models in the picture, too), Ms. Scavino might see that Wiley’s “aesthetically terrifying” painting could hang more naturally in the current Oval Office or the future White House ballroom.

The artist and the commander in chief have quite a bit in common, after all. Both love ostentation, glitter and flamboyance, and Wiley’s use of ornate, even vulgar, gold frames jibes rather well with Trump’s Mar-a-Lagofication of the West Wing. Both employ a populist rhetoric that in fact serves their own celebrity, access to elite institutions and personal enrichment.

Wiley and the president have also both faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct; both have denied wrongdoing and claimed their accusers are motivated by money and fame. (Trump was found liable in federal court for sexual abuse in 2023; Wiley has not been found liable for any sexual assault, but at least three museums, in Florida, Minnesota, and Nebraska, decided not to go ahead with exhibitions of the artist after the accusations emerged.)

Look: There’s nothing inherently sinister about swapping the art in an official building. Administrations come and go, their ambassadors arrive in Canberra or Copenhagen, and they redecorate. No doubt when Obama and Joe Biden were in office, their foreign plenipotentiaries unhooked a few pictures by their Bush- or Trump-appointed predecessors and shipped them back to Foggy Bottom.

What is different with this administration, in art as in life, is the vengeance. Before, a difference in cultural politics would play out with some Bubble Wrap and spackling paste. Under this administration, culture war is waged publicly, optimized for the short-form vertical video. Our ambassador in the Dominican Republic decided to showcase the removal of Wiley’s picture with Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” playing in the background and punctuated the caption with an American flag emoji.

It is not enough to dislike Wiley’s painting; one must shame Wiley the painter. He is the second of the Obama portraitists to come under direct fire from the Trump administration; Amy Sherald [b. 1973], who painted Michelle Obama [2018; National Portrait Gallery], canceled her own exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington [Amy Sherald: American Sublime was scheduled from 19 September 2025-22 February 2026; Sherald canceled it on 24 July 2025] rather than accede to demands to censor (or “contextualize”) a supposedly objectionable work [Trans Forming Liberty (2024); depiction of a Black transgender woman as the Statue of Liberty]. In both cases, the matter at hand is not the painters’ quality or even their political stances, but the need — the pleasure — of functionaries as low down on the organization chart as the Santo Domingo political division to demonstrate loyalty to the president through carnivalesque acts of censorship and humiliation.

But what if your enemy resembles you in ways you cannot admit? That is the real aesthetic terror that this Obamaist kitsch triggers in the halls of the administration: that what you say you want to eradicate (if you ever looked at it at all) is the equal and opposite thing that defines you.

[Jason Farago, a critic at large for the New York Times, writes about art and culture in the U.S. and abroad.  He began writing for the Times in 2015, reviewing exhibitions and reporting features across the United States and in more than a dozen foreign countries.

[Previously, Farago wrote for The Guardian, and was a regular contributor to The New Yorker, the BBC, NPR, the New York Review of Books and Artforum.  He edited a global culture magazine called Even, whose four-year run is collected in the anthology “Out of Practice.”

[In 2017, Farago was named one of the inaugural laureates of the Rabkin Prize for arts writing.  In 2022, he was awarded one of the inaugural Silvers-Dudley Prizes for criticism and journalism, and in 2023 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism.]

*  *  *  *
“OFFICIALS CALL PAINTING ‘WOKE’ AND WANT TO GET RID OF IT”
by Zachary Small 

[Just before the publication of the above article, the report below ran in the New York Times of 26 August 2026 (Section C: “Arts”).  It was also posted on the website as “Trump Officials Propose Sale of ‘Woke’ Painting by Kehinde Wiley” on 24 August 2026.]

The State Department wants to sell a painting by the celebrated artist Kehinde Wiley that the director of its Art in Embassies program called “very woke” and “aesthetically terrifying.” It was removed from the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic last week.

The painting by Wiley, who rose to fame after being selected to create President Barack Obama’s official portrait, features four Dominican models against a floral backdrop. It was commissioned by the federal government in 2013 and paid for with taxpayer dollars.

State Department officials removed the painting from the embassy last week, after first hiding it behind a tarp designed with an image of the American flag.

Erin Scavino, the director of Art in Embassies, criticized Wiley’s painting in a recent podcast interview and pointed out the artist’s connection to Obama. Leah Campos [b. 1977; former intelligence officer serving in the Central Intelligence Agency, 2001-12], the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic [2025-present], celebrated its removal on social media with a video playing the rock anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” writing that the painting was an example of “globalist and woke ideologies.”

Neither elaborated on what she found objectionable.

In a statement on Monday about the removal of the painting, a State Department spokeswoman did not directly address the artwork. The statement instead criticized comments Wiley had made in 2023 about his “Judith and Holofernes” painting, which he described as “a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.” It also cited accusations of sexual assault that Wiley has denied.

[Judith and Holofernes (2012) is Wiley’s modern take on a 17th-century painting (Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1608) by Giovanni Baglione (Italian; 1566-1643). The biblical story of the beheading of Holofernes by Judith (Book of Judith, Chapter 13, verses 1-10) has been depicted in paintings and sculptures throughout history.]

“The work of an individual with such violent and racist words and depictions has no place in the America First State Department,” the spokeswoman said.

The statement said the State Department is determining whether it can legally sell the painting of Dominicans, which is titled “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960.”

“If that is feasible,” the spokeswoman said, “it would be the goal of Art in Embassies to proudly do so.”

A smaller painting by the artist sold at a Phillips auction in 2024 for nearly $845,000. Wiley and his gallerist, Sean Kelly, did not respond to requests for comment.

Virginia Shore, who commissioned the Wiley painting, established many of the embassy art collections as director of acquisitions and chief curator for the Art in Embassies program between 2000 and 2017. She described the work as nonpartisan and said there was no precedent for selling embassy artworks.

“Calling this woke is difficult for me to understand,” she said. “This is a program validated and financially backed under Bush. There is a science of building trust and empathy across borders.”

Wiley received an award from the State Department in 2015 [Department of State Medal of Arts by Secretary of State John Kerry (b. 1943; 68th U. S. Secretary of State: 2013-17)] because of his contributions to cultural diplomacy. He often takes inspiration from historic paintings, asking contemporary Black models to pose inside his version of the compositions. For “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960,” he spent two years studying paintings by the Dominican artists Celeste Woss y Gil [1890-1985] and Gilberto Hernández Ortega [1923-79; renowned Dominican modern artist on whose poses and composition in the 1960 painting Siamesas Wiley based this work], working with art students in the country to finish the scene.

The artwork’s removal was the latest attempt to politicize the State Department’s art program, which became part of the government during the Kennedy administration in 1963 to foster cultural diplomacy. The program was strengthened in 1999 under the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act, which led to embassies developing their own permanent art collections.

This year, Scavino claimed to have gotten an ambassador in Bucharest, Romania, fired over “satanic baby art,” though the diplomat’s departure was reported as a planned retirement. She also selected a friend with no curatorial experience [Jenni Parido, a woman whose most recent job was owning a luxury pet food store in Tampa, Florida] to serve as the commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, bypassing normal procedures. In July, Scavino organized an exhibition in Washington that aimed to “Make Art Great Again” with nearly 70 versions of the American flag on display.

In a statement about the removed Wiley painting, Campos, the U.S. ambassador, said, “It is my intention that everything we project from U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo, including the art and décor, reflect the beauty, strength and commitment to liberty of the United States of America and its people.”

Online, she had a stronger perspective: “Under the Trump administration and my leadership, we are leaving behind globalist, ‘woke’ ideologies to embrace, instead, American patriotism and the beauty of our great country.”

She ended the sentence with an emoji of the American flag.

[Zachary Small is a New York Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics, and technology.  He started contributing to the Times in 2019 and was hired in 2023.

[Small has worked as a journalist for nearly a decade, after previously working in museums and theaters.  He spent years writing criticism for art publications until becoming an investigative reporter on stories about sexual misconduct, fraud, forgeries, and violence in cultural institutions.

[His first book, Token Supremacy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024), details the frenzied collision of art and cryptocurrency.]

2026 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe

 

[The Edinburgh Festival began in 1947 as a single official, classical arts event to heal the wounds of war, which accidentally sparked the world's largest open-access performing arts movement.  It was founded by Rudolf Bing (1902-97; Austrian-born British opera impresario who worked in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including as General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1950 to 1972) to unite Europe through culture after World War II. 

[The main, official event, the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), focuses exclusively on high-profile, curated classical music, opera, theater, and dance.  It established itself as a top-tier destination for new work and hosted the world premières of T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (1949) and Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker (1954).

[Unlike its open-access counterpart—the Edinburgh Festival Fringe—the main festival deliberately limits its programming.  This carefully handpicked lineup allows the EIF to focus entirely on elite, world-class artistic quality.

[In 2026, marking its modern evolution, the EIF entered a high-profile, three-year co-production partnership with the Holland Festival and France’s Festival d’Avignon, two other international festivals founded in 1947.  The EIF now features 147 individual performances across its month-long run (7-30 August 2026; through 31 August for the Fringe).

[Back in 1947, eight theater groups arrived without an invitation because they were left off the official program.  Refusing to leave, these groups performed on the edges (the “fringe”) of the main event using independent venues. 

[Because the main festival booked the city’s premier theaters, these groups took over whatever small spaces they could find—church halls, a cinema, and even a restaurant.  It was this specific layout in 1947 that prompted a journalist to write that these plays were performing “round the fringe of official Festival drama,” accidentally naming the global movement. 

[Today, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival, built entirely on an un-curated, open-access model where anyone with a script and a space can perform.

[The size of the Fringe dwarfs the main official festival, operating as a massive, city-wide takeover.  Currently, the Festival Fringe hosts over 4,100 un-curated shows; over the 25-day run, artists stage 53,884 individual performances.  The lineup features talent arriving from 71 different countries.

[Because the Fringe Society, founded by artists to nurture and uphold the Fringe’s values of inclusivity, experimentation, and imagination, maintains a strict non-vetting policy, the festival’s lineup is highly varied.  Stand-up and sketch comedy make up 38.4% of the entire program (1,401 shows).  It serves as the primary global scouting ground for networks like the BBC and Netflix.

[The festival functions as an incubator for raw creativity, boasting 1,748 world premières.  Beyond comedy and theater, the program heavily features contemporary dance, circus acts, cabaret, spoken word, and musicals.]

“SURVIVING EDINBURGH’S MASS CHAOS”
by Helen Shaw

[This review of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ran in the New York Times on 22 August 2026 (Sec. C: “Arts”).  (It was also posted as “How to Make Sense of 4,000 Edinburgh Shows: Just Soak It All Up” to the Times’ webpage on 20 August 2026.  Helen Shaw reviewed the performances from Edinburgh, Scotland.]

Amid 4,000 fringe shows, discernible trends emerge.

There’s something ridiculous about the name of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

“Fringe” implies decoration happening out on a margin, threads on the hem of a larger garment. But if you have ever elbowed your way down a crammed Edinburgh sidewalk in August, past hundreds of posters for stand-up shows and circus spectaculars, accepting promotional fliers from, say, a woman wearing a disco ball on her head — you might wonder what garment could possibly be larger than this.

This year, the Fringe includes over 4,000 productions. I went to a critics’ symposium where I heard writers talk about how impossible it is to discern trends in such a huge population. And yet, somehow, they do. Certainly in the 23 pieces I managed to see, themes emerged. For example, I accidentally saw three shows in one day that featured Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013; British stateswoman; Leader of the Conservative Party: 1975-90; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: 1979-90; known as the “Iron Lady”]. (I could have just as easily gone to three “Heated Rivalry” spoofs.)

Ostensibly, the Fringe operates on the periphery of the Edinburgh International Festival, an event founded in 1947 to bring the world to the city’s stately sandstone theaters. Despite the Fringe’s exponential (and eclipsing) expansion, that international fest continues. This year, I saw two rather lengthy shows: “Seagull” and “A Trial — after ‘An Enemy of the People,’” both of which ran a full two and a half hours without intermission.

“Seagull” — rendered as “[seagull],” as if for closed captioning — was often wildly thrilling. This Belgian adaptation of [Anton] Chekhov’s [1860-1904] unrequited-passion drama [written in 1895; first produced in 1896] features a superb cast of both hearing and deaf actors, all communicating in Flemish Sign Language. The production, directed by Stijn Van Opstel [sic: Stijn Van Opstal; Flemish actor and theater director, b. 1976; co-founder of the theater company Olympique Dramatique, presenter of [seagull]], is easily the angriest “Seagull” I’ve ever seen, placing at its center the depressive Masja (“Masha”; the explosive Lobke Leirens) and her self-loathing love-object, the neglected writer Konstantin (Yana Wuytjens). In one of Van Opst[a]l’s cleverest gestures, the supertitles sometimes stop translating, and we experience the stinging frustration of incomprehension for ourselves.

[Wuytjens is a female actor, but this was a gender-swapping production, and Konstantin remained a male character.]

In “A Trial,” the Brazilian actor Wagner Moura [b. 1976] plays Thomas Stockmann, the hero of Henrik Ibsen’s [Norwegian; 1828-1906] 1882 “An Enemy of the People,” in which a scientist is reviled for discovering a contaminated water supply. This modern-day agitprop epilogue to Ibsen’s play, devised by the director Christiane Jatahy [b. 1968; the production was from her Paris-based company, Cia. Vértice de Teatro], consists of Stockmann arguing his case to a jury drawn from each night’s audience.

He wants them to declare that his whistle-blowing doesn’t make him an “enemy of the people,” and at first I was impatient with how the verdict seemed to be a foregone conclusion. After an hour, though, I remembered how many real scientists are being vilified, just like Stockmann. “Why don’t we stop this farce?” I kept thinking, right up until that question — and its political ramifications — finally penetrated.

I thought a lot about theatrical duration during my breakneck trip to Scotland. The International Festival’s generous running times give plays time to pivot: to refashion our understanding of a Chekhov classic, or to move from obviousness into persuasion. But almost every show I saw in the Fringe’s protozoic ooze lasted about an hour. Although stand-ups excel in that format, as can song cycles, I shouldn’t have been so surprised that many Fringe plays relied on bathos, since dramatists can draw a character in that time but have little space to develop more complicated emotions than that’s sad.

Perhaps as a result, among the new plays there’s a vogue for characters talking about fashioning a story. That works in rare cases, as in the Emma Howlett’s [British-Irish writer and director, b. 1997] intellectually generous “The Plot” [presented by theatregoose] or in the eerie nightmare story-hour, “As Far as We Know,” by Sam Ward [British theater-maker, writer, and performer; founder of the contemporary theater company YESYESNONO; b. 1994]. It can, though, slide into tweeness.

For instance, in the much-acclaimed but, to my ear, thinly sentimental “Badgers” by Malaika Kegode [British writer, performer, theater-maker, and producer; b. 1993], a podcaster falls into a supernatural mystery. Instead of watching actual scenes, we hear about them from a narrator (Kegode herself) who swoops a magical pen around as if flying a spoon into a toddler’s mouth. She concludes by telling us, cloyingly, that we all have our own stories, and that these are made up of “moments.” Yech.

Clowning, on the other hand, can cut straight to the metaphorical pie-in-the-face. The world doesn’t make linear sense, so why should a show? Simply by painting their noses red, the athletic clowns Xhloe and Natasha [New York City-based absurdist physical theater, clowning, and playwriting duo consisting of Xhloe Rice (b. 1999) and Natasha Roland (b. 1999 or 2000)] can somersault into the middle of the plot of their “Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in Half I Saw It” and start acting out an entire small town plagued by a (fake) sasquatch. Their satire becomes a strangely sympathetic portrait of conspiratorial thinking: People would rather believe in cryptids than in their neighbors’ brutality.

Another [British] clown duo, Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole of the docu-absurdist Sh!t Theater, made the trenchant “Evita Too,” exploring the true story of Isabel Perón — Juan Perón’s third wife, who became the world’s first female president when he died — as well as the performers’ own fraught relationship with legacy.

[The reference, for those who don’t catch it, is to the 1978 Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948; English composer and impresario of musical theater) musical Evita, about the life of Eva Perón, (1919-52, Argentine politician, activist, and actress) who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 1946 until her death in 1952. She was the second wife (1945-52) of Juan Perón (1895-1974; Argentine military officer and politician; 29th and 40th President of Argentina: 1946 to his overthrow in 1955, and 1973 until his death in 1974).

[Evita, as she was known, was followed (1961-74) by Isabel Perón (b. 1931; Argentine politician, known as Isabelita) who served as President of Argentina from 1974 to 1976.]

Sixteen years into their collaboration, Mothersole and Biscuit (who spend parts of the show naked and on roller skates) crack jokes about misogyny, often connecting Isabel Perón’s historical erasure — if not her corporate neo-fascism — to aspects of their own experience. For instance, much like Isabelita, the clowns get a lot of unsolicited advice from men. They cheerfully display a cautionary letter from an Andrew Lloyd Webber representative, who seems worried that the show could reflect poorly on his client’s musical “Evita.” (Adorably, the lawyer notes that he assumes that his letter will end up in the show.)

Lloyd Webber’s legal team must have had a busy summer. I also saw the company Flo & Joan’s [British sisters Nicola and Rosie Dempsey] charmingly bonkers “One Man Musical,” which imagines a certain mega-composer of “musicools” [i.e., Lloyd Webber] trying to win over the youth with a preening solo bio-play.

The wonderfully desultory Ed Easton [British actor, writer, and comedian] ambles around, refusing to do an impression of anyone in particular, probably so he can’t be told to cease and desist. He does, though, issue droll commands while demonstrating maneuvers in “Starlight Express”-style roller skates. He indicates Flo & Joan’s critique of Lloyd Webber’s overweening influence while also warning the front row. “You’re going to need to stop my mass,” he says, rolling toward us.

[Starlight Express is a 1984 musical with music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Richard Stilgoe (b. 1943; British songwriter, lyricist, musician, and broadcaster). It’s about railway trains and the actors perform on roller skates.]

Many Fringe pieces seem to see success itself as villainous, not to say demonic. In the explicit solo show “Roleplay,” Hannah Reilly [Australian comedian and podcaster] blames the lure of podcast superstardom for shaping her hypersexualized persona; in “Ay Am!,” the clown Maya Ricote’s [Mexican/Venezuelan-American telenovela actress turned contemporary clown artist; b. 2000] hilariously exaggerated curves (balloons, basically) have been bestowed on her by a Mephistophelean talent agent, who otherwise keeps her in a cryogenic freezer.

Fame is a shared obsession because, while you’re at the Fringe, you can’t help but wonder what will escape the Fringe. The festival’s crossover hits of the last decades, like “Six: The Musical” [2017; West End, 2019; Broadway, 2021], “Fleabag” [2013; British TV series, 2016-19] and “Baby Reindeer” [2019; British television miniseries, 2024], are hard to recreate. And watching so much theater in such excited company makes your own opinions about what’s successful slalom crazily. Even as I sat laughing in a basement in Edinburgh, I wondered how I’d respond to the same show in a basement in New York.

But I did see two productions that seem ready to thrive outside the Fringe’s peculiar hothouse ecology. One of them, Alex Bechtel’s [New York-based multidisciplinary composer, actor, writer, and music director; b. 1986] “Penelope,” is already many years into its gestation, yet it could almost have been called into existence by this summer’s “The Odyssey” [2026 epic film] discourse. You think a Cyclops is bad? Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, is trapped, as she says, in a house “full of monsters.”

The stunning Grace McLean [American actress, playwright, composer, and singer; b. 1984] plays — and collaborated in writing — the long-suffering titular role, performing a cycle of songs about her fury at a husband who has left her in a two-decade lurch. McLean, whose voice ripples like bronze under the smith’s hammer, has both a wonderful siren’s shriek and a smoky, torchy growl. (Impressively, the show actually climaxes in a long, silent moment; like Odysseus’s nurse, you’ll know it when you see it.)

I was also utterly swept away by “The Real Kyle McCarren,” another long-developing musical, composed by Andy Roninson [American musical theater composer, lyricist, orchestrator, and music director; b. ca. 1989] and Sean McVerry [Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer; b. 1990], with a book by Roninson. It looks like a band gig, but it functions as a wake: Roninson is grappling with the early death of his childhood friend Kyle, the first guy he ever wrote music with. McVerry, on guitar, plays Kyle’s revenant, and between their excellent rock-inflected songs, there’s plentiful frontman banter.

The real story, though, is the interplay among the band. Playing assorted characters (Kyle’s friend, Kyle’s mother, etc.) are several staggering performers, including the astonishing Vincent Jamal Hooper [American stage and television actor; b. 1994 or 1995], sweet Sarah Coffey [Brooklyn-based actor, musician, vocalist, and comedian; b. 1994], and the powerhouse heartbreaker Jaygee Macapugay [Filipino-American Broadway performer; b. 1974]. They have voices like gods, while Roninson, as he frequently admits, does not. He’s a virtuoso on the keyboard, though, and as the group performs, we see each bandmate lost in laughing awe at the others’ gifts.

I was delighted because they were delighted, and this vicarious pleasure summed up my experience of the Fringe — its true power comes from so many artists watching other artists. The rest of us are welcome, but the makers are their own best audience, and we gather strength from their collected heat and light.

[Helen Shaw is the chief theater reviewer for the New York Times.  She trained as a dramaturg at the American Repertory Theater’s Institute for Advanced Theater Training in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the last few years that it was run by its founder, the playwright-critic Robert Brustein.

[Dramaturgy can often be a bridge to reviewing—the first dramaturg, Gotthold Lessing (1729-81; German philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic), was an embedded critic at the Hamburg National Theater—and it turns out Shaw was learning to be a critic without knowing it.

[Once she moved to New York, she started writing freelance reviews and features in 2003.  Most of her criticism over the next decade and a half appeared in Time Out New York.  Shaw joined New York magazine in 2019, The New Yorker in 2022, the Times in 2026.]

New York Fire Hydrants

 

A Special Installment of “A Helluva Town”

[New Yorkers looking for ways to beat the heat in the summer often turn to opening city fire hydrants to create impromptu sprinklers.  This has been one longtime tradition.  But is that water safe to swim in—or drink?  And what risks can come with opening a hydrant? 

[Opening hydrants occurs in other major U.S. cities like Philadelphia and Chicago.  New York City, however, stands out because it formally regulates and legalizes the practice.  While other municipalities crack down on and strictly prohibit unauthorized hydrant opening, the Big Apple has institutionalized a way for residents to do it safely.

[The Philadelphia Water and Fire Departments strictly ban recreational hydrant opening, viewing it as a dangerous hazard that drops water pressure for firefighting and risks street or basement flooding.  Instead of issuing spray caps (a policy Philly phased out), the city directs residents to official public pools and city-operated “spraygrounds.”

[Chicago residents in neighborhoods far from Lake Michigan (such as the South and West Sides) still pop hydrants informally during severe heatwaves.  The city, however, aggressively discourages or locks down units due to risks of low water pressure in upper floors and flooded basements, relying on official park district cooling centers and pools rather than sanctioned hydrant attachments.

[Incidentally, Los Angeles doesn’t have a recreational hydrant-opening culture like New York City at all.  While LA suffers from intense summer heatwaves, the city doesn’t offer a spray cap program.  (The only notable hydrant-tampering in LA occurs in high-density encampments, like Skid Row, where individuals sometimes illegally tap hydrants for basic sanitation, drinking water, or bathing.  The city, however, aggressively locks down these units.)

[NY1’s Dean Meminger spoke with New York City officials about the safety concerns surrounding open fire hydrants and whether they want to put a damper on the summertime tradition.]

IS IT SAFE TO COOL OFF UNDER AN OPEN FIRE HYDRANT?”

by Dean Meminger

[Anchor Meminger’s human interest story aired on Spectrum Cable’s NY1 News on 20 August 2026.]

NY1’s Dean Meminger hits the streets to explore how the tradition began, hear from New Yorkers who grew up cooling off in hydrant water, and find out who really controls the city’s hydrants — the city or the people?

CHAPTER 1: INTRO TO NYC’S HYDRANT CULTURE

Dean Meminger, NY1 News: On a hot summer day in the city, you’re guaranteed to see people cooling off in hydrant water. Thousands of gallons of water just splashing on people, keeping them nice and cool when the temperatures are 90 and above.

Now, if you grew up in the city like I did—I’m born and raised here—perhaps you remember cooling off in this water. Thousands of gallons of water just spraying all over everybody.

Now, the city tries to discourage that. They actually give people [MUSIC] the caps to put on the water so that they don’t waste. so much of it. Full blast is dangerous.

Don’t just open the hydrants. It’s illegal to just open them like that. If every hydrant had this [SHOWS A SPRINKLER CAP] on it, we wouldn’t have pressure problems in the buildings.

I’m going to dive into this issue to find out how the tradition started. I’m going to speak to people who are actually turning on the hydrants and those playing in the water to see what they know. I will also speak to city officials to find out what they’re doing to make sure people are doing it safely.

So, now I’m on a mission to find out who controls the hydrants in our city. The city or the people? Let’s go.

So, first, let’s rewind. How did the summer tradition of opening a fire hydrant even begin in the first place?

CHAPTER 2: HISTORY OF OPENING FIRE HYDRANTS

Lilly Tuttle, Museum of the City of New York, Senior Curator for the Collection: I can tell you—kids were doing it in the 1930s—that there was an issue around 1933, of actually [MUSIC] an uprising, sort of a protest because the fire department shut off the water.

[On 9 June 1933, in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan (part of Midtown West’s Theatre District), during a brutal heatwave, approximately 400 neighborhood children and teenagers wearing bathing suits, swimming trunks, and improvised underclothes, marched through the streets and used wrenches to crack open neighborhood hydrants, placing sticks in the nozzles to spray the water skyward.

[Temperatures in New York City climbed aggressively into the mid-to-high 90’s Fahrenheit with oppressive humidity, creating suffocating, greenhouse-like conditions inside the city’s un-air-conditioned brick tenements. It was described by contemporary news reports as “stifling” and “stifling heat” across Manhattan.

[NYPD officers marched through the neighborhood with wrenches to systematically shut down the open fireplugs, the neighborhood youth revolted. Outraged at losing their only relief from the sweltering heat, the crowd of kids marched directly to the West 47th Street Police Station to stage a boisterous demonstration against the police crackdown.

[This 1933 protest marked the first time the city’s informal hydrant culture escalated into organized civil defiance, setting off a multi-decade battle between residents seeking cooling and helmet-wearing police officers that ultimately forced NYC to invent the modern “spray cap” system, which arose in the 1950s.]

Historically, not every [MUSIC] New York City neighborhood has had sort of an even distribution of [MUSIC] playgrounds and sort of recreational infrastructure.

And so definitely, the hydrant is kind of a creative workaround.

Meminger: Opening fire hydrants in New York has been a part of its history for a long time. Now let’s see what city residents have to say about it.

CHAPTER 3: WHAT NEW YORKERS THINK OF OPENING HYDRANTS

Man in the Street by a Hydrant: For those that’re not close to the pool or to the beach, this is your beach.

Muslim Woman on Sidewalk (heavy accent): I grew up in the lower east side in Manhattan near Fifth Street. To be a swimming pool day because they are but yeah, we playing the hydrants and now my children are enjoying it

Meminger: How cold or cool is that water?

Little Girl: Really cold and I really like it!

Young Man: You know what we in the city and I feel like—if there’s a way for kids to have fun in a safe manner without having to go somewhere far, let them have [MUSIC] their fun

Another Young Man: People in the heat got to find a way to survive the heat

Meminger: And what do you remember about playing in the hydrant as a kid?

Older Man in a Wheelchair: This [LEANS OVER AND SPLASHES MEMINGER. THEY LAUGH]. 

Meminger: So, this is the situation that city officials are trying to discourage.

[MUSIC] We’re driving across the Bronx and we see this hydrant open. No one’s cooling off. Thousands and thousands of gallons of water just wasted. And as we walk right over here, we actually see the cap in the corner. So, someone took it off maybe to cool off, but they put the cap over here. That water is being wasted.

CHAPTER 4: WHAT THE CITY SAYS ABOUT OPENING HYDRANTS

But what does the FDNY think about open hydrants?

Tim Keenan, FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief, Traditionally, right, we do cool off in the fire hydrants in New York City. Right, that’s been going on for many years. In fact, I’m on the job almost 30 years and we’ve had sprinkler caps for hydrants since I first got on the job.

Okay, but where the problem comes in is if people don’t use the sprinkler caps. If they just turn the hydrant on and they let the water just free-flow in the street, that can pose a problem to us.

New York City’s water grid is a gravity-fed system. primarily a gravity-fed system with water coming down aqueducts from upstate and so there’s no quick way to just turn up the pressure. So if we get a lot of hydrants open in the city, it reduces the water pressure and the volume of water.

The best way to do it is with the sprinkler cap. There’s a lot of advantages if you come to a firehouse. They’re available at every firehouse citywide. We have 200 firehouses in the city. Anyone 18 years or older can come to the firehouse and get a spray cap.

Meminger: Have fun, but be safe.

Keenan: Have fun but be safe, right? We want everybody to enjoy. We want everybody to be cool.

Meminger: After speaking directly to firefighters, people who need to cool off, and seeing the issues with open hydrants, we decided to go directly [MUSIC] to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection or DEP.

Lisa F. Garcia, Commissioner of NYC DEP: I know how much it means to the community. Um, for us in the Bronx, it was like we knew this is part of our summer fun. And what I love about this program of the spray caps is we’re not saying don’t turn on the hydrant.

This is understanding the culture [MUSIC] of summer in New York. So, we want you to be able to turn on that hydrant, but use a spray cap so we’re not [MUSIC] wasting water. The fire department has the right pressure, right? And the community and we . . . the kids can still run around in that sprinkler of water and cool [MUSIC] off.

We’re not saying no to using your hydrant. So, come to us, to the fire department. We want to work with you to make sure you can still enjoy it.

Meminger: When it comes to water coming out of the hydrant . . .?

Garcia: Yeah.

Meminger: . . . is it safe to drink that water if it’s been running for a while?

Garcia: Yes. Yeah. So, the water that’s going to come out of the spray cap is delivered from the same water tunnels that come from the reservoirs all the way upstate. So, we maintain 19 reservoirs starting in the Catskills. So, [MUSIC] think of it like . . . almost like natural spring water from the mountains that’s preserved. So it’s . . . it is clean drinking water.

We make sure to sample it and test it. Make sure that you are enjoying the best drinking water I think in the world.

Meminger: So this was a gadget that in the Bronx they made up [LOOKING AT AN IMPROVISED DEVICE INSTALLED ON A HYDRANT]. They actually did some plumbing and they have their [MUSIC] own cut off valve on it to make it spray. I mean people are coming up with their own concept . . . .

Garcia: Yes, we appreciate the imaginative solutions.

Meminger: So they put a . . . they put a PVC pipe and then ran it up [ANOTHER IMPROVISED SPRAY DEVICE]. So, it’s like a shower.

Garcia: Wow. But that’s kind of like a sprinkler part. The . . . Okay, these folks should be sending [MUSIC], their creative ideas to us so we can figure out is this really reducing the amount of gallons we’re using per minute. And like again, this is [MUSIC] safer because the kids can play on the sidewalk.

Meminger: Yeah. So, maybe we’re very creative.

Garcia: So, maybe we can have like a contest. For now, we want to use the ones that have already been certified and authorized, but we could continue [MUSIC] to think of ways to work with communities. Like, ‘What works for you?’

CHAPTER 5: WHO REALLY CONTROLS THE HYDRANTS

Meminger: Now, with that, who really controls the hydrants?

Lilly Tuttle: The city controls the hydrants, but I think it’s amazing to think [MUSIC] about New Yorkers going out and sort of taking ownership over this piece of infrastructure, particularly on a really hot day.

Man by a Hydrant: Well, the city makes sure the water’s in there, but the people control it.

Man in Wheelchair: I believe the people control it.

Meminger: Why?

Man in Wheelchair: Because it’s too hot!

Young Man: It falls more towards the [MUSIC] people. Like there’s always a method to opening . . . .

Muslim Woman: So the city control the hydrant, but I know there’s some people that they have it. You know how it is. The Bronx it down Bronx.

Meminger: So the city may control the water and fire hydrants, but we New Yorkers know if it’s a hot summer day, we’ll always find a way to stay cool.

Hi, I’m Dean Meminger.

[Born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx, Dean Meminger, Jr., is a prominent American television journalist who serves as an anchor and criminal justice reporter for Spectrum News NY1.  Based in New York City, he has spent nearly 30 years—he joined the NY1 news team in 1997, after starting his broadcast career at BronxNet TV in 1995—covering high-profile crime, policing, and community issues across the five boroughs.

[Meminger’s reporting frequently captures the heart, history, and unique culture of New York City.  His special digging into the multigenerational tradition of opening fire hydrants is a perfect example of his ability to blend local heritage with lighthearted community reporting.]