New York Times

President-elect Trump Picks Elaine Chao for Transportation Secretary

She is a woman and an immigrant, a fixture of the Republican establishment for two decades. She is a savvy and professional practitioner of the capital’s inside game. And now she is going to work for President-elect Donald J. Trump. Trump named Elaine L. Chao as his choice to be the next secretary of transportation, elevating someone whose background and experience are in many respects completely at odds with the brash and disruptive tenor of his anti-Washington campaign. His transportation secretary is likely to be one of the more essential players. President-elect Trump, a real estate magnate, has said that infrastructure redevelopment will be a priority of his first 100 days in office. And Chao has experience — politically and personally — in navigating the competing centers of power in the capital. She is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

CNN Brings In the Social App Beme to Cultivate a Millennial Audience

With millions of people regularly tuning in to his YouTube video blogs every morning, Casey Neistat has a millennial fan base coveted by both marketers and media companies. Now, one of those big media outlets is bringing Neistat — and, it hopes, his youthful audience — in-house. CNN announced that it had agreed to acquire the technology and talent behind Beme, the social media app built and started by Neistat and Matt Hackett, a former vice president of engineering at Tumblr. Beme’s 12 employees will join CNN as part of the deal, the terms of which were not publicly disclosed.

Beme was intended to be a social sharing application that Neistat described as “more authentic,” a way of putting four-second bursts of video out into the social sphere without giving users the ability to edit or tweak the content. Taking video was as simple as holding a smartphone’s front-facing sensor to one’s body, as if the camera were an extension of one’s chest. Neistat hopes to bring that idea of authenticity to a news and media environment to draw in a younger audience largely untapped by the cable news network. CNN will shut down the Beme app, which had 1.2 million downloads before losing steam.

An Auction That Could Transform Local Media

[Commentary] With the demand for wireless broadband growing, the Federal Communications Commission is auctioning off a big chunk of the public airwaves. Billions of dollars are likely to change hands, a windfall that could transform local media across the country.

This broadband spectrum is now used by TV stations to broadcast their signals to the comparatively small number of customers who rely on antenna reception at a time when most people use cable, satellite or streaming services. The proceeds from these sales could produce enormous public benefits if they are used to build a 21st-century infrastructure for public interest media. For states, communities and universities holding licenses in play, the auction presents an important opportunity to invest in new ways to meet the information needs of the public. At least 54 public television stations in 18 states and the District of Columbia applied to participate in the auction, according to research by the nonprofit group Free Press. These include three stations in the Los Angeles market, a major outlet on Chicago’s South Side, and the public station at Howard University in Washington. Each could be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps nowhere is there a better opportunity to take advantage of the auction than in New Jersey. The governor and State Legislature should create a permanent fund to support a new model for public-interest media, financed by a significant portion of any auction revenue. This approach could serve as a model for other states, universities and communities seeking to sell their spectrum.

[Daggett is the president and chief executive of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation]

In Europe, Is Uber a Transportation Service or a Digital Platform?

In July 2015, a judge in Barcelona referred a case to the European Court of Justice, asking the Luxembourg-based court to determine whether Uber should be treated as a transportation service or merely as a digital platform. If the court decides that Uber is a transportation service, the company will have to obey Europe’s often onerous labor and safety rules, and comply with rules that apply to traditional taxi associations.

Though Uber already fulfills such requirements in many European countries, the ruling could hamper its expansion plans. But if the judges rule that Uber is an “information society service,” or an online platform that merely matches independent drivers with potential passengers, then the company will have greater scope to offer low-cost products like UberPop and other services that have been banned in many parts of Europe. A ruling is not expected before March 2017 at the earliest. The judges may decide to consider Uber a transportation service, an online platform, or a combination of the two, further complicating the legal standoff.

The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz

[Commentary] For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes.

Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their personality scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names. Cambridge Analytica worked on the “Leave” side of the Brexit campaign. In the United States it takes only Republicans as clients: Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the primaries, President-elect Donald Trump in the general election. Cambridge is reportedly backed by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and a major Republican donor; a key board member is Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who became Trump’s campaign chairman and is set to be his chief strategist in the White House.

[McKenzie Funk, an Open Society fellow, is a founding member of the journalism cooperative Deca.]

Auto Safety Regulators Seek a Driver Mode to Block Apps

Apple iPhones and other hand-held devices have long had an airplane mode that shuts off wireless communications to prevent interference with the vast electronics systems that control modern aircraft. Now federal auto safety regulators want makers of these devices to add a driver mode to modify or block certain apps and features to keep a driver’s attention on the road.

The initiative comes in the form of voluntary guidelines that will be issued Nov 23 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They arrive amid a spike in traffic fatalities in the last two years and increasing concerns about the distractions posed by smartphones and the many apps that Americans are using while behind the wheel. The guidelines call on electronics manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to design future operating systems that limit the functionality and simplify interfaces while a vehicle is in motion and to develop technology to identify when the devices are being used by a driver while driving. That would ensure the limits are placed on drivers and not other vehicle occupants.

Less Defiant Trump at The Times: ‘I Hope We Can All Get Along’

In the morning, President-elect Donald Trump was the media-bashing firebrand many of his supporters adore, denouncing The New York Times as a “failing” institution that covered him inaccurately — “and with a nasty tone!” Eight hours later, after a lunchtime interview with editors and reporters for The Times — one that was briefly canceled, after President-elect Trump quarreled over the ground rules, then restored — the mood of the president-elect, it seemed, had mellowed.

“The Times is a great, great American jewel,” he declared as he prepared to leave the gathering in the newspaper’s 16th-floor boardroom, where portraits of former presidents adorn the walls. “A world jewel,” added President-elect Trump, who was seated next to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s publisher. “And I hope we can all get along.” In an extraordinary 75-minute meeting — parrying, debating and, at times, joking with the leaders of a publication that has long been an object of Trump’s fascination and frustration — the president-elect’s chameleonlike approach to the news media was on full display. He dismissed his earlier talk of strengthening libel laws, telling the assembled journalists, “I think you’ll be OK.” He expressed interest in improving his relationship with the paper, saying, “I think it would make the job I am doing much easier.” “To me,” President-elect Trump said at one point, “it would be a great achievement if I could come back here in a year or two, and have a lot of folks here say, ‘You’ve done a great job.’”

Billionaires vs. the Press in the Era of Trump

A small group of superrich Americans — President-elect Donald Trump among them — has laid the groundwork for an unprecedented legal assault on the media. Can they succeed?

The new president will be a man who constantly accuses the media of getting things wrong but routinely misrepresents and twists facts himself. There are signs, too, of new efforts to harness the law to the cause of cowing the press. President-elect Trump’s choice for chief adviser, Stephen Bannon, ran the alt-right Breitbart News Network before joining Trump’s campaign last summer. Breitbart announced recently that it was “preparing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a major media company” for calling Breitbart a “ ‘white nationalist’ website.” Even if Breitbart is bluffing, the threat will discourage other news outlets from using that term to describe it, and that will in turn help Breitbart and Bannon seem more acceptable to the mainstream. President-elect Trump was right about one thing: You don’t have to win every case to advance in the larger legal war.

President-elect Trump Summons TV Figures for Private Meeting, and Lets Them Have It

It had all the trappings of a high-level rapprochement: President-elect Donald Trump, now the nation’s press critic in chief, inviting the leading anchors and executives of television news to join him for a private meeting of minds. On-air stars like Lester Holt, Charlie Rose, George Stephanopoulos and Wolf Blitzer headed to Trump Tower for the off-the-record gathering, typically the kind of event where journalists and politicians clear the air after a hard-fought campaign. Instead, the president-elect delivered a defiant message: You got it all wrong.

President-elect Trump, whose antagonism toward the news media was unusual even for a modern presidential candidate, described the television networks as dishonest in their reporting and shortsighted in missing the signs of his upset victory. He criticized some in the room by name, including CNN’s president, Jeffrey Zucker, according to multiple people briefed on the meeting who were granted anonymity to describe confidential discussions. It seemed the meeting was being used as a political prop, especially after Trump-friendly news outlets trumpeted the session as a take-no-prisoners move by a brave president-elect.

One Thing Voters Agree On: Better Campaign Coverage Was Needed

[Commentary] Since the election, I have been on the phone with many Times readers around the country to discuss their concerns about The Times’s coverage of the presidential election. The number of complaints coming into the public editor’s office is five times the normal level, and the pace has only just recently tapered off. My colleague Thomas Feyer, who oversees the letters to the editor, says the influx from readers is one of the largest since Sept. 11.

Many people are commenting on the election, but many are venting about The Times’s coverage. Readers are also taking to the comments section of Times articles to talk about it, says the community editor, Bassey Etim. From my conversations with readers, and from the e-mails that have come into my office, I can tell you there is a searing level of dissatisfaction out there with many aspects of the coverage.

[Liz Spayd is the public editor for the New York Times]

Facebook Considering Ways to Combat Fake News, Mark Zuckerberg Says

After more than a week of accusations that the spread of fake news on Facebook may have affected the outcome of the presidential election, Mark Zuckerberg published a detailed post describing ways the company was considering dealing with the problem.

Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chairman and chief executive, broadly outlined some of the options he said the company’s news feed team was looking into, including third-party verification services, better automated detection tools and simpler ways for users to flag suspicious content. “The problems here are complex, both technically and philosophically,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We believe in giving people a voice, which means erring on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible.” The post was perhaps the most detailed glimpse into Zuckerberg’s thinking on the issue since Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election. Within hours of his victory being declared, Facebook was accused of affecting the election’s outcome by failing to stop bogus news stories, many of them favorable to Trump, from proliferating on its social network. Executives and employees at all levels of the company have since been debating its role and responsibilities.

President-elect Trump Selects Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General

President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Sen Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a conservative from Alabama who became a close adviser after endorsing him early in his campaign, to be the attorney general of the United States. While Sen Sessions is well liked in the Senate, his record as United States attorney in Alabama in the 1980s is very likely to become an issue for Democrats and civil rights groups expected to give it close scrutiny. While serving as a United States prosecutor in Alabama, Sessions was nominated in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship. But his nomination was rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee because of racially charged comments and actions. At that time, he was one of two judicial nominees whose selections were halted by the panel in nearly 50 years.

The appointment of Sen Sessions is expected to bring sweeping change to the Justice Department as it operated under Loretta E. Lynch and her predecessor, Eric H. Holder Jr., who, when he was nominated to be the first black attorney general, pledged to make rebuilding the civil rights division his top priority. Several former Justice officials predicted that Sen Sessions would reverse the emphasis on civil rights and criminal-justice reform that Holder put in place.

Mike Pompeo Is President-elect Trump’s Choice as CIA Director

President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Rep Mike Pompeo (R-KS), a hawkish Republican from Kansas and a former Army officer, to lead the CIA. Rep Pompeo, who has served for three terms in Congress and is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, gained prominence for his role in the congressional investigation into the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. He was a sharp critic of Hillary Clinton on the committee. If confirmed by the Senate, Rep Pompeo would take control of a spy agency that has been remade in the years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a relentless focus on manhunts, counterterrorism and targeted killing operations. Over the past year, the CIA has undergone a bureaucratic reorganization under its director, John O. Brennan, an effort Rep Pompeo would decide whether he wants to continue.

On the intelligence committee, Rep Pompeo has taken a particularly hard-line stance on how to treat National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. After Snowden's allies began a campaign to get him pardoned, the entire House Select Committee on Intelligence wrote a letter to President Barack Obama urging against a pardon. The letter said Snowden was no whistle-blower, but rather a "serial exaggerator and fabricator." At that time, Rep Pompeo issued his own press release, calling Snowden a "liar and a criminal," who deserves "prison rather than pardon."

Michael Flynn, Anti-Islamist Ex-General, Offered Security Post

President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered the post of national security adviser to Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, potentially putting a retired intelligence officer who believes Islamist militancy poses an existential threat in one of the most powerful roles in shaping military and foreign policy. General Flynn, 57, a registered Democrat, was President-elect Trump’s main national security adviser during his campaign. If he accepts President-elect Trump’s offer, as expected, he will be a critical gatekeeper for a president with little experience in military or foreign policy issues. General Flynn stunned former colleagues when he traveled to Moscow in 2015 to appear alongside Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at a lavish gala for the Kremlin-run propaganda channel RT, a trip General Flynn admitted he was paid to make and defended by saying he saw no distinction between RT and US news channels such as CNN.

Fake News on Facebook? In Foreign Elections, That’s Not New.

Well before the 2016 American election threw Facebook’s status as a digital-era news source into the spotlight, leaders, advocacy groups and minorities worldwide have contended with an onslaught of online misinformation and abuse that have had real-world political repercussions. And for years, the social network did little to clamp down on the false news.

Now Facebook, Google and others have begun to take steps to curb the trend, but some outside the United States say the move is too late. “They should have done this way earlier,” said Richard Heydarian, a political analyst in the Philippines, one of Facebook’s fastest-growing markets. “We already saw the warning signs of this years ago.” The impact of Facebook and other social media platforms on international elections is difficult to quantify. But Facebook’s global reach — roughly a quarter of the world’s population now has an account — is difficult to deny, political experts and academics say.

Ritual of Ever-Present Coverage May Not Pass Muster With Trump

Since Election Day, President-elect Donald Trump has refused to let reporters accompany him to the White House, accused the media of inciting protests and tweeted accusations that The New York Times fabricated stories about his transition.

As a candidate, he vilified journalists by name and blacklisted news outlets that displeased him. So when President-elect Trump ducked out to dinner one night without informing the journalists assigned to cover him, it struck White House reporters as a small but significant omen that cordial relations between the president and his press corps, a hallmark of the West Wing, were under threat. Is it a big deal if a president goes to dinner and the press doesn’t know? In a word, yes, according to former administration officials, journalists and a group of press advocacy organizations that issued an open letter to President-elect Trump arguing that Americans “deserve to know what the president is doing.”

Twitter Adds New Ways to Curb Abuse and Hate Speech

Social media companies are under increasing scrutiny for the amount of hate speech that thrives on their platforms, especially since the presidential election. Now, Twitter has unveiled several new measures to curb the online abuse, though the changes are unlikely to be far-reaching enough to quiet the company’s critics. Twitter said it was making it easier for its users to hide content they do not wish to see on the service and to report abusive posts, even when those messages are directed at other users. The company has given its support teams training to better identify mistreatment on Twitter.

Gwen Ifill, Award-Winning Political Reporter and Author

Gwen Ifill, a groundbreaking journalist who covered the White House, Congress and national campaigns during three decades for The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC and, most prominently, PBS, died at a hospice in Washington. She was 61.

In a distinguished career, Ms. Ifill was in the forefront of a journalism vanguard as a black woman in a field dominated by white men. She achieved her highest visibility most recently, as the moderator and managing editor of the public affairs program “Washington Week” on PBS and the co-anchor and co-managing editor, with Judy Woodruff, of “NewsHour,” competing with the major broadcast and cable networks for the nightly news viewership. They were the first all-female anchor team on network nightly news. She and Ms. Woodruff were the moderators of a Democratic primary debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, reprising a role that Ms. Ifill had performed solo between sparring vice-presidential candidates in the 2004 and 2008 general election campaigns. She also wrote “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” a book published the day President Obama was inaugurated in 2009.

Google and Facebook Take Aim at Fake News Sites

Google and Facebook have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome. Those companies responded by making it clear that they would not tolerate such misinformation by taking pointed aim at fake news sites’ revenue sources. Google kicked off the action saying it will ban websites that peddle fake news from using its online advertising service. Facebook updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy, which already says it will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites. Taken together, the decisions were a clear signal that the tech behemoths could no longer ignore the growing outcry over their power in distributing information to the American electorate.

Online, Everything Is Alternative Media

Breitbart, the website at the center of the self-described alternative online media, is planning to expand in the United States and abroad. The site, whose former chairman became the chief executive of Donald J. Trump’s campaign in August, has been emboldened by the victory of its candidate. Breitbart was always bullish on President-elect Trump’s chances, but the site seems far more certain of something else, as illustrated by a less visible story it published on election night, declaring a different sort of victory: “Breitbart Beats CNN, HuffPo for Total Facebook Engagements for Election Content.” It was a type of story the site publishes regularly. In August: “Breitbart Jumps to #11 on Facebook for Overall Engagement.”

On social platforms, all media had become marginal; elsewhere, much of the media was in structural collapse. Growing distribution systems belonged to technology companies and their users. Publishers had become mere guests, their own distribution systems, like printed newspapers, stagnant or shrinking. So a news organization’s ranking in that online world — one in which the importance of legacy was diminished — meant something. Faith in the importance of social metrics was a common trait among pro-Trump media, and for obvious reasons. They were clear indicators of support, participation and success, though exposed to no methodology. They were relative to other media and, by proxy, to politics.

Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s Former Campaign Manager, Leaves CNN

Donald J. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, resigned from his role as a CNN political commentator, ending a television deal that had attracted scrutiny and harsh criticism about the cable channel’s journalistic ethics.

Lewandowski, who joined CNN as a paid contributor days after being fired by Trump in June, has expressed interest in a senior adviser role in the White House, apparently. His name has also been mentioned as a potential chairman of the Republican National Committee. Lewandowski has been frequently spotted this week at Trump Tower in Manhattan, chatting with senior aides and attending meetings. Even as he defended Trump in front of millions of viewers on CNN talk shows, Lewandowski stayed in regular contact with the candidate and flew on the Trump campaign jet. He also received tens of thousands of dollars in severance from the Trump campaign, payments that were set to continue through the end of 2016. The arrangement raised concerns about whether CNN was effectively paying a Trump campaign strategist to spin its viewers.

Donald Trump Picks Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff and Stephen Bannon as Strategist

President-elect Donald Trump chose Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a loyal campaign adviser, to be his White House chief of staff, turning to a Washington insider whose friendship with the House speaker, Paul Ryan, could help secure early legislative victories. President-elect Trump named Stephen Bannon, a right-wing media provocateur, his senior counselor and chief West Wing strategist, signaling an embrace of the fringe ideology long advanced by Bannon and of a continuing disdain for the Republican establishment.

The dual appointments — with Bannon given top billing in the official announcement — instantly created rival centers of power in the Trump White House. Bannon’s selection demonstrated the power of grass-roots activists who backed Trump’s candidacy. Some of them have long traded in the conspiracy theories and sometimes racist messages of Breitbart News, the website that Bannon ran for much of the past decade.

Breitbart, Reveling in Trump’s Election, Gains a Voice in His White House

There is talk of Breitbart bureaus opening in Paris, Berlin and Cairo, spots where the populist right is on the rise. A bigger newsroom is coming in Washington, the better to cover a president-elect whose candidacy it embraced.

Mainstream news outlets are soul-searching in the wake of being shocked by Donald Trump’s election. But the team at Breitbart News, the right-wing opinion and news website that some critics have denounced as a hate site, is elated — and eager to expand on a victory that it views as a profound validation of its cause. “So much of the media mocked us, laughed at us, called us all sorts of names,” said Alexander Marlow, the site’s editor in chief. “And then for us to be seen as integral to the election of a president, despite all of that hatred, is something that we certainly enjoy, and savor.”

Where Will Trump Stand on Press Freedoms?

[Commentary] If President-elect Donald Trump keeps up the posture he displayed during the campaign — all-out war footing — the future will hold some very grim days, not just for news reporters but also for the American constitutional system that relies on a free and strong press.

It’s one thing to wage a press war as a candidate, when the most you can do is enforce reporting bans at your rallies, hurl insults and deny interviews and access (all of which are plenty bad). It’s another thing to do it from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where you have control over what vital government information is made public, and where you have sway over the Justice Department, which under President Barack Obama has shown an overexuberance in investigating journalists and the whistle-blowers who leak to them. Imagine what somebody with a press vendetta and a dim view of the First Amendment would do with that kind of power.