Journalism

White House Correspondents' Association President Jeff Mason said they are "not satisfied" with the White House putting a halt on their daily, on-camera briefings. In an e-mail to members of the association, Mason said he met with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to discuss the issues of the briefings.

"The WHCA’s position on this issue is clear: we believe strongly that Americans should be able to watch and listen to senior government officials face questions from an independent news media, in keeping with the principles of the First Amendment and the need for transparency at the highest levels of government," Mason wrote.

As he considers limiting White House news briefings to one per week and requiring journalists to submit written questions, President Donald Trump is listening to advisers outside his administration. Ironically, a couple of those advisers are members of the media — Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), a Fox News contributor.

Consulting people without formal roles in his administration is not unusual for Trump, and several of these people are media figures. I have compiled a list of unofficial advisers (and possible advisers) from the media, along with what we know about their relationships with the president.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has awarded a grant to KWMU-St. Louis Public Radio to collaborate with three other public media stations to drive diversity in news coverage, audiences and staff. St. Louis Public Radio will work with KCUR-Kansas City, WNPR-Hartford and Oregon Public Broadcasting on the 27-month project that includes resources for training for newsrooms and news management, documenting the project’s process and reporting on best practices to the rest of the public media system. A St. Louis-based editor will guide the reporters based at each of the four stations in producing in-depth multimedia stories. Reporters will also contribute to their station’s daily broadcasts, produce news spots, and engage with diverse communities through events, social media, listening posts and/or podcasts. The collaboration will produce joint reporting projects for broadcast and digital distribution, and pitched for national distribution.

Seventy percent of the general public agrees that news organizations "are subject to partisan agendas," with 85 percent of Republicans believing the news media is influenced by funding, according to a YouGov poll. "The rise of fake news, a growing multitude of media sources, and an increasingly polarized nation have Americans learning to take their headlines with a grain of salt," says the YouGov study. The research also shows that seven in 10 Americans agree that news organizations report stories in a way that's favorable to their owners. Not surprisingly, the poll differs along party lines, with 52 percent of Democrats believing the news media is influenced by funding. That number jumps to 85 percent when asking the same question to Republicans.

The real information problem—which we at the Hewlett Foundation are actively exploring with potential philanthropic interventions as part of our democracy reform work with the Madison Initiative—is biased news, including misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Research shows that many citizens are psychologically predisposed to want to read biased news that reaffirms their pre-existing beliefs and tribal identities. This creates obvious pernicious incentives for commercial technology platforms that want to keep people on their sites. So, compared with fake news, biased news will be harder to address.

Polarization and hyper-partisanship remain the key concerns at Madison. However, some recent evidence calls into question the correlation between growing ideological polarization and social media, given that the most rapidly polarizing—older—demographics are the least likely users of social media. So while some actors are motivated by ideological partisanship, some are profit motivated, some seek to amplify prejudices via hate speech, and still others appear not particularly ideological, but instead most interested in shifting the balance of power domestically (or in the case of Russia globally, towards a more illiberal democracy).

[Commentary] President Trump’s administration blocked journalists from recording audio or video of the June 19 briefing. Such pathetic, undemocratic cowardice is part of a disturbing trend.

Increasingly, politicians are weaponizing public anger at the media to justify operating in the shadows. Democracy is dying in that darkness. We cannot and must not accept it becoming the new normal. In democracies, elected officials are employees of the citizenry. They are accountable to us. We cannot accept government in the shadows as the new normal of American politics. Transparency in government is worth fighting for; it separates us from the despots who close their palace’s gilded curtains while the press tries, in vain, to peer within. President Donald Trump hasn’t gone that far yet, but he’s starting to draw the curtains. If we don’t speak out now, this could be just the beginning. In the meantime, we need innovative journalists who can shame the White House for its undemocratic practices while exploring fresh methods of shining light into Trump’s shadowy swamp.

[Brian Klaas is a fellow in comparative politics at the London School of Economics]

The White House press corps vented frustration June 19 with press secretary Sean Spicer for conducting off-camera briefings in place of the usual publicly broadcast briefings. Spicer conducted an off-camera briefing with reporters on June 19 in which the press was told it could not film or broadcast audio of the proceedings. Spicer conducted the last on-camera briefing June 12. “The White House press secretary is getting to a point where he’s just kind of useless,” CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta said after the briefing. “If they’re getting to this point where he’s not going to answer questions or go on camera or have audio, why are we even having these briefings or gaggles in the first place?”

Apparently, White House press secretary Sean Spicer is leading a search for his own replacement at the briefing room podium as part of a larger plan to shake up the White House communications operations. The week of June 12, Spicer and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus reached out to Fox News personality Laura Ingraham about the role of press secretary and Daily Mail editor David Martosko about the role of communications director, apparently.

Mexico’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists have been targeted by advanced spyware sold to the Mexican government on the condition that it be used only to investigate criminals and terrorists. The targets include lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 students, a highly respected academic who helped write anti-corruption legislation, two of Mexico’s most influential journalists and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by the police. The spying even swept up family members, including a teenage boy.

Since 2011, at least three Mexican federal agencies have purchased about $80 million worth of spyware created by an Israeli cyberarms manufacturer. The software, known as Pegasus, infiltrates smartphones to monitor every detail of a person’s cellular life — calls, texts, e-mail, contacts and calendars. It can even use the microphone and camera on phones for surveillance, turning a target’s smartphone into a personal bug. The company that makes the software, the NSO Group, says it sells the tool exclusively to governments, with an explicit agreement that it be used only to battle terrorists or the drug cartels and criminal groups that have long kidnapped and killed Mexicans. But according to dozens of messages examined by The New York Times and independent forensic analysts, the software has been used against some of the government’s most outspoken critics and their families, in what many view as an unprecedented effort to thwart the fight against the corruption infecting every limb of Mexican society.

By now you’ve probably heard that this is a golden age for journalism — how The New York Times and The Washington Post are warring for scoops in ways reminiscent of the Watergate era; how an information-hungry public is sending subscriptions and television news ratings soaring, reinvigorating journalists and reaffirming their mission (“Democracy Dies in Darkness” and all that).

But the story isn’t complete if it doesn’t include Univision News, one of the most striking examples I’ve seen all year of a news organization that is meeting the moment. It is the leading news source for Hispanics in the United States, citizen and noncitizen alike — a core audience that has an almost existential stake in the Trump administration’s policies. These include moves to starve “sanctuary cities” of federal funds and to end the Obama-era attempt to protect from deportation the undocumented parents of citizen children — which, Univision was first to report, the administration did on June 15.