Journalism

When President Trump derides the media as the enemy of the people — as he's doing more frequently — he's not just spouting off his momentary frustration. He's stating official White House policy. Four times in two days, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was offered the opportunity by reporters to clarify whether the president really thinks journalists are the enemy of Americans, or that it's wrong for people to harass journalists doing their job. It wouldn't be the first time an official White House statement contraindicated something the president said or tweeted.

In the back of a fairground auditorium in Tampa, as President Donald Trump presided over a rally dedicated to denigrating his enemies, the journalists dispatched to cover the proceedings attracted their own raucous crowd. Several journalists described an atmosphere of hostility that felt particularly hard-edge.

The White House did not condemn a group of people who heckled a CNN reporter at President Trump's rally in Tampa (FL). "While we support freedom of the press, we also support freedom of speech. Those things go hand in hand," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said when asked whether President Trump supports that behavior. She criticized the media for reporting on classified information, but in doing so cited an example that has been widely debunked. 

They’ve become a facet of almost every news broadcast, as familiar as the anchor sitting behind a desk. Within moments of the start of a newscast or panel discussion, the info-billboards on the lower third of the TV screen begin their silent unfurling. The on-screen banners known as chyrons (kai-rahns) were once flat, artless labels that were about as exciting as an airport arrival-and-departure board. But in an era of shrinking viewer attention spans, chyrons seem almost to have come to life and achieved self-awareness.

Several examples of major non-political news stories recently show that collective bias by the mainstream media goes beyond politics, seeping into issues of race, climate, and terrorism. The financial pressures being put on newsrooms often push journalists to cover what they think will get a lot of pickup, argues Jennifer Grygiel, assistant professor of communications at Syracuse University.

New Jersey's lawmakers have embarked on a novel experiment to address a local news crisis: putting up millions of dollars in the state’s most recent budget to pay for community journalism.

There is one way that cities could ensure at least a modicum of local reporting: Just set up their own municipally-owned papers. Journalism is not that expensive. Even small cities could easily muster up enough cash to get a municipal paper started. Here's how it could work: A municipality would set up a public journalism corporation operating on an independent, nonprofit basis, and seed it with some public revenue. On a steady financial footing — and not subject to the ludicrous profit demands of some hedge fund goon — they could build out or stabilize a basic reporting outfit.

[Commentary] CNN is sui generis as a target of President Donald Trump’s onslaught against the press. It’s a serially abusive situation.

[Commentary] Of all the mind-dizzying hypocrisies that have emanated from President Donald Trump’s communications office, it is hard to find any more outlandish than claiming to “support a free press” while barring a reporter from an open White House event simply because it didn’t like her questions. Outlandish, but not laughable; there’s nothing amusing about the administration’s retaliation against CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Saying it was so the "fake news doesn't waste my time with dumb questions," President Donald Trump said NO, he did NOT (tweeted emphasis) have knowledge of a June 2016 meeting between his son and Russians saying they had dirt on Hillary Clinton. "....,the only Collusion with Russia was with the Democrats, so now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people) - the rigged Witch Hunt continues! How stupid and unfair to our Country....And so the Fake News doesn’t waste my time with dumb questions, NO,...."" .....I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr.