Free Republic

After a week of promotion and controversy, CNN staged a live town hall telecast with Donald Trump this month that was studded with the former president’s insults and falsehoods. It drew thunderous criticism — but strikingly few eyeballs. The 70-minute broadcast attracted an audience of just 3.3 million viewers, about a third less than the number of people watching an episode of “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” on ABC the same night. The tepid response may reflect Trump’s waning drawing power, or the fact that the town hall aired eight months before primary voting begins. But it also tells an ominous...

Known for her aggressive Twitter comments and brusque treatment of the media, the Florida governor’s press secretary has used taunts to solidify a tough image

Mark Levin and Dan Bongino both said that media reports claiming they and other conservative radio show hosts were told by broadcasting company Cumulus Media to stop talking about a fraudulent election on-air or be fired were false, as neither person was contacted by the company. “The story is not 75% bull#### — it's 100% bull####. I don't even work for Cumulus. I don't even know who Brian Phillips is. I've never even heard of him. The email was never sent to me or anyone on my show,” Bongino told the Washington Examiner, saying Cumulus only sells ad slots on...

There have been a lot more empty seats at President Donald Trump's daily news briefings - but no, news organizations aren't boycotting the events in protest or attempting to silence him, despite what he suggested at a briefing this week. Instead, something else is afoot: Reporters are keeping their distance because they are concerned about the health risks at a time when many consider the president's evening news conferences to have become increasingly less newsworthy. More at link The decision by such outlets as The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNBC to stay away may be fundamentally changing...

But the Covington story isn’t just a run-of-the-mill incident of viral outrage. It involved MAGA-hat-wearing teens and Native American activists. Those who shared the video in those first 24 hours, including many conservatives, seemed to feel it was emblematic of the vitriol and racism that drives the worst of American culture. But when new details shifted the story into more ambiguous territory, a well-oiled machine of pro-Trump personalities and sites saw an opportunity to strike. For the students and their defenders, attempts by the media to complicate the narrative of the first viral video came too late. Online vigilantes had...

President Trump's absence for the second year in a row from the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner may end up being the least controversial thing about Saturday night's gathering of the White House press corps. Chatter online among journalists and some in the administration's orbit after the event was full of criticism for comedian Michelle Wolf, who was the evening's headliner; criticism and soul-searching about the annual event itself; and an effort by former White House press secretary Sean Spicer to pressure the leadership of the White House Correspondents' Association into answering for Wolf's vulgar, personal jabs leveled primarily at...

On the front of Thursday's Style section, Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote a piece on blazing-hot author Michael Wolff and his Trump book Fire and Fury. The headline was "A whale of a Trump tale, but is it fishy?" Inside, the headline is "Wolff made up quotes, some of his sources say."  After recounting all the hot stories about Trump and his former aide Steve Bannon, that revelation is tucked inside on page C-4:  Wolff, for example, writes that Thomas Barrack Jr., a billionaire friend of Trump’s, told a friend that Trump is “not only crazy, he’s stupid.”...

Cable news is in trouble. The Pew Research Center reports that the median daily audience for Fox, CNN, and MSNBC is down about 11 percent since 2008. The Washington Post's Paul Farhi sees a grim future for the industry. He argues that cable news outlets are pretty much where newspapers were a decade ago: their audience is aging, their medium is being disrupted by new technologies, and the next generation of viewers is developing habits and preferences that they're poorly placed to serve. (This is probably a good moment to note that I'm a contributor to MSNBC.) The networks may still...

Paul Farhi wrote an article for today’s Washington Post that confirmed yesterday’s Drudge Report exclusive sited by NewsBusters that the New York Times failed to disclose a major story it broke surrounding U.S. spying in America was part of a soon to be released book by one of its columnists, James Risen. In addition, Farhi indicated that the timing of the release of this report might indeed have been designed to correspond with a Congressional vote to renew the Patriot Act. The antiterrorism bill was blocked last evening in the Senate with members claiming revelations in the Times article may...

The New York Times' revelation yesterday that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct domestic eavesdropping raised eyebrows in political and media circles, for both its stunning disclosures and the circumstances of its publication. In an unusual note, the Times said in its story that it held off publishing the 3,600-word article for a year after the newspaper's representatives met with White House officials. It said the White House had asked the paper not to publish the story at all, "arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny." The...