Free Republic

Trump’s America is in some ways even worse than Russia was during my Soviet childhood. But even before Trump entered the White House, his worst insults were usually aimed at the independent media. Or, as he labeled it: the “fake news” and “the enemy of the people.” As a former Soviet citizen, I am frequently overcome by a horror-movie feeling of fear and disbelief. It’s almost as if I don’t know where I am. In cosmopolitan New York? Or back in monotonous Moscow, listening to Soviet leaders boasting from the Kremlin about Communism’s drummed-up victories and denouncing their illusory enemies?...

Americans see more political bias in news than ever, and nearly seven-in-10 blame media owners for influencing the ways stories are reported, according to the latest failing report card on the nation’s news business. According to “American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy,” a new report from Gallup and the Knight Foundation, the percentage of Americans who see a great deal of political bias in stories has nearly doubled since 1989. Currently, 45 percent see “a great deal” of political bias, said the report, according to an analysis by the Nieman Lab. Maybe worse, said Nieman: “Less than half of Americans...

If you all get the chance watch a replay of today's White House Press conference. It is better then any SNL series of skits you will ever witness. There is not enough space or room to document the insanity remarks and questions, that poured from the lips and mouths of the White House Press Corps. I was laughing and rolling on the floor endlessly. The "entire" White House Press Corps consists of nothing more then idiots, morons, lie tellers, Trump haters, buffoons, dummies, that are truly, dumb, dumber and dumbest...and these words are complementary at best. The great, good news...

President Trump Holds a Joint Press Conference with Prime Minister Solberg (Norway)

I believe this is one of the most important stories in the last 20 years. I think it corroborates what many of us believe here on FR, which is that both parties have it in for all of us. Set aside this reporter worked for the NYT. I think when you read this, you'll get a sense for what a funhouse mirror everything seems to be. I have no blog. Read this and it will change you, regardless of your political stripe.

Back in early November, we talked about the little-noted demise of two of the weekly local papers in New York City, the Gothamist and DNAinfo. At the time, I noted that it was really a sad development because papers like that have the somewhat unique ability to focus all of their time and resources on covering local news which is often drowned out amidst all the national and global stories which eat up the front pages of the bigger papers. Those two outlets broke many stories about municipal corruption and waste, as well as keeping a finger on the pulse...

I thought the press coverage of President Trump was slanted but I didn’t think it was this bad. The obvious bias has now been quantified in new research done by Pew Research Center looking into the negative stories on the president. Over Trump’s first 100 days in office, 24 different media organizations found that reporting on the president has been the most negative of any other president who has been in office over the past 25 years. Research further revealed that only 5 percent of the media’s reporting during this period was positive while 62 percent was negative and 33...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – WDRB News is fighting what its attorney calls a “clearly illegal“ search warrant obtained by Louisville Metro Police that would allow officers to comb through the station’s newsroom and access computers, notes and unpublished material gathered for a recent news story about a suspect in a police shooting. Jon Fleischaker, an attorney representing WDRB, said it is the first time he has seen such an order in at least the last 40 years, when federal law prohibited law enforcement agencies from serving search warrants on news organizations except in extremely rare cases. “There are very serious...

GENEVA — The United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday that President Trump’s repeated denunciations of some media outlets as “fake news” could amount to incitement to violence and had potentially dangerous consequences outside the United States. The rebuke by Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, at a news conference in Geneva was an unusually forceful criticism of a head of state by a United Nations official. Mr. al-Hussein was reacting to Mr. Trump’s recent comments at a rally in Phoenix during which he spoke of “crooked media deceptions” in reports of the violent clashes at...

Enjoy!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5Mp2Ge3Wg  

When we last checked in on newly released information regarding that infamous tarmac meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, we learned that the media wasn’t terribly interested in discussing the matter any more than absolutely necessary. But as reporters continue to dig through the trove of Justice Department emails obtained by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, we find out that there were some people who were very interested in talking. The people in question would be Lynch’s staff and they were having a flurry of discussions with...

The press can be dealt with in a professional manner. You need someone who has been in the business to do it. That person would understand inside out how the system works and why. Also, that individual would know how to address a journalist, good or bad. Another key point is to separate them from each other and stop the hyena vs lion dynamic. One-on-one interviews with selected reps from each outlet would be a good start. In a school classroom, you do not get into a major verbal conflict with one student in front of all of the rest....

George W. Bush is a gentleman and his father, George H.W. is too, even more so. Both were attacked maliciously and aggressively by the media and by their political opponents. I admired the civility of both presidents who were above the fray. But their presidencies suffered defeats because they were unwilling to fight fire with fire. Donald J. Trump is a different man, a different politician and a different president. Trump is a street fighter. He is going to be aggressive and cunning when politicians and the media come after him. President Trump is naturally combative, having honed his skills...

There is a reason why the mainstream news media and the Democratic Party are in an uproar: They’ve been left out of the political equation by a player who understands the game better than they do. And that player is President Trump, who has conducted a masterful war against his media foes over the last 72 hours, launching a series of strategic tweets that deemed the hostile press not only “fake” but “fraudulent.” The president himself declared that he was the victor to his 31 million Twitter followers, adding one more telling tweet that summarizes his very effective skill set:...

On Sunday, President Donald Trump made a public statement on Twitter that glorified physical violence against members of the press. Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, made the following statement: "We condemn the president's threat of physical violence against journalists. This tweet is beneath the office of the presidency. Sadly, it is not beneath this president. "No one should be threatened with physical harm for doing their jobs. Journalists are your neighbors, they're your friends. Journalists perform a critical function in our society, one the Founding Fathers felt was so necessary that they...

The New York Times has issued a correction four days too late for its flap of a Russia story Monday. In a piece entitled, "Trump's Deflections and Denials on Russia Frustrate Even His Allies," the editors published some inaccuracies. In particular, the writers suggested that 17 intelligence agencies had signed off on a report noting that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. In reality, only four had come to that conclusion.In fact, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee exactly that last month. "Only three agencies" were directly involved in the assessment, "plus...

CNBC editor Nikhil Deogun said members of the press needed to stick to facts and remind themselves that their readers "are not as ignorant, as stupid as we think they are" during a discussion Wednesday on media in the Donald Trump era.In a panel moderated by Katie Couric at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Deogun and Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker, The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, Time editor Nancy Gibbs and USA Today editor Joanne Lipman delved into the challenges of covering Trump and declining trust in the news media.In one portion, Couric brought up the problem of confirmation bias in the media."Consumers are increasingly...

With mainstream media reporters telling their audiences that the end is nigh over the Trump White House decision to hold fewer press briefings on camera, few are mentioning that the move is not without precedent — with President Bill Clinton’s White House turning off the cameras in the ’90s because they weren’t “necessary.” The Trump administration has been reducing the number of press briefings available to cameras in recent weeks, triggering horror from many in anti-Trump press outlets, particularly those with a reputation for showboating. CNN Senior White House reporter Jim Acosta even tried to push his own hashtag: #whyarethecamerasoff...

Watching today's constant battle between the White House and the press is tiresome for spectators and probably even more exhausting for those who are involved in the day to day back and forth. While it might drive ratings, it might not be of much use to anyone other than the advertisers and the networks. During the 2012 Republican presidential primary, I served as a Senior Advisor and media surrogate for Newt Gingrich (my father). During that time, I talked often to James Farwell, author of "Persuasion and Power: The Art of Strategic Communication" for his advice regarding press relations. Farwell,...

It was many years ago, but the memory lingers of the first time I was embarrassed to be a journalist. It was a steamy summer afternoon and reporters and photographers were shoe-horned into a small Manhattan apartment for a civic group’s announcement. As we waited, a photographer wearing a “press” card in his battered fedora picked up a bud vase from a table, pulled out the rose and drank the water in one gulp. The hostess was horrified and shrieked, “What are you doing?” He looked at her as if she were nuts and said simply, “It’s hot in here...