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Could Trump’s Disdain for the Press Lead to Russian-Like State-Controlled Media?

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Actual Press Coverage to Be Limited for a Trump Presidency?

Will Donald Trump’s unprecedented disdain for the mainstream media lead to various forms of state-controlled press, like Russian president Vladimir Putin has created?

Here was Trump at a rally, attacking the “dishonest” media, less than one week before the election. That attack included calling out by name Katy Tur of NBC News, who was in the press box:

The press and the American presidency traditionally have had a relationship that at times appears adversarial, while at other times is viewed as seemingly cozy and nearly conspiratorial in nature. While the American people have come to expect this state of affairs, the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States has drastically altered the very dynamics of that relationship. 

Media critics, watchdog groups, and Trump’s opponents have charged that the President-elect has manipulated, bullied, and cajoled American media into covering his campaign, and now presidential transition, without regard to his more egregious actions, statements, flip-flops, or outright misstatement of fact. His detractors claim that media outlets seem uninterested or unable to holding him accountable.    

One troubling factor is Trump’s ability and penchant for going around the mainstream media via social media to engage with the public directly. Veteran journalist and senior editor, Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post’s media columnist, noted this past week:

In many ways, Trump can bypass the traditional press — using YouTube or Twitter to take his message to the world without pesky journalistic fact-checking or filtering. 

He has masterfully manipulated the media for the past 18 months — bullying reporters, garnering billions in free publicity and portraying journalists as part of the corporate structure that must be brought down so that the people can triumph.

That’s a deeply misleading and dangerous picture. In fact, U.S. citizens need an independent press more than ever. 

Journalists, and their corporate bosses, shouldn’t allow themselves to be used as props in Trump’s never-ending theater.

Trump’s willingness to by-pass the media sets a dangerous precedent according to David Karpf, a political communications professor at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Speaking with CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) political journalist Matt Kwong Tuesday, Karp warned:

“If Trump effectively shuts down the White House press corps, and only provides interviews to some amalgamation of Breitbart.com and Fox News,” he says, “there’s a very real risk that within six months to a year we’re going to have something that looks like [state-controlled] Russia Today and [former Soviet newspaper] Pravda.” 

Is it possible that a marginalised press corps is a path to a “quasi-state-controlled apparatus” in the U.S.? Yes, according to a broadcast news executive for Comcast-Universal, the parent company of NBC News. Speaking with NCRM on the condition of anonymity, he said, “These are valid concerns raised by Professor Karpf.” 

The executive, knowledgeable about the meeting held at Trump’s transition headquarters this week in New York between various media representatives and the President-elect, indicated that Trump and his team’s disdain for the collective gathering was obvious: 

“He [Trump] was lecturing the media representatives present, complaining that their coverage was biased and unfair. At one point he became agitated over one media outlet’s use of photograph that he deemed made him less attractive with a double chin.”

There was nothing of policy import, no discussions of a post-election press conference, the type normally held by a president-elect within the first days of winning office and no concrete commitment by either Trump or his transition team regarding allowing for greater press access, daily briefings, or a pool to cover him.

Take, for example, the report published late Wednesday that finds President-elect Trump has had more contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin than any other world leader, and their aides have been communicating as well.

Then take the response of Jason Miller, the Trump transition team’s communications director’s response to reporters:

Lynn Walsh, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, an organisation whose stated mission is to promote and defend the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press as well as encourage high standards and ethical behavior in the practice of journalism; echoing Professor Karpf’s concerns to CBC’s Kwong cautioned:

“All the information is coming through one filter. It’s Trump’s opinion, his angle, his team, without allowing anyone from the outside — whether a journalist or the public — to question it.”

Trump has used Twitter to defend himself against conflict of interest allegations over his continuing involvement in his global business empire, attempted to spin coverage of a $25 million settlement in the Trump University fraud cases, incited feuds with news outlets, most notably The New York Times. Then too, in an extraordinary never before seen display of anger by a president-elect, Trump lashed out at the cast of the popular Broadway musical “Hamilton” after they lectured Vice President-elect Mike Pence who was in the audience last week and also taking aim at NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ whose comedic parody of him he deemed ‘unfunny’ and said that the show needed to go away. 

Trump and his team limiting press access was defended by Fox News pundit Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel program Tuesday night. Hannity stated that Trump should reconsider granting traditional access to reporters until they and their media bosses admit to colluding with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “Trump can do this and speak directly to you, the America people, without having his words twisted and taken out of context,” he said. 

Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary for President Bill Clinton was more blunt in his assessment. “He’s saying, ‘I’ve got some power that you barons in the mainstream media are losing,’ and that’s direct access to an audience through social media,” McCurry said. The bottom line as far as Trump is concerned?  McCurry opined that Trump’s overall sense of his relationship with the press seems to be one of: “I can make you pay a price if you’re not willing to work with me.”

Adding to media’s consternation, Trump and his team have been seemingly resistant to adopting the “protective pool,” a tradition that dates back decades, which allows a small group of reporters, representing the extended White House press corps and other media, access to the president-elect, keeping them near in the event of breaking news or national security.

Since his election Trump has ditched the press, first when he barred the pool from flying with him on his plane when he went to Washington to meet with President Obama, and afterwards simply returning to New York without alerting the press he had left D.C. Then a few days later after his spokesperson had called a “lid” to the reporters assigned to him, he and his family left for a dinner unannounced at Manhattan’s 21 Club. The “lid” should have signaled an end to the day’s activities for the president-elect. Although the press pool did travel to Florida with Trump for Thanksgiving, in move seen again as out of ordinary for a president-elect, they were flown on a separate plane. 

Communication and the free-flow of information from an incoming presidency is a must for a free and democratic society to be kept informed as to the actions of its leaders. In the case of the American presidency it probably more so critical given the nature of the office and a president’s impact on the global community at large. Trump’s seeming indifference and disregard for the previously established traditions and conventions sets a dangerous precedent.

 

Brody Levesque is the Chief Political Correspondent for The New Civil Rights Movement.
You may contact Brody at Brody.Levesque@thenewcivilrightsmovement.com 

Image: Screenshot via Bloomberg Politics/YouTube 

 

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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