Callum Borchers

[Commentary] The debut of virtual seats in the White House briefing room delivered on the promise of new perspectives — but also showed how the Trump administration could use the inclusion of remote questioners to its advantage. The first journalists to join a Q&A session via video link included local television reporters from Rhode Island and Ohio, a conservative radio host from Oregon who endorsed President Trump during the campaign and a newspaper publisher from Kentucky who also backed President Trump. The problem was that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer did not offer straight answers to any of their questions. And because the questioners were quickly disconnected, they had no opportunity do what the reporters who sit before Spicer do every day — follow up and press for more details.

Essentially, Spicer used the new Skype seats to give himself four chances to recite vague talking points without being challenged by a journalist. There is potential for remote questioners to make meaningful contributions to White House press briefings — the first four certainly tried — but, so far, that does not appear to be what the White House really wants.

President Donald Trump is breaking into prime time to reveal his Supreme Court nominee in the most Trumpian way possible — on live TV, with the biggest audience he can muster. Get ready for Feb 1 tweet about the ratings. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox all confirmed that they will carry Trump's selection show live, in place of their regularly-scheduled programs. That means bumping "The Middle" on ABC, "New Girl" on Fox and a special about Super Bowl commercials on CBS.

Networks hate presidential prime-time addresses for one, obvious reason: money. The events can cost millions of dollars in lost advertising revenue. With a former reality TV star now in the Oval Office, broadcasters could be forced to choose between taking more losses than they have in the past and rejecting White House requests for air time. Speaking in prime time on just his 12th day in office, President Trump is already ahead of the pace of President Barack Obama, whose own, frequent addresses at the outset of his presidency irked the networks. The frequency with which Trump demands prime-time air — and the way the networks respond — will be worth monitoring.

Are some news articles like acai berry fat-loss supplement offers? The answer could help determine whether US elections can shed the weight of false information. In an article published by the New Jersey State Bar Association, MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber argues that the news is as much a product as a diet pill — and that the fake variety could be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission in the same way as phony claims about the belly-blasting power of a certain botanical.

It's a complicated contention. “Absent the existence of libel, Supreme Court precedents suggest that the First Amendment protects a citizen expressing lies or their version of fake news,” conceded Melber, who has a law degree from Cornell. “Political operatives have strong case law to defend deceptive assertions as protected speech, especially if they show that the lies are part of some wider expression, be it political, satirical or artistic.” However, Melber added, “the court has ruled that some commercial speech, like advertising or communication concerned solely with business, gets less First Amendment protection than political speech.” If the FTC and the court system could agree that fake news isn't really a form of political discourse but is, instead, a kind of commercial offering in which “the political misinformation is the product,” then perhaps the nation's consumer-protection agency could stop some of it, he says.

Filmmakers often tout the accolades their new movies have received from critics in the media via creatively excerpted blurbs. The new president is doing the same thing.

A page on the White House website, called “Praise for President Trump's Bold Action,” looks a bit like an ad for the latest blockbuster. A four-star review seems to be the only thing missing. Trump's team did, of course, pick the most flattering excerpts from these articles. The Chicago Tribune editorial board applauded the president's early focus on jobs but also wrote that “Trump's prickly temperament — his thin skin, especially — has already been a distraction.” So the “praise” for Trump's first week has come with a lot of qualifiers. But there is a clear strategy here: Trump wants to promote the idea that the negative media is coming around, admitting — perhaps reluctantly — that he is doing a good job.

White House Spokesman Sean Spicer should have listened to Ari Fleischer. After Spicer's flagrant misstatement of Inauguration Day crowd figures over the weekend, Fleischer — a former White House press secretary trying to help the current one — offered some free advice. “As soon as a press secretary gets into statistics and facts, the press is going to fact-check the press secretary,” Fleischer said. “So don't use a fact, don't use a stat, unless you're 100 percent certain you've got it nailed down.” But, Spicer stood before reporters on Jan 24 and delivered this whopper, in defense of President Trump's bogus claim that massive voter fraud cost him the popular vote in November: “I think there's been studies. There was one that came out of Pew [in] 2008 that showed 14 percent of people who have voted were not citizens.”

It is hard to overstate what a brazen lie this was. I say “lie” — a loaded word that suggests Spicer knew he was telling a falsehood — because it is inconceivable that he believed it to be true. Trump has mischaracterized Pew's research on more than one occasion, and fact-checkers have crushed him for it. There is no way that Spicer, whose job requires him to obsess over media coverage, did not know that this absurd claim has been debunked.

Don't mess with CNN. That's the unvarnished version of a message that the network's president, Jeff Zucker, delivered to President-elect Donald Trump in an interview. "One of the things I think this administration hasn’t figured out yet is that there’s only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus — and that’s CNN," Zucker said. "The perception of Donald Trump in capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN. Continuing to have an adversarial relationship with that network is a mistake."

When President-elect Donald Trump rails against the “dishonest” media, roughly half of Americans agree with his premise — that the press treats him unfairly. But even more people think Trump is unfair to the media. Those are among the results of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which showed that 47 percent of Americans generally view media coverage of Trump as unfair; 49 percent say coverage is fair (plus-2) but the poll's margin of error is 3.5 points. Call it an even split. Public opinion is clearer on Trump's treatment of the media: 57 percent characterize it as unfair, and just 38 percent call it fair. That's a 19-point gap.

So why, you might ask, does Trump keep up a fight in which he looks like the more flagrant offender? It appears that his anti-media screeds do more damage to his own reputation than to his target's. The answer could have something to do with the way public opinion breaks down along demographic lines. In short, Trump's attacks on the media overwhelmingly bother people who, generally speaking, are not likely to support him, anyway. At the same time, they are red meat for his base.

Seven weeks before taking the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump spent part of his night retweeting angry messages about CNN's coverage of his bogus voter fraud claims — including one tweet from a teenager — then continued the tirade into the morning of Nov 29. The tweetstorm came one week after President-elect Trump met with a group of TV executives and journalists, including CNN President Jeff Zucker, in a session that attendees expected to be part of a peacemaking effort but which turned out to be an airing of grievances against the media. With his latest spray of complaints, President-elect Trump has once again shattered any notion that he will tone down his anti-press rhetoric. This is the approach that got him elected, of course. Still, it's hard to see what an incoming president stands to gain by engaging in the kind of social media trolling most often associated with teenage boys — and inviting the comparison by literally quoting a teenage boy.

Seven weeks before taking the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump spent part of his night retweeting angry messages about CNN's coverage of his bogus voter fraud claims — including one tweet from a teenager — then continued the tirade into the morning of Nov 29. The tweetstorm came one week after President-elect Trump met with a group of TV executives and journalists, including CNN President Jeff Zucker, in a session that attendees expected to be part of a peacemaking effort but which turned out to be an airing of grievances against the media. With his latest spray of complaints, President-elect Trump has once again shattered any notion that he will tone down his anti-press rhetoric. This is the approach that got him elected, of course. Still, it's hard to see what an incoming president stands to gain by engaging in the kind of social media trolling most often associated with teenage boys — and inviting the comparison by literally quoting a teenage boy.

President-elect Donald Trump said during the campaign that he was “running against the crooked media.” He referred to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” But beyond the insults and the accusations of a conspiracy against him, Trump also raised the specter of concrete threats to the press. Here are four: 1) Weaker libel protections, 2) Less access to the President, 3) Reduced funding for public media — or maybe none at all, and 4) Less trust.