Journalism

In CNN’s newsroom, it is called the Triad: a three-pronged internal system designed to ensure that sensitive reporting by the network’s journalists is unimpeachable before it runs. Recently, the Triad fell short — and by June 27, the consequences were being felt across the news industry and in the hallways of the White House. CNN was forced to apologize after retracting a story on its website that a Russian bank linked to a close ally of President Donald Trump was under Senate investigation. Three high-ranking journalists at the network resigned.

But the mea culpa did not stop President Trump and his supporters from seizing on the mistake, condemning CNN and claiming it as evidence that other major news organizations were conspiring against the administration. On Twitter, President Trump wrote that “they caught Fake News CNN cold” and asked, “What about all the other phony stories they do?” News organizations regularly issue corrections and, in rarer instances, retract a story. Other journalists praised CNN for taking responsibility after a painful black eye. But the ferocious response on Tuesday was a reminder of CNN’s unique role as a nemesis for President Trump, who says the network has unfairly tried to tie him to Russian interference in last year’s election — and underlined the heightened tensions between the news media and an administration that has curtailed access and labeled the news media an “opposition party.”

[Commentary] Donald Trump won the presidency by assuring voters he could do everything, and do it quickly. Much of his presidency so far has been spent covering up the fact that he can’t. And we keep learning a painful lesson: There’s not much we can do about it.

There’s a term for the sort of military strikes insurgent groups and underpowered forces employ: asymmetric warfare. As it turns out, Donald Trump was eminently prepared to launch an asymmetric warfare campaign against the institutions of American democracy, nowhere more effectively than against the media. His career — part salesman, part showman, part hustler — taught him a key lesson that, as it turns out, was as effective against the media as an IED could be against a military caravan: Never admit you’re wrong.

President Donald Trump blasted several publications after CNN retracted a story published recently tying a top Trump ally to a Russian investment bank. "So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC?" President Trump tweeted. "What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!"

[Commentary] Sometimes the noise drowns out the good news. And it certainly is right now. It would be hard to fault the average American for thinking all that’s going on in Washington these days is high-drama hearings and partisan sniping. But amid the countdown clocks and cable news chatter, something important is happening: Congress is getting things done to help improve people’s lives.

Here in the House of Representatives, we can do more than one thing at a time. And the truth is, even while carrying out our oversight responsibilities, we’ve been delivering on our promises to the American people. We are passing important legislation. We are doing our job. You just may not have heard about it.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors 2016 Annual Report details the agency’s activities and growing impact around the world. As detailed in the report, the BBG networks have played a critical role in supporting the pursuit of freedom and democracy, providing balanced election coverage for voters in emerging and fragile democracies; life-saving information to the hundreds of thousands of people trying to flee oppression, war and economic strife; and clear, unbiased and uncensored news to people living under authoritarian regimes and violent extremists. BBG networks are news leaders, covering stories left untold in environments that lack press freedom and fostering civil dialogue in places overwhelmed with disinformation. They are leading channels for information about the United States as well as independent platforms for freedom of expression and a free press.

President Trump's relations with the media — never strong to begin with — have taken another sour turn with dwindling opportunities for on-camera engagement with the president's representatives. The White House has appeared to adopt a communications strategy of dealing primarily with its base of supporters, as witnessed by Trump's two interviews in the past week with Fox News Channel's morning show, "Fox & Friends." Board members of the White House Correspondents Association met with WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer and expressed the importance of Americans getting the chance to question leaders. "We believe it is in the interest of transparency to have regular televised briefings," said Jeff Mason, a Reuters correspondent and president of the White House reporters' group. "We aren't satisfied with the current situation and won't be until it changes." Shortly after the meeting, Spicer held an off-camera briefing. Television networks were allowed to record audio, but not air it live. “I want the president's voice to carry the day," he said.

Three CNN staffers have resigned following the publication and subsequent retraction of a story linking a Trump transition team member to the Russia-related investigations. The piece, published late during the week of June 19, cited an anonymous source saying the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into the chief executive of a $10-billion Russian investment fund who met with financier Anthony Scaramucci before the inauguration.

The reporter, Pulitzer-prize nominee Thomas Frank, assistant managing editor Eric Lichtblau (who recently joined from the New York Times) and Lex Haris, the executive editor in charge of investigations, are all out. "In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story's publication," CNN said in a statement.

The hasty effort in New York to pass a right-of-publicity bill ended—for now—recently after the state assembly sponsor pulled his bill and the senate appeared unwilling to advance its own version until the assembly acted. Media organizations had opposed the legislation: The National Press Photographers Association said the assembly bill would “unconstitutionally deprive” its members “of the right to exercise property and copyright interests in their still, filmed, and recorded images.” And a broad coalition—including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Media Law Resource Center, and the New York News Publishers Association—ran a full-page ad in the Albany Times-Union calling the bills “an attack on the First Amendment.”

But what’s the right of publicity, anyway? And why were media organizations so concerned about the bills? Those two questions are worth answering: Many states have some kind of publicity-related law on the books, and it’s likely that another New York bill will be introduced in the fall.

Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel put her signature to the latest e-mail that uses attacks on the media to try and raise money for the party and its candidates. Taking a page out of President Donald Trump's divide to conquer strategy of trying to delegitimize negative stories, the e-mail cites a "fake news" headline from arguably the president's favorite target—CNN—to illustrate what the party claims is "fake news" that is "far more powerful than the Democratic Party." "[T]hey have the power to trick American voters into believing they're unbiased—all the while they peddle hateful and deceitful rhetoric about our President," she said. She makes it clear that CNN and the New York Times are two of those "they," saying: "They call themselves 'The Most Trusted Name in News.' They claim to cover 'All the News That’s Fit to Print…" Curiously, she suggested, after calling mainstream media outlets hateful and deceitful, that Trump supporters win when "we rise above their attacks" and deliver a positive message.

[Commentary] The Trump Administration’s penchant for secrecy is not a media issue; it is a democracy issue. And that makes it the weak spot in President Donald Trump’s otherwise successful jihad against American journalism. The bottom line, particularly on the Right is this: They hate you. They really hate you. Trump’s strategy in declaring the media “enemies of the people” is clear: He delegitimizes an independent source of criticism and exposure, while providing his base with red meat. His approach is aped by his allies in the conservative media, including Fox News’s Sean Hannity, who has taken to using clumsy formulations like the “Destroy Trump Media.”

Journalists may regard the case for transparency in government as self-evident, but the case can and should be made anew. The Trump era provides an opportunity to go back to first principles and remind the public why the freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment. Don’t take it for granted that the public has connected all of those dots.

[Charlie Sykes is a political commentator who hosted the conservative radio talk show "Midday with Charlie Sykes" on WTMJ in Mlwaukee from 1993 to 2016.]