July 2017

Steve Bannon has a shadow press office. It may violate federal law.

In an arrangement prominent ethics experts say is without precedent and potentially illegal, the White House is referring questions for senior presidential adviser Stephen K. Bannon to an outside public relations agent whose firm says she is working for free. Alexandra Preate, a 46-year-old New Yorker and veteran Republican media strategist, describes herself as Bannon's "personal spokesperson." But she also collaborates with other White House officials on public messaging and responses to press inquiries. It was Preate who responded when the Center for Public Integrity recently asked the White House Press Office questions about Bannon. Preate, however, is not employed by President Donald Trump’s administration or paid by the federal government.

The unorthodox setup means Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, is potentially violating the Antideficiency Act, which provides that federal employees "may not accept voluntary services for [the] government or employ personal services exceeding that authorized by law." The revelations about Preate's work are the latest controversy to embroil the White House Communications Office, which is reeling from a series of high-profile resignations, firings and leadership changes in recent days.

Trump is at war with the press — and it’s time for the press to stop helping him

[Commentary] For more than a year now, Donald Trump — first as a candidate, then as president — has made a war against the press a central plank of his public persona. He has singled out individual journalists for ad hominem attacks and declared entire news organizations to be working against America’s interests.

The lack of trust that now exists between the press and the public didn’t start with Trump, though he certainly has done his part to exacerbate it. It has been building slowly for decades, to the point that the conversation between the media and its readers is broken. Many Americans no longer think the press listens to or understands them, and they long ago started tuning us out. We became part of the establishment that had turned its back on them. These are our failings, and they need to be fixed. Reporters should be focused on the president’s team and his policies, examining his remaking of American government. These are the stories that resonate with Americans, not his views about what’s airing on MSNBC or CNN some Monday morning. We are already seeing some excellent reporting in this vein. We need more.

[Kyle Pope is editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.]

Palin team to subpoena 23 New York Times reporters in defamation suit

Sarah Palin’s legal team plans to subpoena 23 current and former staff members of The New York Times, including writers and editors, for a defamation lawsuit, according to court papers filed in a federal district court in Manhattan on July 26. The legal team will demand the newspaper turn over "every internal communication it has had about the former vice presidential candidate since 2011." Palin filed the suit against the Times in June, alleging defamation. The case concerns an opinion piece written by the paper's editorial board that directly linked the 2011 shooting of Rep Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) to a political ad publicized by Palin. The ad put Democratic districts up for reelection in a logo symbolizing crosshairs. The court filing shows Palin claiming the newspaper wrongly accused her of "inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011.