Jim Rutenberg

Trump’s anti-media Twitter posts still serve as reminders of his campaign vows to “open” libel laws, his veiled threats to punish corporate owners of news organizations whose coverage he does not like and his occasional calls for leak investigations. They took on a more ominous tone as the Justice Department began considering whether to bring a case against WikiLeaks that the Obama administration decided against pursuing, fearing it would start a trend of prosecuting news organizations and criminalizing journalism.

If the Trump administration decides it has no such qualms, then the president’s tweets just might wind up being journalism’s great insurance policy. His Twitter trail could be a gift to lawyers for the news industry during leak investigations into articles that made the president mad enough to pick up his Android and tap, Tap, TAP! It could provide great grist for legal arguments that the investigations are less about prosecuting damaging leaks than they are about punishing journalists. That, at least, is the view of Floyd Abrams, the titan of free speech jurisprudence. Abrams is seeking to re-educate the public about the thing that stands between it and, say, becoming Russia: the First Amendment.

I wanted to better understand President Trump’s America, a place where truth is being ripped from its moorings as he brands those tasked with lashing it back into place — journalists — as dishonest enemies of the people. So I went to Russia.

[In one instance, w]hen Trump administration officials tried to counter Russia’s “false narratives” by releasing to reporters a declassified report detailing Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles — and suggesting to The Associated Press without proof that Russia knew of President Bashar al-Assad’s plans to use chemical weapons in advance — the Russians had a ready answer borrowed from Trump himself. As the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia put it, “Apparently it was for good reason Donald Trump called unverified information in the mass media one of the main problems in the US.” It was the best evidence I’ve seen of the folly of President Trump’s anti-press approach. You can’t spend more than a year attacking the credibility of the “dishonest media” and then expect to use its journalism as support for your position during an international crisis — at least not with any success. While President Trump and his supporters may think that undermining the news media serves their larger interests, in this great information war it serves Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests more. It means playing on his turf, where he excels. Integral to President Putin’s governing style has been a pliant press that makes his government the main arbiter of truth.

[Commentary] The cultural-political revolution of the Nixon era was neither televised nor sponsored. If you listen to the coolest protest anthem ever, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” by Gil Scott-Heron, you’ll hear that it was not “brought to you by Xerox,” did not “go better with Coke,” did not have stars like Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen or the entertainment value of “Green Acres.”

The Trump era’s #Resistance is flipping all of that on its head. It’s being televised, podcasted, hashtagged, Snapped, Facebooked, Twittered and Periscoped. It doesn’t yet go better with Coke. But it does go better with a good night’s sleep in Parachute sheets, a slick new web page designed with Squarespace and an affordable shave with Harry’s razors — bearded Bernie bros notwithstanding. Just go check out an episode of “Pod Save America,” one of the big breakout hits of the nascent resistance movement. Running twice weekly, it has all of the above-named brands and sponsors, stars several members of former President Barack Obama’s inner circle and seeks to entertain as much as it tries to inspire anti-Trump action.

A fascinating story emerged about Netflix recently. It was reported that the streaming television service was developing new interactive technology allowing viewers to direct the plots of certain television shows, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style. The company later told me that the experiment was focused on children’s programming, more as a developmental learning tool than as some new twist on the modern media sphere’s rush to give you exactly what you want when you want it.

No matter how far the experiment goes, Netflix is again in step with the national zeitgeist. After all, there are algorithms for streaming music services like Spotify, for Facebook’s news feed and for Netflix’s own program menu, working to deliver just what you like while filtering out whatever might turn you off and send you away — the sorts of data-driven honey traps that are all the talk at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival going on here through this week. So why not extend the idea to the plots of your favorite shows?

Given the cultural and political rifts that have followed President Trump’s election, and the aggressive way in which President Trump has pursued his agenda, it was natural that some would want to use their international Oscar platforms to make big statements about free speech, diversity and cherished American values. But they were treading on tricky terrain.

First, there was the question of whom they were actually winning over with political oratory delivered amid a bacchanalia of self-celebration and haute couture, some of it costing as much as the average American’s home down payment. And for all the talk of inclusion in the political speechifying leading up to, and during, the Oscars, how inclusive is Hollywood itself? The answer is that despite the big honors that black actors and black-themed films took home, the industry still has a long way to go to improve diversity throughout its ranks. Hollywood’s judgment would go a lot further if it directed some of that political energy back at itself.

If there were ever a moment for government leaders who believe that true information unearthed by independent news sources is vital to our nation to stand up and say so, this would be it.

-- Jim Rutenberg, New York Times

[Commentary] The Administration doubled down on its antipress aggression, this time declaring it was “going to get worse every day” for these “globalist” and “corporatist” journalists (and other such gobbledygook from the former Goldman Sachs executive Stephen Bannon). And all the while, so many of the most important and credible leaders in the President’s own party more or less kept their traps shut or looked the other way. If there were ever a moment for government leaders who believe that true information unearthed by independent news sources is vital to our nation to stand up and say so, this would be it.

This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself. Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism “fake.” Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail).

Or, maybe it’s the commentary you spike because you’re a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing. In that last case, your fear would be existential — a matter of your very survival — and your motivation to self-censor could prove overwhelming. We no longer have to imagine it. We got a real-life example recently in San Antonio (TX), where a PBS station sat atop the slippery slope toward censorship and then promptly started down it.

[Commentary] The ties that bind the most powerful media mogul in the world to the leader of the free world just keep getting stronger. Or, more precisely, we keep learning just how strong they are. The question is where that leaves the rest of the world when they’re done divvying it up.

The whole Murdoch’s highly influential news organizations were covering Trump’s campaign and transition, their executive chairman was entangled in a financial arrangement of the most personal sort — tied to his children’s financial (very) well being — along with the president’s daughter. Referring to her only as the president’s “daughter” fails to capture her true role. She is Trump’s most trusted confidante. And she is married to a key presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who, as it happens, is so close with Murdoch that he even helped Murdoch set up his bachelor pad after his last divorce, The relationship between the president and Murdoch has implications well beyond The Wall Street Journal, given the global breadth of Murdoch’s media holdings, his history of putting them to use for political leaders who then help him with his own business needs, and Trump’s own reactivity to the news media.

How it all affects the rest of us depends on how powerfully Murdoch’s news media properties swing behind the new presidential agenda and how much criticism of President Trump they’ll abide from their journalists and commentators. And all of that could depend on what Murdoch wants from the administration, and how badly he wants it.

[Commentary] The “Bowling Green Massacre” may go down in the record of the Trump presidency as the first break in the “fake news” clouds that have cast such gloom over our fair and once (relatively) true republic.

The same internet that enabled false stories to run unchecked through news feeds during the election year dispatched new white blood cells that attacked Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts” with “true facts” (a redundant term that I guess we’re stuck with for now). Their most effective attack was traditional reporting, in many cases from news organizations that have doubled down on fact-checking, joined by newfangled memes that accentuate the truth. The Massacre That Wasn’t showed that while Facebook, Google and Twitter take steps to combat nefarious hoaxes, they are already playing host to an organic correction movement led by ordinary users who are crowdsourcing reality. It’s early. Vigilance, and continuing improvements throughout the news business, remain necessary. But the tale of the “massacre” could be the start of something new.