Lauren Frayer

[Commentary] For years, conservatives breathlessly accused the media of being too easy on President Barack Obama and acting like a bunch of sycophantic boot-lickers for his administration. Turns out, some only wanted the chance to try it out for themselves once a Republican was in office.

The Trump Administration, with all its ethical mishaps and conflicts, presents conservatives the perfect opportunity to establish themselves as a tough, new vanguard of right-of-center journalism. Unfortunately, right-wing trolls and fanboys with press passes seem more interested in racking up brownie points with POTUS and nursing grudges against liberal media competitors. Sadly these media personalities—easily found in places such as Breitbart and Fox News—have become exactly what they hated their mainstream media foes for being: biased cheerleaders all too willing to ignore any misdeeds by the president in the name of helping him enact his agenda. Some of those who used to be the conservative movement’s most loyal government watchdogs are nothing but lapdogs now for President Trump.

[Amanda Carpenter is a CNN contributor, former Communications Director for Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Speechwriter for Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).]

[Commentary] President Donald Trump has moved quickly to use Executive Orders and other plenary powers to deliver on some of his major campaign promises on issues such as immigration, the Dakota Access pipeline and appointment of a conservative Supreme Court Justice. For the most part, however, his promised deregulatory assault on what his chief strategist Steven Bannon calls the “Administrative State” has not advanced as quickly. Hundreds of top-level positions at Executive Branch agencies remain vacant, and the process of rescinding regulatory policies can be cumbersome and time consuming. There is at least one important exception - media and telecommunications regulation at the Federal Communications Commission. Within weeks after taking office, newly-designated FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has moved aggressively and with unprecedented speed to overturn many recent FCC decisions and changed some longstanding policies. While some of these actions are more symbolic in nature, others have had immediate and significant impact. Many more such actions are likely to be unveiled in the weeks, not to mention months, to come.
[Andrew Jay Schwartzman is the Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation]

Even if President Trump’s wiretap claim was groundless, as seems all but certain, it has unexpectedly renewed a debate on the left as well as the right over whether security agencies invade Americans’ privacy and could undermine democracy.

Whether the president intended such a discussion or even welcomes it, his repeated undercutting of the spy agencies has been striking. Some of his vocal critics believe that the wiretap gambit is a deliberate attempt to create a distraction from the many challenges facing his young presidency. It could also be that by pre-emptively discrediting the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency, he is hoping to undermine any damning evidence they may produce of his associates’ contacts with Russia. In the domestic sphere, after all, he and his aides denigrated the Congressional Budget Office in anticipation of the office’s dismal projections on his health plan. Or possibly the president’s repeated battering of the intelligence agencies is not so different from his attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency or the State Department. He may view the spy agencies as just additional targets in what his adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, calls the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

The Trump administration at times wears its populist hat and at others its pro-business hat. When it comes to antitrust enforcement, investors are betting it is sporting the latter. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this wager is the spread between Time Warner’s share price and the price implied by AT&T’s deal for it, announced Oct. 22. If it were to close by the end of 2017, holders of Time Warner shares would stand to gain 12%. That compares with 21.6% on Oct. 31. The narrowing suggests investors are increasingly convinced that President Donald Trump won’t follow through on his pre-election threat to block the proposed merger. It also speaks to a general optimism about lenient antitrust enforcement under President Trump.

A couple weeks ago, an adorable seven-year-old boy named Toby complained that President Donald Trump is “deleting PBS kids” just to pay for the wall. Toby told US Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), “he shouldn’t do that.” The young boy received massive applause for standing up to his Senator, the President, and for what’s right. At this town hall, Senator Cotton said you could have both – a Mexican wall and PBS. But today it turns out that Toby was right. President Donald Trump unveiled his budget proposal, titled, “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.” Disturbingly, the plan calls for the elimination of federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It’s time to push back hard against any proposal that threatens public broadcasting and the vital services it delivers throughout the country. Let’s not take Big Bird away from kids like Toby.

Public media operations—and loyal listeners—are expected to put up a fierce fight against potential funding cuts. But hanging on to the hope that federal funding will always be around could potentially be a fatal mistake for local stations, former NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller says. All public media players, she says, ought to double down on efforts to court listener support and philanthropic giving as a hedge against the continued, and perhaps complete, reduction of government support.

Schiller notes stations should move aggressively to pursue non-governmental revenue streams. “It would be irresponsible not to have those contingency plans in place, and even without the threat of federal dollars being pulled, it would be irresponsible to not begin to act on ways to replace that money through other sources,” says Schiller.

A top political ally to Vice President Mike Pence is an investor in the conservative news organization that was granted special access to cover Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's latest overseas trip. Nick Ayers, an Atlanta-based political strategist who worked on the campaign, is a part owner of the Independent Journal Review, whose White House correspondent was the only reporter allowed to accompany Tillerson on a trip to Asia this week.

There is no evidence to suggest that Ayers was behind or involved in the decision to allow the reporter to accompany Tillerson on his trip, nor is there any indication that the strategist is involved in the organization's editorial decisions. A State Department spokesman said the decision to allow IJR reporter Erin McPike on the trip was "to bring somebody in who doesn’t necessarily cover the State Department, a media outlet that isn’t steeped in foreign policy and give it a new, fresh perspective.” That decision enraged reporters assigned to cover the State Department, and reignited questions about the whether the Trump administration grants special privileges to news outlets that it views as favorable.

These days, even a labor strike can be corporatized and repurposed as public relations. The typical refrain from brands that take on a cause is that they are “using their platform” to “raise awareness” about an issue. But the internet has complicated the transaction. Modern news audiences are bombarded with too much information, and right now, it all seems to be news for or against President Donald Trump. Brands that enter the fray aren’t so much “raising awareness” as they are jostling for their own messaging to be seen amid the rush of signals.

President Trump’s election has sparked great interest in civic engagement — joining community groups, organizing protests, showing up at town hall meetings. The resistance brand presents another option: Buy this thing, not the other. Is that the kind of awareness that needs to be raised?

Foreign reporters challenged President Donald Trump to address his wiretapping accusation and attacks on the media at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A German reporter asked President Trump whether he regrets claiming that former President Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, provoking Trump to joke about reports that the National Security Agency had once monitored Merkel’s phone under Obama. “As far as wiretapping, I guess by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps,” President Trump said with a grin.

President Trump beat back questions about why the White House had accused Britain’s intelligence agency of having helped Obama surveil Trump Tower, saying press secretary Sean Spicer had merely read aloud a report from a Fox News legal analyst. “We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I did not make an opinion on it,” President Trump said. “That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox. So you should not be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

[Commentary] Voice of America began radio broadcasting in 1942, to combat Nazi propaganda. Per its charter, it is mandated to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” Since WWII, it has been the front-edge of America’s informational interface with citizens around the world, particularly those battling dictatorships and tyranny. VOA is the largest public diplomacy program of the United States government and broadcasts in more than 40 languages. Serving an estimated weekly global audience of 236.6 million, they provide news, information, and cultural programming through the Internet, mobile and social media, radio, and television. With today’s information overload, where fake news goes viral, and real news is labeled fake, where hacks and leaks dominate our news cycle, Voice of America is an indispensable tool in our engagement with global citizens.

As President Trump considers his priorities, as he looks to beef up the U.S. military, and potentially make major cuts in diplomacy, and as the Congress reviews his 2018 budget submitted this week to Congress, they should be reminded that the fate of nations over this past decade has changed on a dime. And it was not weapons systems that fell these governments, but the power of information to mobilize a people. For good or for bad. When you consider recent history, the sophistication of Russia’s disinformation campaign, and the online recruitment tools ISIS uses, VOA’s importance is clear. President Trump should be “doubling down” on its broadcasts, and not considering cuts for a network that dispatches truth, hope and inspiration to some of the most volatile parts of the world. Further, he should take care to safeguard VOA’s integrity, its gold-standard global media brand.

[K. Riva Levinson is President and CEO of KRL International LLC]