Paul Farhi

A coalition of news organizations asked a federal court to unseal materials used by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to obtain search warrants in his investigation of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others indicted in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The news organizations are seeking to compel disclosure of affidavits, records of seizures and the warrants themselves that Mueller filed in bringing indictments against such figures as Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others.

From early in its history, cable news found the panel format — featuring people from different perspectives and disciplines — to be a lively (and cost-efficient) way to deliver opinions on current events. The discussions can be enervating, enlightening or infuriating, depending on who is on which side of the food fight. But it’s often hard to tell the reporters from the opinion slingers, especially when the panels bleed into the delivery of the news itself. News reporters bristle when critics tar them as liberal or conservative.

The Chicago-based owner of the Los Angeles Times is expected to announce it is selling the newspaper in a surprise move that probably spells the end of its long-troubled relationship with Southern California’s leading news outlet. The buyer is Patrick Soon-Shiong, a Los Angeles-area physician and a major shareholder of the paper’s current parent company, Tronc. Soon-Shiong is the billionaire founder and chief executive of NantHealth, based in Culver City (CA). He will also buy its sister newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Using Skype, the video-call app, the White House has extended the daily question-and-answer sessions for the first time to people in far-flung locales. The innovation, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, “has been very successful bringing in additional reporters beyond the Beltway.” Except that many of the people who have occupied the “Skype seat” aren’t reporters at all.

Many have been conservative talk-show hosts who are receptive to, or openly cheering for, Trump’s agenda. Since Spicer initiated the calls, he has taken questions from the likes of nationally syndicated radio personalities and regional hosts. The newbies have made little attempt to conceal their points of view, their enthusiasm for President Donald Trump or simply their contempt for the news media.

Once again, Shepard Smith is doing cleanup on aisle Fox. Moments after President Donald Trump suggested that Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano had validated the unfounded claim that President Barack Obama had recruited British agents to bug Trump Tower during the campaign, Smith stepped in to say otherwise. “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” said Smith, the network’s chief news anchor. “Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way.” And perhaps to drive home the point, Smith added, “Full stop.” It was a rare bit of record-correcting for Fox, which enabled Napolitano to pass off his wiretapping thesis for several days before British officials complained that it was rubbish. (As a result of Napolitano’s faulty reporting, Fox pulled him from the air for an indefinite period this week.) And it was perhaps no coincidence that the correcting came from Smith, whose off-message comments about Trump have made him an apostate to the conservative Fox News orthodoxy.

In an age of partisan media, the lines between “partisan” and “media” can sometimes blur. Case in point: The pool reporter covering Vice President Mike Pence on March 9 — that is, the reporter who supplied details about Pence’s daily activities as proxy for the rest of the press corps — was an employee of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. In other words, the news that reporters received about the vice president came from a journalist employed by an organization with a vested interest in the direction of White House and federal policy.

The development is unusual; the reporter, Fred Lucas, is the first member of his organization to take on pool reporting duties, which are typically handled on a rotating basis by mainstream news organizations. Lucas writes for the Daily Signal, a news and commentary site started nearly three years ago by Heritage, one of Washington’s leading policy shops. The Signal covers issues that are a focus of Heritage’s conservative agenda, such as an Obamacare repeal, tax policy and illegal immigration. While there were no objections to Lucas’s pool reports on Vice President Pence, some journalists suggested the presence of the Signal as a member of the pool crossed a symbolic line, into greater legitimacy for the partisan press.

Over four days in early August, Donald Trump gave interviews to four TV stations in Ohio, Florida and Maine, and to the Washington bureau of a national TV chain. The interviews were a coup for the stations, which eagerly promoted their “one-on-one” encounters with the GOP nominee. They were also an effective way for Trump to target voting blocs in key states, particularly since he had begun limiting his national media exposure largely to friendly interviewers on Fox News. The most striking thing about the interviews, however, may be that one company was behind all of them: Sinclair Broadcast Group.

The Maryland-based company is the nation’s largest owner of TV stations, with 173 in 81 cities nationwide, including those that interviewed Trump in August. The Washington bureau was Sinclair’s, too; it provided its interview with Trump to Sinclair’s many stations for their newscasts. Sinclair, which has drawn criticism for favoring conservative candidates before, says it had no special arrangement with Trump’s campaign and that it didn’t favor him at the expense of his main rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. It also said it offered equal time to Clinton and solicited interviews with her throughout the campaign, but her managers responded less enthusiastically than Trump.

John Gizzi, the chief political correspondent for the conservative Newsmax Media news group, is enjoying newfound access at the White House. During the first two weeks of the Trump administration, press secretary Sean Spicer has picked him out several times from among the jostling mob of journalists seeking to question the administration. Gizzi’s change of fortune reflects a small but important change in the way Spicer, and the Trump administration generally, has approached the news media.

Once relegated to a secondary role under President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush’s press secretaries, smaller, primarily-conservative news outfits — Newsmax, Townhall, the Blaze, the Daily Caller and Breitbart, among them — are now first among equals in Spicer’s daily encounters with the press. Reporters from once-favored mainstream news outlets haven’t exactly been shut out by Spicer. But at some briefings, he’s ignored the entreaties of journalists from The Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times — all of which President Trump has singled out for criticism — to call on reporters for outlets that used to be an afterthought. The White House also appears to have steered Trump’s TV interviews to favorable outlets, too.

I’m writing because I have a request: Please stop calling us “the media.” Yes, in some sense, we are the media. But not in the blunt way you use the phrase. It’s so imprecise and generic that it has lost any meaning. It’s — how would you put this? — lazy and unfair. As I understand your use of this term, “the media” is essentially shorthand for anything you read, saw or heard today that you disagreed with or didn’t like. At any given moment, “the media” is biased against your candidate, your issue, your very way of life. But, you know, the media isn’t really doing that. Some article, some news report, some guy spouting off on a CNN panel or at CrankyCrackpot.com might be. But none of those things singularly are really the media. Fact is, there really is no such thing as “the media.” It’s an invention, a tool, an all-purpose smear by people who can’t be bothered to make distinctions.

Donald Trump’s campaign has denied press credentials to a number of disfavored media organizations, including The Washington Post, but on July 27, the campaign of his running mate, Gov Mike Pence (R-IN), went even further. At Gov Pence’s first public event since he was introduced as the Republican vice-presidential candidate two weeks ago, a Post reporter was barred from entering the venue after security staffers summoned local police to pat him down in a search for his cellphone. Gov Pence’s campaign expressed embarrassment and regret about the episode, which an official blamed on overzealous campaign volunteers.

Post reporter Jose A. DelReal sought to cover Gov Pence’s rally at the Waukesha County Exposition Center outside Milwaukee (WI), but he was turned down for a credential beforehand by volunteers at a press check-in table. DelReal then tried to enter via the general-admission line, as Post reporters have done without incident since Trump in June banned the newspaper from his events. He was stopped there by a private security official who told him he couldn’t enter the building with his laptop and cellphone. When DelReal asked whether others attending the rally could enter with their cellphones, he said the unidentified official replied, “Not if they work for The Washington Post.” After placing his computer and phone in his car, DelReal returned to the line and was detained again by security personnel, who summoned two county sheriff’s deputies. The officers patted down DelReal’s legs and torso, seeking his phone, the reporter said.