New York Times

Journalists from The New York Times and several other news organizations were prohibited from attending a briefing by President Donald Trump’s press secretary on Feb 24, a highly unusual breach of relations between the White House and its press corps. Reporters from The Times, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times and Politico were not allowed to enter the West Wing office of the press secretary, Sean M. Spicer, for the scheduled briefing. Aides to Spicer only allowed in reporters from a handpicked group of news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed. Those organizations included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended. Reporters from Time magazine and The Associated Press, who were set to be allowed in, chose not to attend the briefing in protest of the White House’s actions.

“Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. “We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.” The White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents the press corps, quickly rebuked the White House’s actions.

Biased? Probably. Oppositional? Maybe. Essential? In theory. But the enemy? Not so much.

President Trump la called the news media “the enemy of the American people.” But in interviews around the country, Americans of varying political affiliations, even those with serious misgivings about the media, largely allowed that the president’s characterization had gone too far. Trump’s presidency has exacerbated already deep ideological divisions in the country, and Americans on one end of the political spectrum increasingly find themselves unable even to look their counterparts in the eye. But if there has been one instance when the rift has not seemed quite as large, perhaps it has been the response to Trump’s harsh rebuke of the media. Still, the feeling toward the news media among those interviewed was far from warm and fuzzy. Many said they believed the media was flawed in general, and certainly when it came to the coverage of President Trump and his administration.

The United States is so polarized that it can seem that Republicans and Democrats choose to exist in two entirely different versions of the day, depending on their media diet. But a new analysis of the web traffic of 148 news organizations shows something subtler: Publications across the political spectrum broadly cover the news events of the day, but their readers appear to gloss over the stories they don’t want to see. That analysis comes from Chartbeat, a web analytics company used by hundreds of online media publishers, including The New York Times. Chartbeat’s real-time dashboards display the articles that are being read most at any given moment, along with where those readers came from and how long they stayed.

[Commentary] Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto about community, released last week on Facebook, wisely analyzed the state of journalism: He decried sensationalism, and declared that “a strong news industry is also critical to building an informed community.” Giving people a voice, he said, “is not enough without having people dedicated to uncovering new information and analyzing it.” He even noted that “reading local news is directly correlated with local civic engagement.” Unfortunately, his memo ignored two major points — the role that Facebook and other technology platforms are playing in inadvertently damaging local news media, and the one way they could actually save journalism: with a massive philanthropic commitment.

[Steven Waldman, the founder of LifePosts.com, was the prime author of the Federal Communications Report “Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age.”]

A Q&A with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD).

With Republicans now in power across the government, Congress has moved aggressively toward undoing Obama-era tech policies. Network neutrality, the rule that ensures equal access to all websites, and broadband privacy rules are the first targets. Lawmakers also hope to play a bigger role than in the last administration on policies of particular concern to Silicon Valley and internet users, including driverless cars and the scaling back of Federal Communications Commission powers concerning broadband providers. Asked, "How do you want to change net neutrality rules?" Chairman Thune responded, "We’re open for business. We think a legislative solution is the best alternative and that the FCC under Chairman Tom Wheeler went too far with regulations that were overreaching and basically classified the internet as a public utility under a 1934 statute. Congress needs to be heard from, or you will have a constant back-and-forth on this issue depending on which party is in the White House."

President Donald Trump, in an extraordinary rebuke of the nation’s press organizations, wrote on Twitter on Feb 17 that the nation’s news media “is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people.” Even by the standards of a president who routinely castigates journalists, President Trump’s tweet was a striking escalation in his attacks on the news media.

At 4:32 p.m., shortly after arriving at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach (FL), President Trump took to Twitter to write: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!" That message was swiftly deleted, but not before being seen by thousands of social media users. Sixteen minutes later, President Trump posted a revised version of the tweet. Restricted to 140 characters, the president removed the word “sick,” and added two other television networks to his list of offending news organizations, ABC and CBS.

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.

White House misconduct. Sensational leaks. Battling broadsheets. The swirling story around President Trump’s dealings with Russia is being compared in journalism circles to past blockbusters like Watergate and the Monica Lewinsky scandal — with a 21st-century twist. News organizations like The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN are jousting for scoops, but instead of sending clerks to grab the early editions from newsstands, editors watch the news unfold on Twitter in real time. Anonymous sources are driving bombshell stories, and leaks are springing from encrypted iPhone messaging apps rather than from meetings in underground parking garages. The news cycle begins at sunrise, as groggy reporters hear the ping of a presidential tweet, and ends sometime in the overnight hours, as newspaper editors tear up planned front pages scrambled by the latest revelation from Washington. In consequence and velocity, the political developments of the past four weeks — has it been only four weeks? — are jogging memories of momentous journalistic times.

Making the most of the fractured political and media landscape, 20th Century Fox created a group of fake news sites as part of a viral marketing campaign for its new film “A Cure for Wellness.” The sites displayed ads for the movie and slipped references to its plot alongside made-up stories about divisive topics like abortion, vaccines and President Trump. Fox used at least five fake news sites designed to look like local news media — The Sacramento Dispatch, Salt Lake City Guardian, Houston Leader, NY Morning Post and Indianapolis Gazette — to stir online outrage and drum up interest in the movie, which was produced by New Regency Productions and is to come out this week. It used other fake sites to promote the film as well, including one designed to resemble HealthCare.Gov and another for a fake bottled water company. Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox acknowledged their role in the fake news operation in a statement on Feb 14.

In the hours since Michael Flynn resigned as national security adviser, two narratives have emerged. One, embraced by many in the traditional legacy media, centered on what Flynn had done that led to his resignation: discussed sanctions against Russia in a conversation with the Russian ambassador, and then misled Vice President Mike Pence about it. The other, which developed among the more right-leaning news media, focused on the leaks from Washington that had put pressure on Flynn to step aside, and whether these leaks were intended to damage President Donald Trump.

One narrative holds Flynn, and others who knew about his discussions, accountable. The other portrays Flynn more as a victim. Which narrative does President Trump ascribe to? He attributed Flynn’s resignation to “illegal leaks.” It is not unusual for news media to promote different story angles. And the division between left-leaning and right-leaning news organizations is certainly not new. But the rift between the mainstream media and more partisan news organizations has grown starker in the nearly four weeks since President Trump took office, reflecting a widening political and ideological rift.