Washington Post

How would you like it? That's the short version of a defense offered by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Ca), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, as reporters questioned him about looking into contacts between members of President Trump's administration and Russian officials.

“Look, I'm sure some of you are in contact with the Russian Embassy,” Chairman Nunes told a group of journalists. “So be careful what you ask for here. ... Do you want us to conduct an investigation on you or other Americans because you were talking to the Russian Embassy? I just think we need to be careful.”

A journalist's contacting the Russian Embassy — presumably in the course of reporting on National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — is not even remotely comparable to what Flynn and Sessions did. It is just plain silly for Chairman Nunes to suggest that it is.

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.

The White House Counsel's Office has concluded that senior adviser Kellyanne Conway acted “inadvertently” when she endorsed Ivanka Trump's clothing line, rebuffing a recommendation by the top federal ethics official that she be disciplined for an apparent violation of federal rules. Stefan C. Passantino, who handles White House ethics issues as deputy counsel to President Trump, wrote in a letter that his office concluded Conway was speaking in a “light, offhand manner” when she touted the Ivanka Trump line during a Feb. 9 appearance on “Fox & Friends.” At the time, she was addressing efforts by activists to persuade retailers such as Nordstrom to drop Ivanka Trump-branded items. “We concluded that Ms. Conway acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again,” Passantino wrote to Walter M. Schaub, Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, adding that Conway made the comments “without nefarious motive or intent to benefit personally.”

Passantino said he met with Conway and advised her that her remarks “implicated the prohibition on using one's official position to endorse any product or service.” “Ms. Conway has acknowledged her understanding of the Standards and has reiterated her commitment to abiding by them in the future,” he added.

Does the recent “Gaggle Order” — the decision to ban the New York Times, CNN, Politico, Buzz Feed, and the Los Angeles Times reporters from Sean Spicer’s press “gaggle” — violate the First Amendment? Turns out that’s a close question.

It certainly looks, at first glance, like a prohibited content-based (or possibly even viewpoint-based) discrimination limiting the affected outlets’ ability to receive information, which would subject it to the highest form of First Amendment scrutiny and require some “compelling” justification to be constitutional. On the other hand, surely the First Amendment doesn’t prevent a president (or his press secretary) from, say, granting an exclusive interview (or providing a “leak”) to one (favored) reporter or paper or TV network and not another.

For one night, in his address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump laid down arms in his war against the media. Vice President Pence made clear the next day on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” that President Trump's tonal shift is not permanent. This was his exchange with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough:

Brzezinski: Is the war on the media over? Are we going to hear the words “fake news” anymore or is that page turned?
Pence: Well, I think what you have in this president — and frankly all of us in the administration — is a willingness to call out the media when they play fast and loose with the facts.
Brzezinski: He called us the enemy of the people. It's pretty strong terminology.
Pence: Yeah, well, Mika, when you see some of the baseless and fabricated stories that have come out and been treated with great attention, you know, it's frustrating.
Scarborough: But, you know, “enemy of the people”? That's a Stalinist term.
Pence: Well, look —
Brzezinski: And blocking media. Are we going to see that again?
Scarborough: Was that a turning point? He's moving away from that sort of rhetoric?
Pence: I think one of the reasons why President Donald Trump was elected is because he's a fighter. The American people want a president who will fight for their future, who will fight for American jobs, fight to make America strong in the world again but also, you know, he's willing to make his case and challenge his detractors when unfair criticisms come his way.

At an industry conference in Barcelona, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he plans to use key policy decisions made in the 1990s and early 2000s as a guide for his own agenda. Those early decisions include, he said, a bipartisan consensus to not require Internet providers to obey “outdated rules crafted in the 1930s for a telephone monopoly.” He also cited a Bush-era commitment to give Internet providers sole control over broadband networks that they built, rather than adopt a European-style system permitting other companies to use those same cables to sell competing Internet service.

But some consumer advocates say that Pai's historical references are misleading. Although the World Wide Web's own early history was marked by a free-for-all in which online businesses competed on mostly equal footing, it is not the case that the government played no role, said Gene Kimmelman, president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge. Policymakers at the time “were setting up an entire regulatory framework for opening [a] telephone monopoly to a broader competitive environment,” said Kimmelman, referring to a time when telephone lines — and thus Internet connections — were controlled by just a few large players. “And it required substantial government intervention.”

Google is taking the plunge into live television with a new streaming service that's designed to compete with Sling TV, DirecTV Now and PlayStation Vue. Google revealed YouTube TV — a $35-a-month service that allows for up to six user profiles. The plan, which like other streaming services does not require a contract or long-term commitment, comes with many of the same key channels available on other platforms, such as Comcast SportsNet, ESPN, Syfy and the Disney Channel. YouTube TV also comes with a strong array of broadcast network channels, such as ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW, though Viacom appears to be absent from the lineup. Local news programming from network affiliates will also be included, according to Robert Kyncl, YouTube's chief business officer, at the event. Still, YouTube TV lacks some notable cable channels — CNN, HBO and Cartoon Network are not on the list featured in YouTube's blog post, for example.

Hours before delivering his first joint address to both houses of Congress, President Doanld Trump offered a candid assessment of the job his administration has done in explaining his policies to the American people. Asked to grade his job performance thus far in his presidency, Trump offered high marks for his accomplishments, but he gave himself a “C” for messaging, conceding that he has not been able to properly explain what he's done. "In terms of messaging, I would give myself a C or a C plus,” Trump said. “In terms of achievement, I think I'd give myself an A. Because I think I've done great things, but I don't think I have — I and my people, I don't think we've explained it well enough to the American public.”

Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., a former banker and investor who earned billions during decades of buying and selling industries and who President Trump has touted to lead his trade negotiations, was confirmed as secretary of commerce by the Senate in a 72-to-27 vote.

Dubbed the “king of bankruptcy” for his leveraged buyouts of battered companies in the steel, coal, textile and banking industries, Ross has generated a fortune of $2.5 billion, ranking him among the wealthiest 250 people in America. Ross worked for decades at the New York investment bank of Rothschild, during which time he represented Trump's failing Taj Mahal casino and helped forge a deal that allowed President Trump to retain ownership. In the early 2000s, Ross purchased some of America’s largest steel mills, including Pennsylvania’s Bethlehem Steel and Cleveland’s LTV Corp. He later sold his steel conglomerate to India’s Mittal Steel, helping to form what is now the world’s largest steel company.

[Commentary] The early television news reviews of the Trump presidency are in and they are not good — not even on Fox News.

Only 3 percent of the reports about Trump that aired on NBC and CBS were positive, while 43 percent were negative and 44 percent were neutral. On “Special Report,” the Fox News program that most closely resembles the evening network news, 25 percent of the reports about President Trump were negative, compared with 12 percent positive and the remainder neutral. In other words, even the conservative-leaning Fox News featured twice as much bad press as good press.

The networks differed in their emphases. Fox News focused on personnel decisions in the new White House, and coverage of that issue area was more positive than negative by a ratio of 2 to 1. Another bright spot for President Trump was Fox’s coverage of economic news: There was mostly positive coverage of the new president’s initiatives that are intended to strengthen the international competitiveness of U.S. business. CBS and NBC focused more on Trump’s immigration policy and whether he was respecting U.S. constitutional norms such as separation of powers. Most of these news reports were far more negative than positive. But CBS and NBC coverage of Trump’s international diplomacy was more positive than negative, but there were fewer stories on that topic than on others. Of course, the news media’s role as a monitor of government usually leads to at least some negative news. But the negative coverage of President Trump seems unusual.

[Stephen J. Farnsworth is a professor of political science and international affairs at the University of Mary Washington, S. Robert Lichter is a professor of communication at George Mason University, and Roland Schatz is president of Media Tenor Ltd.]