Washington Post

[Commentary] With cries of “fake news” coming from all sides, schools are stepping up — teaching media literacy to help students distinguish rumor from fact, hoax from reality. As President Trump’s bizarre suggestion of a recent terrorist attack in Sweden proved recently, he needs a crash course. We’re here to help.
1. Compare and contrast information sources.
2. Don’t share without verifying.
3. If you put out misinformation, correct it quickly.
4. Be skeptical.
5. Use critical thinking

Nearly a month into a presidency full of missteps, Donald Trump returned Feb 18 to firmer ground outside of Washington, staging a raucous campaign-style rally here with a throng of adoring supporters who helped sweep him into the White House. For 45 minutes, there was no talk of the president’s falling approval ratings or turmoil in his administration. Instead, Trump rattled off familiar campaign promises, scolded the media, mocked protesters gathered outside, declared that it is “a new day in America” and basked in applause from a crowd of 9,000 that waited hours in the sun to see him.

[Commentary] We’ve never had a president who was this obsessed with the news media, and that obsession is going to continue to shape his presidency. Cable news in particular seems to be a far more important influence on Trump’s thinking than any intelligence briefing or government economic data. And that means we’d better get used to the chaos of Trump’s first month in office, because it’s going to last for four years. Cable news is ruling Trump’s attention. The erratic nature of cable news makes Trump’s focus more erratic.

Ann Ravel, one of the three Democratic appointees on the deeply divided Federal Election Commission, announced that she will leave her post March 1, setting up one of the first tests of how President Trump will approach campaign finance regulation. The opening at the FEC provides Trump with an opportunity to demonstrate the tack he plans to take toward the growing reach of the wealthy in politics. There was a surge of massive donations by the super-rich in the 2016 presidential race, with just 10 mega-donor individuals and couples contributing nearly 20 percent of the $1.1 billion raised by super PACs by the end of August, according to a Washington Post analysis. Trump made denouncing big donors a centerpiece of his presidential bid, lambasting the role of super PACs and promising to “drain the swamp.”

We all know that the technology industry has a gender problem. But how do you move the needle from awareness to action? Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, and Girls Who Code, a nonprofit tech group have an idea: take the fight to the states.

On Feb 17, both will host the first-ever Girls Who Code Governor's Summit at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park (CA). The guest list includes Govs Mary Fallin (R-OK) and Gina Raimondo (D-RI) and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa. Many organizations aimed at improving gender equality in the tech field have focused on changing the culture at tech companies in the past. But this is the first time an effort is aimed at the state level. “​What’s great about having these governors and state officials involved is that they set the educational agenda for their states,” Sandberg said. And, she said, reaching young kids — as Girls Who Code has done on a smaller scale — is key to improving tech's gender problems long-term.

If you read the New York Times report that several of President Trump's aides and associates communicated regularly during the campaign with Russian intelligence officials, you know that Trump's rebuttal to the controversy at a news conference made little sense. That's a big “if,” however. The reality is that Trump supporters, generally speaking, don't read the Times.

When the Pew Research Center surveyed voters after the election, the Times didn't even register among Trump backers' primary news sources. The Trump base's media consumption habits — of which the president is undoubtedly aware — is the key to success for attacks on “fake news” reports by the Times and other major outlets that Trump voters disdain. If his supporters don't actually read a report, then Trump doesn't have to respond to it, really. He can respond to a version of his own invention, and his backers will be none the wiser.

A House bill to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate allegations of Russian interference in 2016’s presidential election has garnered its first Republican supporter. Rep Walter B. Jones (R-NC) co-sponsored the Protecting Our Democracy Act. He joins every member of the House Democratic Caucus in co-sponsoring the bill, which would set up a 12-member panel evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. The bill, introduced by Reps Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), gives the commission powers to investigate “any attempts or activities by the Russian government, persons or entities associated with the Russian government, or persons or entities within Russia to use electronic means to influence, interfere with, or sow distrust in elections for public office held in the United States in 2016.”

President Donald Trump entered the East Room reeling from a week filled with resignations, withdrawals and continued questions surrounding his campaign's contacts with Russia. What followed was an hour-long, full-throated attack on Trump's favorite foil: the media. “Many of our nation's reporters will not tell you the truth,” President Trump said. “The press honestly is out of control,” President Trump said. “The level of dishonesty is out of control,” President Trump said. And that was before he even took a single question!

It was a return for President Trump to what worked for him during the course of the 2016 campaign: A circuslike atmosphere in which he uses the media — and his supporters' distrust of the media — as a sort of tackling dummy to re-center the narrative on ground more favorable to him. Trump didn't just run down the media — although he did a lot of that — but he also mocked various outlets, reviewed shows on cable TV that he likes (and doesn't), told reporters to sit down and be quiet, and critiqued the quality of the questions he was being asked. There was a rawness to his attacks, a personal invective that seemed well beyond the typically antagonistic relationship that exists between the media and the president they cover. Why do it? Because Trump understands something very important: For his supporters, the media represent everything they dislike about American society. The media is composed, to their mind, of Ivy-League educated coastal elites who look down their noses at the average person, dismissing them and their views as stupid and ill-informed. For people who feel like their voices weren't and aren't heard in politics — or culture more broadly — the media is the perfect scapegoat.

For the past eight years, a presidential news conference was a chance to hear from Professor Obama, the long-winded lecturer in chief who expounded on domestic politics and international relations with nuance, depth, range and, most of all, a lot of words. Under the new administration, brevity is in.

President Trump, who has carved out a niche online as the tweeter in chief, is willing to go beyond 140 characters while fielding questions from reporters at the White House. But sometimes, it seems, not by much. Trump’s joint news conferences with foreign leaders are brisker affairs. He is not interested in filibustering answers to run out the clock, the way Obama did, but prefers racing through them in a mix of simplistic declarative sentences, ad-libs and non sequiturs. When he does fall back on talking points, as all politicians inevitably do, they are not the kind that come from a briefing book prepared by an aide. Rather, Trump’s talking points often appear to spring from his own id and have little or nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Despite his crusade against the press, President Donald Trump’s contempt does not seem to apply to the massive conglomerates — such as Comcast and Verizon — with so much influence over what the American people watch on television and read on the Internet. And at a time when extreme commercialization has helped drive the decline of accountability journalism, President Trump and his recently appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai have signaled their intention to exacerbate the problem.

A former associate general counsel at Verizon and a consistent opponent of FCC rules intended to protect consumers, Pai fits the mold of other, higher-profile Trump appointees whose experience and ideology run counter to their roles in the administration. And since taking over the top job, Pai has already started transforming the FCC into an unofficial branch of the telecommunications industry. In Feb, Chairman Pai put his initial stamp on the agency with a series of orders that elicited harsh criticism from media reform and consumer advocacy groups, such as Free Press, which said they will “undercut affordable broadband, greenlight more media consolidation and endanger key protections for Internet users.”