Journalism

[Commentary] The Washington Post made waves on Aug 3 when it published the full transcripts of President Donald Trump’s erratic phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia that occurred just after he was inaugurated. Despite their clear news value, some journalists and pundits questioned whether the leaked transcripts should be published.

Far from being criticized for publishing these leaked transcripts, The Washington Post should be commended. The Trump Administration has spent the last few months trying to cut off all avenues of transparency to the White House, refusing to release visitor logs, keeping Trump’s schedule opaque, limiting the information in readouts of calls to foreign leaders, refusing to hold a presidential press conference since February, and even demanding journalists do not record the administration’s daily press briefings. The Trump Administration may complain all day about leaks, but leaks are increasingly the only way the American public can learn what the administration is really doing. And the news value of these transcripts could not be more obvious: They showed Trump did not know basic facts, that he asked a foreign leader to lie to the press for him, that he knew from the start that his signature campaign promise to “make Mexico pay for the wall” was bogus, and that he has no sense for how allies should cooperate with each other.

[Trevor Timm is the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation.]

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice Department was now pursuing three times as many leak investigations as the previous administration, a significant devotion of law enforcement resources to hunt down the sources of unauthorized disclosures of information that have plagued the Trump Administration. AG Sessions vowed that the Justice Department would not hesitate to bring criminal charges against people who had leaked classified information. He also announced that the FBI had created a new counterintelligence unit to manage these cases.

The Sessions news conference came against the backdrop of repeated pressure by President Trump, in public and in private, for the Justice Department and the FBI to hunt down people inside the government who have been telling reporters what was happening behind closed doors. In addition, Sessions said that after meeting with FBI and intelligence investigators, the Justice Department would review its policies affecting media subpoenas. “We respect the important role the press plays and we’ll give them respect, but it’s not unlimited,” AG Sessions said. “They cannot place lives at risk with impunity. We must balance the press’ role with protecting our national security and the lives of those who serve in the intelligence community, the Armed Forces and all law-abiding Americans.”

Like its fellow mega-platforms Twitter and Facebook, YouTube is an enormous engine of cultural production and a host for wildly diverse communities. But like the much smaller Tumblr (which has long been dominated by lively and combative left-wing politics) or 4chan (which has become a virulent and effective hard-right meme factory) YouTube is host to just one dominant native political community: the YouTube right.

This community takes the form of a loosely associated group of channels and personalities, connected mostly by shared political instincts and aesthetic sensibilities. They are monologuists, essayists, performers and vloggers who publish frequent dispatches from their living rooms, their studios or the field, inveighing vigorously against the political left and mocking the “mainstream media,” against which they are defined and empowered. They deplore “social justice warriors,” whom they credit with ruining popular culture, conspiring against the populace and helping to undermine “the West.” They are fixated on the subjects of immigration, Islam and political correctness. They seem at times more animated by President Trump’s opponents than by the man himself, with whom they share many priorities, if not a style. Some of their leading figures are associated with larger media companies, like Alex Jones’s Infowars or Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media. Others are independent operators who found their voices in the medium.

[Commentary] Journalists are facing the challenge of covering one of the most unusual and unreliable governments in modern history: President Donald Trump disseminates lies, twisted facts, and changes in policy in real time through his Twitter account. His advisors send contradictory messages on sensitive national topics and change policies at the last minute, surprising even Cabinet members. Federal data vanishes from the “thin cloud” on matters such as climate change and the environment. Despite—or perhaps because of—all of this, investigative journalism is flourishing and growing as it did during the Watergate days. However, this time, journalists are much better equipped for finding the truth independently, thanks to data and technology. The challenge for journalists is to thoroughly and selectively grasp the power of technology while upholding the profession’s core journalistic mission. To that end, the Columbia Journalism School is launching a Master of Science in Data Journalism that we hope will advance data journalism education and contribute to building the next generation of newsroom leaders.

[Giannina Segnini is director of the Master of Science in Data Journalism program at the Columbia Journalism School.]

Even critics of President Trump seem to agree: The leakers have gone too far. Many in Washington are expressing alarm that the transcripts of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders were leaked to The Washington Post, warning that the action could undermine the U.S. government and imperil national security. “This is beyond the pale and will have a chilling effect going forward on the ability of the commander in chief to have candid discussions with his counterparts,” said Ned Price, a former National Security Council official under President Barack Obama. “Granted, the White House contributed to this atmosphere by welcoming the free-for-all environment, where anonymous leaks are commonplace. But we must draw the line somewhere.”

[Commentary] Leaking the transcript of a presidential call to a foreign leader is unprecedented, shocking, and dangerous. It is vitally important that a president be able to speak confidentially—and perhaps even more important that foreign leaders understand that they can reply in confidence.

Aug 3’s leak to The Washington Post of President Trump’s calls with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Australia will reverberate around the world. No leader will again speak candidly on the phone to Washington (DC)—at least for the duration of this presidency, and perhaps for longer. If these calls can be leaked, any call can be leaked—and no leader dare say anything to the president of the United States that he or she would not wish to read in the news at home.

[David Frum is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush.]

President Donald Trump made building a wall along the southern US border and forcing Mexico to pay for it core pledges of his campaign. But in his first White House call with Mexico’s president, President Trump described his vow to charge Mexico as a growing political problem, pressuring the Mexican leader to stop saying publicly that his government would never pay. “You cannot say that to the press,” President Trump said repeatedly, according to a transcript of the Jan 27 call obtained by The Washington Post.

President Trump made clear that he realized the funding would have to come from other sources but threatened to cut off contact if Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto continued to make defiant statements. The funding “will work out in the formula somehow,” President Trump said, adding later that “it will come out in the wash, and that is okay.” But “if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”

[Commentary] First, it is shocking to see presidential conversations released in this way. Some in the executive branch, as Anthony Scaramucci aptly put it, are intent on protecting the country from President Trump. This is a good thing, by the way. White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has obviously failed to plug the flood leaks, and one wonders whether a leak this egregious is meant to signal that the White House will remain dysfunctional.

And that brings us to the next point: Trump is frighteningly obsessed with himself and his image to such an extent that he cannot fulfill the role of commander in chief. Third, President Trump’s narcissism leaves him open to flattery and threats (to reveal embarrassing material, for example). That’s the worry in the Russia investigation — namely, that Vladimir Putin has “something” on Trump, which compels Trump to act in ways inimical to U.S. interests. President Trump’s interests are paramount, so a cagey adversary can easily manipulate him.

White House aide Stephen Miller clashed with CNN's Jim Acosta over the White House's new preferred immigration policy, at one point lambasting the reporter as a "cosmopolitan." The exchange was among several contentious moments at the White House briefing, where Miller touted a bill reducing legal immigration that President Donald Trump helped roll out Aug 2.

Miller and Acosta butted heads over the legislation. Acosta, who said his father immigrated from Cuba before the Cuban Missile Crisis, questioned whether the White House's policy is in keeping with American tradition. "You are sort of bringing a 'press 1 for English' philosophy here to immigration and that's never been what the United States has been about," Acosta said. "Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?" Miller pounced at that point. "I can honestly say: I am shocked at your statement that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree, this is an amazing moment," he said, speaking over Acosta as the reporter tried to interject.

Facebook wants you to read more articles on its mobile app. The company announced it will prioritize stories that load faster on a user's mobile News Feed. Stories that take longer to load could appear less. Up to 40% of website visitors leave a site after just a three-second delay, according to research from the Aberdeen Group. Facebook says the change is meant to improve the user experience, but there may be another motive here: Instant Articles. Facebook wants to host publisher stories on its own website, and one of the major benefits of hosting your content on Facebook is that it’s supposed to load faster. If load time will soon impact how many people see your post, publishers might be more inclined to use Instant Articles for fear that not doing so could hurt their distribution.