First Trump transition

There are predictable signs that after eight years of giving the problem inadequate attention and occasional ridicule, the business press has decided that federal budget deficits and the national debt are going to start to matter again. Gosh, I wonder why? The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber was relatively subtle about it in a report on Uncle Sam's December and year-to-date budget deficits…

Is it hasta la vista, baby, for the venerable White House daily briefing for the media? Way back there in 1955 James Hagerty, the press secretary for President Dwight Eisenhower, came to the conclusion that admitting television cameras to presidential press conferences  Ike held in the Indian Treaty Room of the next-door to the White House Old Executive Office Building (now named for Eisenhower)…

Critics from across the media spectrum have slammed BuzzFeed for publishing something they failed to corroborate, a 35-page dossier of smarmy allegations against Donald Trump that was assembled by a firm hired to do opposition research on the GOP candidate. But on CBS Saturday morning, Slate editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg saluted BuzzFeed’s decision to disseminate the anti-Trump hit piece: “I’m…

ABC seemed to be holding out hope Thursday evening on World News Tonight that BuzzFeed’s salacious accusations against President-elect Donald Trump were true. “The Russians and Trump have angrily denounced the allegations as completely false, including the unverified claim that Trump was secretly recorded when he visited Moscow,” declared Brian Ross giving the impression that the president-elect…

Demonstrating the power of fake news to influence uninformed people, just-elected Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire brought up a thoroughly discredited Washington Post story at the Senate confirmation hearing for Former General John Kelly. President-Elect Donald Trump has nominated Kelly to be the nation's next head of the Department of Homeland Security. Hassan brought up the…

Logic and proportion may be non-factors in media coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency, fears Lloyd Grove. In a Wednesday column, Grove opined that journalism “is in danger of passing through the looking glass, only to land in a menacing, topsy-turvy world, namely the White House Press Room…It’s likely to be [a] place where language will occasionally signify its opposite, and government…

CNN's Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter blasted Donald Trump on Thursday's New Day over the President-Elect's treatment of the media at his Wednesday press conference. Acosta, who got in a face-off with Trump, expressed his "hope...that Donald Trump can get past this...'Clinton News Network, CNN sucks' mentality that we saw out on the campaign trail." Stelter bewailed how "the environment right now is…

Unprecedented times bear unprecedented conflict, and the fog of conflict is often rife with rumor, speculation, and fake news. Such is the case in the denouement of Trump v. Univision, and it is important to unpack this story and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Broadcast networks slammed Trump’s plan to prevent his businesses from being conflicts of interest during his presidency, and provided scant balance to defend him. During his first press conference on Jan. 11, President-elect Donald Trump introduced his lawyer who explained Trump’s multi-pronged approach to prevent conflicts of interest. Trump’s plan included giving control of his businesses…

Tuesday's All Things Considered on NPR played up the long-term effect of the anti-ObamaCare "death panel" talking point and labeled this phrase "fake news." Don Gonyea let President Obama; Anita Dunn, his former communications director; and a talking head from the left-wing Center for American Progress decry the "dishonest" message from ObamaCare opponents and lament the "lasting negative effect…

Claws came out Wednesday night on MSNBC’s Hardball as host Chris Matthews aired a half-hour long special dedicated to digging into the absurdity of BuzzFeed News publishing “salacious fake news” regarding President-elect Donald Trump. Matthews, who is known for his own outrageous statements, seemed incredibly disturbed by the whole situation. He at one point declared, “It’s certainly not…

Wednesday was the second and final hearing in regards to the attorney general nomination of Alabama Senator Jeff Session, and it was marked by strong opposition from his African-American colleagues on the hill. And later that night, NBC News seemed to relish in their smears of racism towards the Senator who defeated Alabama’s Ku Klux Klan. “No less drama in this fight as African-American members…

The decision by the “mainstream media” to run a salacious and unsubstantiated article regarding President-elect Donald Trump that was first posted on the BuzzFeed website has drawn extensive criticism, including accusations that this choice is “the media's latest self-inflicted wound” and “irresponsible journalism.” Those accusations were made on Tuesday by James Warren, the chief media writer…

Univision rushed to frame its executives' meeting with President-elect Donald Trump as "productive". However, that framing is quickly coming undone from within the organization.