Today, Monday (the first), the White House launched a campaign to expose the media and journalists due to reports that displease the government of US President Donald Trump, renewing measures to attack the professional press that were common during his second term.
The page on the government website lists “Media Offenders of the Week” under a banner that reads “Deceptive. Biased. Exposed,” the trademark of three newspaper outlets, the Boston Globe, CBS News, and the British website The Independent.
The page also names reporters who write reports that displease the government, and each journalist cited has his or her own page listing what the White House calls violations.
For example, reports about a video of Democratic members of Congress asking the armed forces not to comply with illegal orders were categorized as distorted. Trump accused lawmakers in the video of inflammatory behavior that could be “punishable by death,” in a post on the Social Truth Network — the site says the reports “subversively insinuate” that Trump gave illegal orders and that the news distorted his statements that he called for the execution of his rivals.
Trump’s post on the matter at the time read: “Inciting behavior, punishable by death! This is really bad and dangerous for our country. Your words cannot be tolerated. Seditious behavior by traitors!!! Arrest them???”
The White House campaign is trying to give the accusations the appearance of fact-checking, categorizing the media and reporters and listing what the “accusations, wrongdoing and truth” are. Finally, there is a search for the accused websites, newspapers and broadcasters, and a ranking table – and the Washington Post topped the list on Monday.
“The Washington Post is proud of its accurate and rigorous journalism,” a newspaper spokesperson said in a text on the subject.
The US president has made a series of personal attacks on journalists and institutional attacks on press coverage since his return to government in January this year – a common practice for the Republican Party since his campaign for his first term in 2016.
Many of the outlets mentioned are also the target of Trump’s billion-dollar lawsuits, including the BBC, whose director resigned after accusations of tampering with reports about the president, and The New York Times, which the Republican is suing for $15 billion for defamation. Other media groups succumbed to pressure and reached agreements, such as Paramount, the parent company of CBS, which agreed to pay US$16 million to settle the lawsuit.
Last week, Trump called a reporter an idiot after she asked why the president blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for Afghans entering the country, days after an Afghan national who worked for the United States killed a National Guard member in Washington, a few blocks from the White House.
In October, the media abandoned coverage of the Pentagon after the Department of Defense forced media companies to sign a new press policy prohibiting journalists from accessing or requesting information that the department does not provide, in addition to revoking the credentials of anyone who did not sign it.
“Today, we join nearly every other news organization in refusing to agree to new Pentagon requirements that would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed on important national security issues,” wrote ABC, CBS and NBC News, as well as the conservative, Trump-friendly Fox News, on which current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been a commentator for years.
In March, just months after resuming office, Trump also called CNN and MSNBC “corrupt and illegal” and “arms of the Democratic Party.” In February, the president barred The Associated Press from covering the White House’s Oval Office because the agency had not begun using the term “America’s Gulf” to refer to the Gulf of Mexico.