White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

Archives for July 2018

Obama and Biden Salute the Troops at Dog Tag Bakery

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President Obama at Dog Tag Bakery. Photo Courtesy of Dog Tag Bakery

Dog Tag Bakery has long been a company that gave back to the veterans who have given their lives to defend American freedoms. Their program gives jobs to combat veterans and puts them through a leadership training and entrepreneurship course in order to help veterans and their families live the American Dream. Former President Barack Obama and his VP Joe Biden visited Dog Tag Bakery on Monday, July 30th to pay a surprise visit to these deserving veterans.

Fans and customers stopped by to take photos of the duo, who chatted over Dog Tag’s famous pastries and cookies.

President Obama addressed the Dog Tag fellows saying, “What you guys are doing, having already rendered service whether as a member of the military or a spouse or family member, to come back and contribute and do more for your communities, that’s what makes us proud.”

 

CNN Reporter Kaitlan Collins Banned from White House Open Press Event

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CNN Reporter Kaitlan Collins, Photo Courtesy AP

Kaitlan Collins, a CNN reporter, was barred from covering an open press event with President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, July 25th, by Bill Shine, the former FOX News exec and current deputy chief of staff of communications. After shouting what Shine considered an “inappropriate” comment at an earlier press pool, Collins was told she would not be allowed to attend the event between Trump and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Bill Shine, who joined the Trump administration in recent weeks, later pushed back on reports Collins had been banned from the event, claiming the reporter was simply “disinvited” from attending.

The question Collins was flagged for posing to the president concerned Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. In the same open press event, she asked about the delayed meeting between Vladimir Putin and President Trump. Both questions went unanswered.

The White House Correspondents’ Association decried the move in a statement, sat that the move was a “misguided and inappropriate decision.”

Olivier Knox, this year’s president of the White House Correspondents Association, said “this type of retaliation is wholly inappropriate, wrong-headed, and weak,” and that “it cannot stand.”

FOX News president Jay Wallace condemned the move from the White House saying, “We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press.”

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed the controversy during a press briefing Wednesday evening. “At the conclusion of a press event in the Oval Office a reporter shouted questions and refused to leave despite repeatedly being asked to do so. Subsequently, our staff informed her she was not welcome to participate in the next event, but made clear that any other journalist from her network could attend.”

Zignal Labs Beats the Bots CEO Josh Ginsberg Warns Business Leaders 50% of Social Media is Fake

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Josh Ginsberg, CEO of Zignal Labs, with Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s Squawk Box July 17, 2018

How do you know if your social media followers are real? Zignal Labs has developed a powerful new solution to combat malicious online bot attacks. Zignal Bot Intelligence is a patent-pending software that extends Zignal’s media analytics capabilities to identify bots, create a realtime visual picture of the attack, and provide their customer with data-driven insights about the attack so the customer can put together an informed response strategy.

“Bots are synthetic accounts, these are not real people. Oftentimes, it’s one person controlling thousands, even millions of conversations online in a coordinated manner so that they’re able to influence the outcome of something,” says Josh Ginsberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Zignal Labs. “Here’s the problem: companies have no idea this is happening.”

Based upon extensive media analysis of Fortune 1000 companies, Zignal Labs has found that virtually all businesses, regardless of size or industry, are at risk of attack from bot-led disinformation and media manipulation campaigns – if they haven’t been attacked already.

“This is more than just a problem with a singular platform…when an attack happens, it’s happening on multiple platforms, it’s happening on blogs and comment sections, all of this is working together,” says Ginsberg. “This is a massive problem and the only way you can solve it is with technology. Zignal Labs has developed a unique solution and that’s why we’re committed to working with customers to solve it.”

See for yourself at Zignal’s Bot Intelligence:
http://www.zignallabs.com/bots

 

Video: Greta Van Susteren Witnesses Deteriorating Conditions at Rohingya Refugee Camp in Bangladesh

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Voice of America’s Greta Van Susteren visited Bangladesh’s vast Rohingya refugee camp in June. According to Van Susteren, conditions at the refugee camp are “unthinkable, absolutely unthinkable that anyone could suffer like this.” She adds that the monsoon season has taken a heavy toll on the nearly one million refugees.

During the monsoon season, heavy rains and flooding have devastated makeshift shelters and left water sources contaminated and the residents susceptible to diseases like cholera. Van Susteren says that they’ve been able to vaccinate about half of the people in the camp but “there’s another 480,000 people who haven’t been.”

Van Susteren met with some of the relief workers who have come from all around the world to assist the people of the camp and notes that while they are doing amazing work, there’s just too many people in the camp for aid workers to adequately care for. According to Van Susteren, “This is ethnic cleansing…The world media can’t cure cholera, it can’t reverse what’s happened, but it can use its power and influence to put a spotlight on this crisis.”

Greta Van Susteren’s new show “Plugged In”, which debuted in February, airs Wednesdays at 10:30am on Voice of America and can be streamed live on VOA’s Facebook.

 

WashPost: Leon Panetta Urges Cooperation with NATO Allies Ahead of Trump’s Europe Visit

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Former CIA Director and Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta sat down for a one-on-one interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius as part of the Post’s Worldviews: The Future of Democracy on Wednesday, June 11th. Worldviews takes a look at the state of democracy, both in America and around the world, ahead of President Trump’s weeklong trip to visit with European leaders and NATO allies.

Panetta issued an impassioned plea to all Americans to help preserve democracy saying, “Our democracy is not going to solve its problems from the top down. It will only solve its problems from the bottom up…from the election of new individuals who are willing to give back.”

During the conversation, Leon Panetta expressed dismay at the President’s seemingly comfortable relationship with Vladimir Putin saying, “I worry that this president, for whatever reason, is not operating with the awareness of how much an adversary Russia is to the stability of the United States.”

The ambassadors from Brazil, Israel, and France discussed the global outlook for democracy, while FOX’s Steve Hilton spoke with Amb. John Negroponte about the rise of the populist movement in the wake of President Trump’s election as well as the Trump administration’s foreign policy in a panel moderated by Washington Post Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah. Democracy Fund president Joe Goldman was also on hand to remind the audience of the importance of protecting democracy in a country where 25% of the population think that America should have a strong leader who doesn’t need to bother with Congress or hold elections.