White House Correspondents Insider

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

President Trump Suggests Challenge to NBC’s Broadcast License

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Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump tweeted that NBC’s broadcast license should be “challenged” and the network is “[b]ad for country!”

There is no license granted by the federal government to NBC or any national network. However, individual stations and affiliates are registered with the FCC — including more than 200 NBC affiliates. This registration is for the broadcast license at local stations, and not associated with a network’s news division or non-news programming.  The purpose of these licenses is to prevent different stations from transmitting their signals on overlapping wavelengths, which would block individuals from tuning in.

The president’s comments come on the heels of a recent NBC News story citing three unnamed officials who were “in the room” of an executive briefing.  In the story, NBC News stated that Trump sought to increase the U.S. nuclear arsenal tenfold.

Asked about recent statements by the President about “fake” news, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded that “the president is an incredible advocate of the first amendment.”

AXIOS’S MIKE ALLEN Wins the Facebook Booking War: Lands Sheryl Sandberg

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Mike Allen, Tammy Haddad and Daniel Lippman. Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

Mike Allen scored one of the most significant interviews of the cycle, announcing this morning Axios will host a series of exclusive interviews with notable influencers at Facebook.  Starting the series this Thursday, Allen will talk with COO Sheryl Sandberg.  You can watch the interview on Axios’ Facebook page or Axios.com.

Throughout the series, Axios editors and reporters will delve into important aspects and dimensions with the social media giant — including technology, politics, economics and privacy.  Axios notes it will strive to focus on the collision of these topics, and will control both the questions asked and the coverage itself.

Interviews will be on-the-record, and available on Axios’s Facebook page as a Facebook Live video, as well as on Axios’ website itself.  Facebook will also make the interviews reachable through their Hard Questions blog, which explores areas facing their global community.

New Poll: Public Confidence in News Media Rises, Trust in Trump Falls

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Photo courtesy Pixabay.

According to data released by Reuters / Ipos, the public is placing more trust in the news media, while also increasingly distrusting the administration of President Donald Trump.

The poll found that 48 percent of adults say they have either a “great deal” or “some confidence” in the press, an 11-point increase since November 2016.  Additionally, 45 percent say they have “hardly any” confidence in the press, measurably down six percent from a similar study in January.

“What you’re seeing now is a gradual recognition of the importance of the press,” said Martha Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University and director of the White House Transition Project.

Simultaneously, public confidence in President Trump has been declining across partisan lines since taking over the White House this year.  Forty-eight percent of adults say they have a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the Trump administration, down from 52 percent in January.  Republicans’ trust in the president has decreased six percent since January, and three percent among Democrats.

The Reuters / Ipsos opinion poll surveyed 14,328 adults from August 24 through September 5th.  This survey is the third so far this year on confidence in major public institutions.

Protesters Blocked From Discussion on Free Speech Headlined by Attorney General at Georgetown

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Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited the campus of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington on Tuesday to give a lecture on the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

However, over 100 students that had reportedly been invited to the event were barred and dis-invited due to the threat of protests against the Trump administration’s top justice official.

Greyson Wallis, a law student at Georgetown, told the Washington Post that:

“It seemed like they were rescinding those invites because they didn’t want any sort of hostile environment, and I can understand not wanting to have a violent environment, but that’s not at all what we were trying to do. We’re law students. We all just wanted to hear what he had to say and let him know where we differ from his opinions.”

As Sessions read remarks about plans to defend free speech, some students in attendance silently protested the event by placing duct tape over their mouths.  Roughly 100 other students and approximately 40 faculty members stood outside the building in protest, holding signs and chanting through bullhorns.  They also took a knee and later linked arms, in a symbolic reference to protests over the weekend by NFL players against accusations of police violence toward African Americans.

“A law school is a place for people to learn about the deepest principles that undergird our democratic republic. Those principles are trampled upon by Attorney General sessions in particular and Donald Trump,” Georgetown law professor Heidi Li Feldman said. “You cannot invite people who so thoroughly threaten the basic premises of American law to a campus and not speak up if your mission in life is to educate people about the American legal system.”

Tanya Weinberg, a spokesperson for the law school, replied to criticisms lobbed against the school saying “At events like today’s, we designate protest areas to allow free expression on campus in a manner that upholds safety and security and minimizes potential disruptions to learning. Additionally, students in the auditorium were allowed to protest in a way that did not disrupt the event.”

White House Lawyer Overheard Discussing Russia Probe at Restaurant in DC

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Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Ty Cobb, a top attorney on President Donald Trump’s legal defense team, was overheard by reporters at a prominent Washington, DC steakhouse discussing White House strategy dealing with special prosecutor Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian influence.

Cobb was brought in to oversee the White House’s legal and media response into the Russia probe last July, and was talking openly at BLT Steak with Washington lawyer John Dowd, who has experience in high-profile political cases.  Cobb and Dowd were sitting next to New York Times reporter Ken Vogel, who could clearly hear the conversation.

“The friction escalated in recent days after Mr. Cobb was overheard by a reporter for The New York Times discussing the dispute during a lunchtime conversation at a popular Washington steakhouse. Mr. Cobb was heard talking about a White House lawyer he deemed ‘a McGahn spy’ and saying Mr. McGahn had ‘a couple documents locked in a safe’ that he seemed to suggest he wanted access to,” reported the New York Times.

White House chief of staff John F. Kelly “erupted” and reprimanded Cobb for his indiscretion of discussing sensitive matters loudly in public, according to several people contacted by the New York Times following the incident.

“If you’re sitting, talking with someone at dinner, you need to be careful,” said Rep. Chris Collins, when asked on CNN about public officials audibly discussing official business in a public venue.

Top UN Human Rights Official: Freedom of Press Under Attack by Trump

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Photo courtesy John Gillespie.

The top human rights official at the United Nations stated that freedom of the press is under attack by U.S. President Donald Trump.

”It’s really quite amazing when you think that freedom of the press, not only sort of a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution but very much something that the United States defended over the years is now itself under attack from the President,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

He continued, “it’s sort of a stunning turnaround.  And ultimately the sequence is a dangerous one.”

President Trump has consistently attacked the mainstream media, even before his inauguration as a candidate.  His standard response to news stories that aren’t positive of him or the administration consists of him ripping the media as “fake news” and accusing journalists of being unpatriotic.

At a political rally in Phoenix last week, Trump claimed that journalists are “truly dishonest people” following criticisms of his response to a white supremacist rally in Virginia where he blamed “both sides” for the violence.  One woman was killed when a man attending the rally drove his car through a crowd of counter-protestors.

Fox News Goes Off the Air in UK

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Fox News Channel newsroom. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

Fox News will end its feed airing the network throughout the United Kingdom on Tuesday afternoon, according to an announcement by its parent company 21st Century Fox.

“21st Century Fox has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the U.K.,” the company said in a statement.  “Fox News is focused on the U.S. market and designed for a U.S. audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the U.K.”

There has been stiff competition for viewers in the United Kingdom, where U.S.-based Fox News was going up against British-based news organizations such as the BBC, ITV and Sky News.

A decision to approve 21st Century Fox’s bid for ownership of Sky TV was postponed last June by U.K. Culture Secretary Karen Bradly, pending additional review and analysis by the country’s Competition and Markets Authority.  21st Century Fox currently owns 39 percent of Sky TV.

In the United States, Fox News finished August as the most-watched channel on basic cable, according to Nielsen Media Research.  The network has held this title for 14 consecutive months.

President Trump Blames Media for Racial Tensions

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Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump led crowds in his first campaign-style rally in Phoenix, the first since a white supremacist rally in Virginia resulted in the death of one counter-demonstrator and nearly two dozen others injured.  At the rally, Trump spent much of his time speaking blaming the media for the racial tensions highlighted since Charlottesville.

“Not only does the media give a platform to hate groups, but the media turns a blind eye to the gang violence on our streets, the failures of our public school, the destruction of our wealth at the hands of our terrible, terrible trade deals made by our politicians that should’ve never been politicians, and the hostility to our local police that work so hard and do an incredible job,” he said.

Turning specifically to criticisms he faced across the political spectrum following his initial response on Charlottesville, Trump misquoted and toned down his own statement, leaving out that he blamed people “on many sides” for the violence.

“This is me speaking. ‘We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence.’ That’s me speaking on Saturday, right after the event.”

He continued with blaming the media for the confusion stemming directly from his several days of contradictory statements following the violence: “Truly dishonest people in the media and the fake media, they make up sources.  They don’t report the facts, just like they don’t want to report that I spoke out against hatred and violence and strongly condemned the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and the KKK.”

The president was playing to his base supporters at the rally, where he was interrupted frequently with chants of “drain the swamp” and “CNN sucks.”

Fox News Host Receives Death Threats After Segment Criticizing Trump

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Fox News building on 6th Avenue in NYC. Photo courtesy Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons.

Fox News host Eboni K. Williams berated President Donald Trump in her Monday “Eboni’s Docket” segment, blasting him for failing to call out white supremacist groups when condemning violence over the weekend in Charlottesville.  In an interview with Variety, she said her email was flooded with “seething, scathing” take-downs in response.

Some of the comments she received included statements that she “should meet [her] maker soon,” and that she “shouldn’t be allowed to walk the streets of New York.”

“When you don’t speak out and condemn, that’s tacit compliance in my book,” Williams said. “So whether President Trump approves of it actually, or actually wants it, I think is irrelevant because what we know is that these people think they are acting on behalf of the President of the United States.”

Many have criticized Williams for not addressing counter-protests that occurred in Charlottesville during her segment.  “I don’t think they were at fault because they didn’t drive a car into a crowd of people and kill Heather Heyer,” she replied. “That was one individual that self-identified as a white nationalist and Nazi. To even have an analysis beyond that is irresponsible.”

Williams has received extra security from Fox News, and is currently escorted to and from the network building when she arrives and leaves work.

White House Correspondents Association Receives Press Freedom Award

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Photo courtesy AFS-USA Intercultural Programs.

The White House Correspondents Association will be honored by the National Press Club and its nonprofit Journalism Institute with its John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award.

Named after the late president of the National Press Club and a renown journalist dedicated to press freedom, this award is presented annually to two recipients — one domestic and one foreign — at the annual Fourth Estate Gala, to be held in October.  The recipients are recognized for “demonstrating through their work the principles of press freedom and open government.”

In announcing the decision, the National Press Club said that

“While there are a number of worthy potential recipients this year, the Club and Journalism Institute chose the White House Correspondents’ Association for its tireless — and often thankless — efforts to maintain lines of communication with the leaders of our government and stand up for public access, all while enduring insults, public ridicule and not-so-veiled threats.”

The Club also noted that “the toxic environment for reporters in Washington is making it more difficult for journalists at a state and local level to keep the public informed.”

The press corps of Mexico is this year’s foreign recipient of the Press Freedom Award.