DEVELOPING: TRUMP ADMIN LAUNCHES DRUDGE-LIKE 'REAL NEWS' SITE
The Trump administration debuted a Drudge Report–inspired news site called White House Wire on Wednesday.
The .gov site leans into the same all-caps style in black and white as Drudge Report, the news aggregation site. Axios, first to report on White House Wire, quoted an anonymous White House official who said the site is “a place for supporters of the president’s agenda to get the real news all in one place in a shareable and readable format.”
The linked coverage is uniformly Trump-friendly, and heavy on outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News. The lead story, however, isn’t a news story at all. Instead, “PRESIDENT TRUMP ESTABLISHES RARE EARTH MINERALS DEAL WITH UKRAINE” links to a post on X, the Elon Musk-owned social site, by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The White House Wire also links to its own YouTube videos with the same headline-like format.
There are four separate ticker-like scrolls, including “Forty-Seven 24/7” and “Watch now: Press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Stephen Miller brief members of the media.”
Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge, once a Trump booster, reportedly soured on the president in 2020. On Thursday, the original Drudge Report led with the story: “TRUMP LAUNCHING HIS OWN DRUDGE REPORT USING TAXPAYER DOLLARS!” In a comment to Axios, Drudge joked, “I’m considering a $1 trillion lawsuit!”
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
Democracy and politics | Signalgate | The CBS submission | Voiceless America
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors