News commentary

Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s Debut Was Pure Amateur Hour

New York magazine · Margaret Hartmann · last updated

There’s a rumor that President Trump decided he was done waiting for his staffers to find him a new White House press secretary to replace Karoline Leavitt, so he picked one of his favorite conservative media personalities without consulting anyone. So far, that tracks.

New White House press secretary Katie Zacharia held her first press conference Tuesday morning, and it was a real amateur hour — or, rather, amateur 14 minutes. Here are the lowlights.

 

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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


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The First Amendment is facing challenging times: Crackdowns on campus protests prompted both-sides claims of intolerance. Attempts to head off dangerous health misinformation have been characterized as violations of free speech. Donald Trump is publicly punishing news outlets that deviate from his administration’s version of events while privately suing some outlets into submission.

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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. 

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