The White House Is Its Own Media Outlet
A few days ago, we searched for the latest news from Washington, DC, on behalf of visitors who had traveled to the US from abroad. They were considering canceling their trip to the nation’s capital after hearing about President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard. So we asked Google whether DC was safe. To our surprise, the first article that appeared in the “news” tab was not from a news source—it was from the US Department of Defense.
The article, titled “Guard Assisting Law Enforcement in Making DC Safe,” does not take the form of a press release or an official announcement. Instead, it is written in the style of a news piece. It says that the president has “declared a crime emergency” in DC and “vowed to make streets there safe again.” It depicts a photo of a civilian family smiling at National Guardsmen, and quotes an Air Force staff sergeant saying “we’re just here to help.” The article did not mention that, according to the statistics, crime in the city has fallen over the past two years.
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
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