The administration of US President Donald Trump launched a new page on the White House website designed to publicly condemn media resources. The new page was structured as a public registry that tracked and ranked the “media offenders” of the week. The page title read: “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.”
The page included several key sections:
“Media Offender of the week”: This section listed specific articles and reporters accused of distorting Trump’s words. For example, outlets such as CBS News, The Boston Globe, and The Independent were accused of framing the President’s call for holding members of Congress accountable as a call for their “execution”.
“Offender Hall of Shame”: This section contained links to publications that the White House had labeled as “fake.”
“The Leaderboard” and “Repeat Offenders”: This provided a ranking of leading American and global media outlets (including The Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, BBC, and others) based on the number of “violations.”
Why Was This Done?
The Donald Trump administration created this page to publicly and systematically challenge negative coverage of the President’s actions and words, which the White House deemed dishonest or biased. Trump repeatedly claimed that “fake media is trying to shut us up,” and the page, according to the White House’s design, was intended to be a tool for marking such media outlets.
How Did the Media React?
The launch of the “Hall of Shame” provoked a sharply negative reaction from the journalistic community and freedom of speech experts. The Society of Professional Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation were among those who condemned the move. Seth Stern, Advocacy Director at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, stated that Trump has made it clear that his issue is not media bias, but rather that “journalists aren’t flattering him and repeating his lies.”
“People understand the obvious conflict that arises when a presidential administration appoints itself the arbiter of media bias, and I expect that after the first wave of publicity, few Americans will pay attention to this latest stunt,” Stern said. “This trick no longer works.”
