Kelsey Sutton

Donald Trump pushed back against rumors that he has been looking into launching a media venture, telling a Cincinnati (OH) radio station that he only had “one interest” — winning the presidential election on Nov 8. “No, I have no interest in Trump TV,” Trump said. “I hear it all over the place. I have a tremendous fan base, we have a tremendous base. We have the most incredible people, but I just don’t have any interest in that.”

On Oct 24, Trump’s campaign launched a half-hour show on Trump’s Facebook page that is serving as a lead-in to Facebook livestreams of Trump’s campaign rallies. The live show, which is being filmed from Trump Tower in New York, is scheduled to continue every weeknight through Election Day. The show is similar to a pre- and post-debate live show on Trump’s Facebook page that the campaign launched to cover the final presidential debate last week as an alternative to mainstream media coverage of the debate.

After Oct 20’s third and final presidential debate, on cable and network television, Donald Trump surrogates rushed to spin Trump’s assertion that he would not accept the results of the November election, and some cable television post-debate panels descended into screaming matches. But on Donald Trump’s Facebook page, which had already livestreamed a pre-debate show, followed by the debate itself for a little fewer than 200,000 concurrent viewers, and a post-debate program full of panels, pre-recorded bits and complete with anchors and all the other trappings of a news program, an alternate reality was being established.

Proclaiming itself an antidote to the “mainstream media” which Trump has said is guilty of tipping the scales of this election against Trump and the American people and in favor of a Clintonocracy, the nearly three hours of programming on Facebook cycled through Trump surrogates, family members and former Apprentice cast members, all of whom praised Trump endlessly. Right Side Broadcasting Network, a conservative online media network that live streams Trump rallies, filmed the pre- and post- debate show, on which the common refrain was: “The mainstream media is against us.” Another common refrain following Trump's debate performance: “By far his best debate. A clear and decisive victory.” Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, who served a a co-host along with Trump adviser Cliff Sims, declared it “the greatest Republican debate performance since Abraham Lincoln.”

Fox News’s vice president of public-opinion research sent a memo to staff reminding employees that unscientific online polls, which were cited in several segments to suggest that Donald Trump won Sept 26’s presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, do not meet the network’s editorial standards.

"As most of the publications themselves clearly state, the sample obviously can’t be representative of the electorate because they only reflect the views of those Internet users who have chosen to participate," Dana Blanton, Fox News’s vice president of public-opinion research, wrote in the memo to the channel's politics team. "Another problem — we know some campaigns/groups of supporters encourage people to vote in online polls and flood the results," she wrote. "These quickie click items do not meet our editorial standards." "News networks and other organizations go to great effort and rigor to conduct scientific polls — for good reason," Blanton added in the memo. "They know quick vote items posted on the web are nonsense, not true measures of public opinion."

The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan advocacy group that supports open government and tracks money in politics, announced that it was cutting staff and suspending its data-driven projects and reporting tools. The organization, which launched in 2006 with the express purpose of tracking money in politics, said that it would end its tool building and database maintenance, which are often used by reporters writing about campaign finance and politics.

Michael Klein, the Sunlight Foundation’s board chairman, wrote a post explaining the decision to scale back dramatically. “While we are enormously proud of what Sunlight has accomplished over the past decade, and has come to stand for, we are also aware of the changes time has wrought,” Klein wrote in the post. “We are aware that the robust maturation of technology over the past decade has — happily but substantially — reduced the urgency of Sunlight’s early role as a leading transparency innovator. In addition, the board had to recognize that Sunlight’s initiating objective— to build support for better legislation against and regulation of the power of money in politics— has been significantly limited by the US Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision.”

Donald Trump suggested that his campaign may take away press credentials from The New York Times, his latest attack on the media over the course of his presidential campaign.

At a campaign event in Columbus (OH) on Aug 1, the Republican presidential nominee called the Times’ coverage of him “very dishonest” and suggested adopting the same ban on the newspaper as he has on The Washington Post. Trump revoked the Post’s press credentials in June after the newspaper published an article critical of Trump’s statements about a mass shooting in Orlando (FL). “It’s gotten a little better,” he said about the Post's coverage. “I should do it with the Times.”