Journalism

Margaret Talev, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, slammed President Donald Trump after he lashed out at the media during his visit to the United Kingdom. “In response to the President lashing out at NBC, CNN and The Sun: Asking smart, tough questions, whether in a presidential press conference or interview, is central to the role a free press plays in a healthy republic,” Talev said.

President Donald Trump denied criticizing British Prime Minister Theresa May on her home soil July 13, despite being quoted in an interview with a British tabloid saying she had gone "the opposite way" and ignoring advice he gave her regarding Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. President Trump declared as "fake news" his criticism of May in an interview in The Sun, although the tabloid itself released a recording of the session. In the interview, President Trump said he would have done Brexit "much differently.

Russia's information attack against the United States during the 2016 election cycle sought to take advantage of the greater trust that Americans tend to place in local news.The information operatives who worked out of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg not only sought to pose as American social media users or spread false information from purported news sources, according to new details. They also created a number of Twitter accounts that posed as sources for Americans' hometown headlines. 

The media needs to stop letting President Donald Trump be its "assignment editor," Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein says. There is no rule that "every time the president travels somewhere and opens their mouth, they get wall-to-wall coverage for days," Klein said. Rallies by previous presidents hardly attracted the type of attention that President Trump's do, he explained. Yet, when newsrooms scramble to cover PresidentTrump's rallies, such as the one held on July 5 in Montana, other, more important stories may be getting left behind.

President Donald Trump may go far in living up to his much-ridiculed pledge to open up libel laws to make it easier to sue media outlets. How? Turn no further than Abbas v. Foreign Policy Group, a 2014 decision at the US Appeals Court for the DC Circuit authored by recent Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh. At first blush, the decision looks like a win for libel defendants. In fact, when it came out, many reporters highlighted how Kavanaugh poured cold water on the notion that asking a question could be actionable as defamation by implication.

YouTube has announced a slew of new features it hopes will help makes news on the platform more reliable and less susceptible to manipulation. The company is also investing $25 million in grants to news organizations looking to expand their video operations as part of a larger $300 million program sponsored by YouTube's sister company, Google.

President Donald Trump attacked the media once again on July 6, calling them "downright dishonest" and "really bad people" during a campaign-style rally in Montana. "I see the way they write. They're so damn dishonest," President Trump said. "And I don't mean all of them, because some of the finest people I know are journalists really. Hard to believe when I say that. I hate to say it, but I have to say it. But 75 percent of those people are downright dishonest. Downright dishonest. They're fake. They're fake." "They make the sources up. They don't exist in many cases," he continued.

Federal prosecutors concluded an 18-month investigation into a former congressional technology staffer on July 3 by publicly debunking allegations — promoted by conservative media and President Donald Trump — suggesting he was a Pakistani operative who stole government secrets with cover from House Democrats. As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Imran Awan pleaded guilty to a relatively minor offense unrelated to his work on Capitol Hill: making a false statement on a bank loan application. U.S. prosecutors said they would not recommend jail time.

[Commentary] The newsroom is the defining institution of journalism and a miracle of social organization.

Facebook has long had the same public response when questioned about its disruption of the news industry: it is a tech platform, not a publisher or a media company. But in a small courtroom in California’s Redwood City, attorneys for thecompany presented a different message from the one executives have made to Congress, in interviews and in speeches: Facebook, they repeatedly argued, is a publisher, and a company that makes editorial decisions, which are protected by the first amendment.