New: A letter from AP executive editor Julie Pace to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles signals a likely legal challenge now that the Trump admin has twice singled out the AP for punishment over its use of "Gulf of Mexico." The actions "were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech," Pace writes.

"This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization's editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment."

Out with the oldspeak. In with President Trump's newspeak – or else.

The AP being barred from Trump's events is part of a much larger weaponization of language to advance the MAGA agenda 🧵 The Trump White House is punishing The AP because the newswire hasn’t changed its stylebook entry for Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America." AP reporters were blocked from covering Trump events twice yesterday. So this was not a one-off. It is a standoff. cnn.com/2025/02/12/med…

Think about it: A year ago you could go days without seeing or thinking about Joe Biden. Now you’re lucky if you can go hours without thinking about President Trump. He’s inescapable. And that’s just how he likes it. Today: The Super Bowl is also the Trump Bowl 🧵 White House aides have indicated the president's ubiquity is partly a strategy to impress Republican voters and disorient Democratic opponents. It also satiates his own ego. cnn.com/2025/02/09/bus…

Today the FCC published the full, raw "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris from last October 🧵 The tape and transcript refutes President Trump’s assertions that CBS committed “election interference.”

He charged that “they took the answer out in its entirety, threw it away, and they put another answer in.”

That’s been proven false.

🧵 In a highly unusual move, the FCC has asked CBS News to hand over the unedited transcript and tapes from its interview with VP Kamala Harris last fall. CBS says "we are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to do." CBS owns stations that are licensed by the FCC, and the stations are obliged to respond to reasonable requests from the government agency. But those requests are typically about technicalities like broadcast transmission signals, not the raw materials of a news program.

Let's not mince words. If Paramount settles Trump's "60 Minutes" lawsuit, it will look like a payoff. Specifically, it will look like a big check to Trump (or his presidential library) in exchange for regulatory approval of Paramount's pending deal with Skydance Media. That's why journalists, including some inside CBS News, are expressing alarm about the NYT's report that Paramount is trying to settle. Trump's lawsuit was legally dubious when it was filed on Halloween and it's just as dubious now.

Mark Zuckerberg's rightward shift "worked" yesterday, in that the announcements attracted lots of attention; won some approving words from President-elect Donald Trump; and put everyone else on notice. Elon Musk has grown fond of saying "you are the media." Zuckerberg is joining him and saying "you are the fact-checkers." Figure it out for yourselves. But...

Happening now on Fox & Friends: "Meta is announcing major changes to its censorship policy. The company's chief global affairs officer is here in the studio, he's going to join us in a moment." "We're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S," Mark Zuckerberg announces

Aaron Brown has died. He was one of the greatest anchors in CNN history. "NewsNight," circa 2001 to 2005, was all Aaron: from his thoughtful writing and rigorous questioning, to "the whip" around the world with correspondents, to his trademark preview of the morning papers My friend Jon Auerbach said it best overnight – Aaron "was a journalist's journalist. He was a writer. He was a craftsman." cnn.com/2024/12/31/us/…

I did a lot of reporting overnight about Trump’s announcement that he wants Kari Lake to run @VOAnews. For now, that’s all it is: A suggestion, albeit a highly influential one. Here’s what I found… First things first: Presidents don’t ordinarily pick the director of Voice of America. In fact, Trump did no such thing during his first term in office. So the mere announcement about Kari Lake is a flex. A sign that he wants to wield his power more aggressively in his 2nd term.

I recently went back through the reporter notes from my 2020 book HOAX and realized that I had some newly relevant info about Pete Hegseth. In retrospect, I wish I had included these quotes in the book. 🧵 Tonight this material is part of a big new CNN story titled "As Hegseth’s public profile grew, he faced deepening private turmoil" cnn.com/2024/12/05/pol…

Elon Musk has called MSNBC "the utter scum of the Earth." He has said the channel "peddles puerile propaganda." Just a few days ago he said "MSNBC is going down." And now he is posting memes about buying the channel. So... could he? 🧵 Conventional wisdom holds that Musk and his friends are just joking. But Musk's posts are adding to the anxiety that MSNBC staffers are feeling about Trump's reelection and the recently announced spinoff of Comcast's cable channels. Over the weekend I spoke with lots of sources…

Stand by for news in this morning's @ReliableSources newsletter... According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Scarborough and Brzezinski were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration. cnn.it/3YVQ2mL

The election results put an exclamation point on pervasive concerns about distrust and dissatisfaction with the news media. Now a reckoning is underway. Media execs and rank-and-file reporters are wondering what needs to change. So here are some concrete ideas... 🧵 Podcasts, YouTube videos and other digital sources are ascendant while traditional news outlets are struggling to remain relevant. On social media, in-depth investigations get ignored while misleading memes get shared millions of times. Frankly, some journalists feel defeated.

Pete Hegseth is well-liked inside Fox News – but Trump tapping him as Defense Secretary is a total shock to his colleagues. As one of his fellow hosts said to me, flabbergasted, "You're telling me Pete is going to oversee two million employees?" cnn.com/2024/11/13/med… The Department of Defense has closer to three million employees, which only serves to underscore the point. Hegseth is a decorated Army vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But nothing in his bio suggests experience leading large organizations.

It's a mistake to dismiss real dissatisfaction with the economy and the government as merely a product of right-wing propaganda. But it's also a mistake to ignore the mis- and disinformation that permeates pro-Trump media from top to bottom. For example... Check out this @Ipsos poll from last month. People who answered factual questions about inflation, crime, and immigration incorrectly were "more likely to opt for Trump," Ipsos said, while those who answered correctly preferred Harris. ipsos.com/en-us/link-bet…

Of the five boroughs in NYC, Staten Island is Trump's stronghold. Yet today the borough's newspaper, the Staten Island Advance, "enthusiastically" endorsed Harris, calling her "the only choice in 2024," and delivering some tough love to readers 🧵 "We understand a significant portion of conservative-leaning Staten Island will disagree, some vehemently, in support of her opponent," the Advance wrote. But the editorial tells Trump fans, in effect, that he's lying to you silive.com/opinion/2024/1…

Journalists are typically most comfortable talking about what we do know. But sometimes the story is what we don't know. CAN'T know yet. And this is one of those times. We have to communicate uncertainty about the election. 🧵 "I spend more hours figuring out ways to say this race is close than New Yorkers spend in traffic," @ForecasterEnten quips. "I've used just about every adjective for 'close,' and 'even,' but that’s the message every time," @SalvantoCBS says.

News incoming about CBS and Trump... Exclusive: Lawyers for CBS News are rebuffing a legal threat from Donald Trump over the network's "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris, telling the former president his demands are based on a "faulty premise." cnn.com/2024/10/23/med…

This morning an umbrella organization of civil rights groups is alerting the public to "digital voting disinformation" and imploring firms like X and Meta to take action. "There is still time for social media companies to step up and do what is right," @mayawiley says... Online platforms don't HAVE to be polluted with lies: "We have the power to and ability to balance free speech rights with verification, links, labeling and ensuring algorithms demote rather than promote dangerous disinformation." Here's my full story... cnn.com/2024/10/21/med…

Fox News anchor @BretBaier, who is about to interview Kamala Harris, is all too keenly aware that Fox's viewers want him to affirm what they already feel – namely, extreme disdain for Harris and overwhelming distrust of the media. His X feed says it all... 🧵 As soon as Baier announced his Harris sit-down, uber-skeptical commenters on this site replied with doubts and conspiracy theories. "This interview will be as watered down as they come." "No doubt she already has the list of Q's." "I don't trust Fox and I trust Baier even less."