Trump picked a fight with the media... and lost

Donald Trump barred CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House this week over what he called negative coverage, drawing pushback from the U.S. press corps. The ban came the same week Trump gave Chinese leader Xi Jinping an elaborate red-carpet welcome, a pairing Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland and Shrai Popat said shows Trump looking weaker at home even as he courts a longtime rival, though they cautioned against underestimating him. The expulsion of the three outlets is part of a broader pattern of pressure on American journalism. A leading global watchdog found U.S. democracy more imperiled than at any point since the 1960s, pointing to criminal investigations, politicized regulation, frivolous lawsuits and severe cuts to public media funding. In August, Trump said the host of Meet the Press should face punishment from the FCC over a factual statement, and the agency subsequently went after ABC following a Jimmy Kimmel joke about Melania Trump. The Pentagon also ousted the top editor of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes on grounds of "insubordination," a move that followed the paper's coverage of a suicide attempt aboard the USS Lincoln. Ownership adds to the strain: critics have pointed to softer coverage at CBS News since a Trump ally took control of its parent company, noted that the same buyer could soon acquire CNN as well, and flagged Jeff Bezos's staff cuts and editorial interventions at the Washington Post. These pressures arrive as the midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress, approach, according to The Guardian.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Guardian’s reporting. Read the full story at The Guardian →