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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Marina Dunbar

White House launches website to excoriate media for ‘biased’ stories

a room full of seated people facing a person behind a podium
Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House earlier this year. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

The White House rolled out a new section of its official website on Friday that publicly criticizes and catalogs media organizations and journalists it claims have distorted coverage.

At the top of the page, the text reads: “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.” The feature names the Boston Globe, CBS News and the Independent as “media offenders of the week”, accusing them of inaccurately portraying Trump’s remarks about six Democratic lawmakers who released of video encouraging military members to not follow illegal orders.

The controversy arose after Trump accused Democrats of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” on social media. He also reposted a statement including the words: “hang them.”

According to the site, “The Democrats and Fake News Media subversively implied that President Trump had issued illegal orders to service members. Every order President Trump has issued has been lawful. It is dangerous for sitting Members of Congress to incite insubordination in the United States’ military, and President Trump called for them to be held accountable.”

The online page also features an “Offender Hall of Shame”, which includes the Washington Post, CBS News, CNN and MSNBC (now known as MS Now). Visitors can browse a searchable database of articles, along with the names of the journalists who wrote them. Each story is categorized under labels such as “bias”, “malpractice” or “left wing lunacy”.

A leaderboard currently ranks the Washington Post as the top offender, with MSNBC and CBS News taking the second and third slots.

Among the Washington Post articles named is a report from earlier this month that states the US Coast Guard would stop classifying swastikas and nooses as hate symbols, an action the Coast Guard reversed after the article was published.

The Post acknowledged the quick reversal in a follow-up article. In its coverage of the new tracker, the paper quoted an internal spokesperson who said: “The Washington Post is proud of its accurate, rigorous journalism.”

Beyond those singled out as weekly offenders, the White House page also lists the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Politico and Axios among the long list of outlets it accuses of bias or misinformation.

The launch of the webpage is the latest escalation in Trump’s long-running attacks on the media. It follows lawsuits against the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, legal settlements with ABC and CBS, and his repeated references to major news outlets as the “enemy of the people”.

In recent weeks, Trump has also intensified his personal attacks on female journalists. Earlier this month, he referred to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” during a clash onboard Air Force One after the president was questioned about the Epstein files.

Days later, after facing questioning from an ABC News correspondent about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the Epstein scandal, Trump responded by calling the reporter a “terrible person”.

Last week, in a Truth Social post, Trump called a New York Times correspondent “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out”, following an article that she co-authored that suggested the president was running low on energy in his 80th year.

The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.

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