On Friday, November 28, the White House launched an online “media bias” tracker featuring reports the administration labels as “offenses” by news outlets amid the president’s recent verbal clashes with reporters. The real-time page lists articles from various publications with links to stories that, in the Trump team’s view, contain distortions of context, falsehoods, mischaracterizations, bias or professional malpractice. In a statement, the White House said the site serves as “a record of false and misleading media stories flagged by the White House.” It includes a “hall of shame” and a leaderboard of outlets whose coverage has been deemed out of line with the administration’s standards.
Heading the list is The Washington Post, followed by MSNBC (recently rebranded as MS NOW), CBS News, CNN, The New York Times, Politico and The Wall Street Journal. All of these outlets lost their Pentagon press credentials last month after new rules were introduced requiring prior clearance of information with officials. The current administration is engaged in legal disputes with the WSJ and in recent months settled its conflict with CBS out of court. In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly resorted to personal insults, calling a New York Times correspondent “a third-rate reporter who is ugly both inside and out,” and snapping “Quiet, piggy” at a Bloomberg journalist who asked about Jeffrey Epstein.
After the newspaper was added by the president to the list of “systematic offenders” for its reporting on scandals surrounding the White House, The Washington Post quoted an internal representative who said: “The Washington Post is proud of its accurate and rigorous journalism.”