The second time around, President Donald Trump is upending established news media conventions. Representatives of right-wing outlets are called on to ask questions at White House briefings while mainstream reporters Trump has called the “enemy of the American people” are ignored.
Trump also announced that Voice of America — which he unsuccessfully tried to shut down — now will carry programming from far-right network One America News, which parrots Trump’s agenda.
Meanwhile, the Family Research Council claims Fox News has gone “woke” and is “regurgitating” liberal propaganda on transgender ideology.
Changes to White House briefings will alter what American and international audiences will or won’t learn about the administration. Briefings limit the ability of independent news groups to cover Trump 2.0, and the change at VOA means international listeners will hear less news and more Trump-friendly information.
“Trump is killing the free press — at home and abroad,” said one critic.
From Media Matters traciing White House press briefings in the Trump administration.
At the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt answers fewer questions from mainstream reporters and more questions come from ideologically driven influencers, including The Daily Caller (founded by Tucker Carlson), Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, The Daily Signal (founded by the Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025), Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, RealClear Politics and the Gateway Pundit.
Reporters from The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press now get fewer questions. The AP serves thousands of newspapers but was banned by Trump after it failed to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. A judge reversed the ban, saying it violated the First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
Trump also has wrested control of the seating chart for White House press briefings from the White House Correspondents’ Association, which had handled the seating arrangements in the small room for decades. “New media” outlets loyal to Trump share a new seat at the front of the room and get to ask the first question in the briefings.
A recent question from The Daily Caller illustrates the new tone: “Does the president intend to permanently cut off funding to NGOs that are bringing illegal foreign nationals to the country, such as Catholic Charities?”
“Four out of five reporters called on most in White House press briefings are from right-wing outlets,” reported Media Matters for America. “While the White House attacks traditional press freedoms, the press briefings are now littered with biased questions from the administration’s most staunch supporters.”
Mike Lindell advertising his product, MyPillow.
Lindell TV is one of the new media outlets getting favorable attention from Press Secretary Leavitt. Lindell TV was founded by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy who has spent four years promoting false claims of 2020 election fraud and is being sued for more than $1 billion by voting technology companies he allegedly defamed.
Cara Castronuova, Lindell TV’s White House reporter, is a championship boxer, sports announcer and conservative activist with no previous journalism experience, and it shows in the questions she asks, which typically begin with praise for Trump and his agenda.
In one case, Castronuova praised Trump’s appearance, saying he looked better, and asked how the improvement came about: “He actually looks healthier than ever before, healthier than he did eight years ago, and I’m sure everyone in this room could agree. Is he working out with Bobby Kennedy and is he eating less McDonald’s?”
In April, new media outlets enjoyed a private briefing with Press Secretary Leavitt, who called it the “first official influencer briefing.” (Mainstream journalists may have influence but distinguish themselves from pro-Trump social media influencers.) The influencers’ questions and comments confirmed their leanings:
- When will the border wall be completed?
- When will remaining files be released about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein? (Conservatives say the files will implicate the “Biden crime family.”)
- When will we see Trump’s new External Revenue Service, which derives funds from tariffs?
- Will Trump continue defending the Second Amendment?
One new media representative praised Trump’s executive order designating English as America’s official language and reported the order already was changing the country. “My Uber driver is finally speaking English,” she said.
Over at Voice of America, which now broadcasts a news feed from One America News, the message going out to the world from the United States is decidedly pro-Trump. OAN is extremely loyal to the administration, making its news more closely resemble official propaganda outlets in countries run by autocrats or dictators.
OAN has staked out territory to the right of Fox News. It does not report negative opinion polls that show Trump losing support, and it has steadfastly reported Trump’s election falsehoods as truth. OAN blamed Trump’s 2020 loss on voting technology companies and it has paid for those falsehoods by settling two defamation cases — one with Smartmatic and another with Dominion executive Eric Coomer.
Trump named Kari Lake to lead VOA. Lake is TV journalist-turned-politician and double election denier: she says Trump didn’t lose the presidential vote in 2020 and she didn’t lose the Arizona governor’s race in 2022. Both are lies.
Meanwhile, Fox News has undergone a “woke transformation” said Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and guest Allie Beth Stuckey in a recent FRC program.
Fox has been written off by MAGA conservatives ever since it became the first network to call the 2020 election for Joe Biden. Now, Perkins and Stuckey say the network has gone woke for its reporting on the mere existence of transgender people.
“Fox News highlighted the story of a biological girl whose family encouraged her to transition to a boy,” Perkins explained. He said the story went too far when it “praised the family’s extraordinary courage,” claiming the story promoted “the left’s propaganda.”
“I knew they were liberal socially,” said Stuckey, who said she was saddened to see Fox “regurgitate this propaganda.”