SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 12.5.2025 – UPDATED 12.9.2025
More seriously—more sinister—the White House has just put up a wall-of-shame webpage tracking media outfits and reporters who “misrepresent” or “lie” about the administration. Names are named, outfits identified and shamed. All this is meant to intimidate; it institutionalizes attacks on the media and, considering the broader context, potentially prompts and gives permission to unstable people who might want to act in the president’s supposed defense. The webpage, paid for by taxpayers as part of the White House website, looks not like an insult but part of a sustained campaign. It is a threat. It should be taken down. Peggy Noonan in Wall Street Journal 12.6.2025 – https://www.wsj.com/opinion/were-in-an-era-of-political-violence-cc359449?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
Donald Trump is a Clear and Present Danger to democracy.
I don’t know what’s more distressing.
The White House launching a Media Offenders Website titled ‘Hall of Shame’ https://www.whitehouse.gov/mediabias/ or the general silence with few exceptions from the American media whose First Amendment rights are being trampled.
The shock of all this is that the publishers should be at the proverbial barricades. Press freedom and the First Amendment are under attack. Journalists, editors and publishers must be aware that when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 he destroyed the free press in Germany. If they’re not unaware they’re deluding themselves.
Trump will never get that far. But his intimidation tactics using the power of the Federal government is sending a chilling message
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.5.2025
A new government website lists journalists and media outlets that Donald Trump’s administration considers liars. Experts say the move endangers free media ― and thus erodes democracy in the US.
The website set up by the Trump White House amounts to threatening media outlets, Jonathan Katz, a fellow in governance studies at the think tank Brookings Institution, says, too.
“It can have a chilling effect on free speech, on independent media,” Katz told DW. “We’re watching carefully to see how this affects press freedom in the United States.”
It’s no secret that the current US administration doesn’t have too high an opinion of journalists. President Donald Trump recently called a female reporter asking him about his involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal “piggy.”
And in a press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt talked about how much of her job is taken up by dealing with what she labeled inaccurate characterizations published by White House correspondents.
“The fake news that we see pumped out of this building on a day-to-day basis — it’s honestly overwhelming to keep up with it all,” she said.
In response to what Leavitt said were “fake news and … attacks” being spread by reporters, the White House has created a website that lists media outlets and reporters who, according to the government, publish false, biased or misleading stories.
The new “Media Offenders” website includes featured “Offenders of the Week” as well as a “Hall of Shame” that consists of four pages (at time of publication) of media reports the White House has sorted into the categories bias, lie, false claim, malpractice, omission of context, mischaracterization, circular reporting, failure to report and left-wing lunacy.
In a statement released on December 1, the White House said by creating the website, it “dropped a flamethrower on the Fake News Media.”
https://www.dw.com/en/how-white-house-attack-on-journalists-affects-us-press-freedom/a-75040640
Top photo: Donald Trump only wants to hear what makes him look good. He closes his ears to everything else.
Lee's Perspective 