By Mark Anderson
An unprecedented thing happened recently in the Trump 2.0 White House: the admission of alternative media to the press corps. Such media—whose entrance alongside the legacy media covering the president directly would have been inconceivable prior to Trump’s first term—now have a seat at the table. As to be expected, the orthodox press is not comfortable with the new arrangement.
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Trump’s first term saw him relentlessly repeat the words “fake news” while targeting the legacy media cartel for its shameless, unhinged globalism. He also began to collaborate with alternative media to a limited extent.
In so doing, Trump 45 laid the groundwork for Trump 47 and the now-steady admission of several alternative media outlets into the White House’s fold.
Alternative outlets ranging from right wing to Libertarian and, to a limited extent, quasi-populist—also including Catholic and Protestant Christian outlets—are now admitted to cover the regular press conferences in the White House briefing room. The White House also emails press bulletins to notify media in outlying areas that Air Force One will be reaching a particular location, such as Trump’s recent visit to an air base near Detroit. One-time passes can be applied for by any legitimate media to cover these visits.
At least one of these new media outlets is a think tank—the America First Policy Institute. Additionally, a new White House-approved media outlet called Global Strat View is a self-described media-think tank hybrid.
According to Global Strat View’s website:
Our team of professional journalists spans the Indian subcontinent, Europe, and North America … committed to truth, quality, and the highest ethical standards in journalism. … Global Strat View also has a virtual think tank which facilitates discussions between various stakeholders.
Another new media presence is NOTUS, or News of the United States.
Lest anyone assume that these newly admitted media voices are all shameless toadies for Trump—although a number of them lean that way—NOTUS recently ran reports with the following headlines: “Lawmakers Are Growing More Skeptical Trump’s Tariffs Will Spark an Industrial Renaissance in the U.S.”; and “Sen. Chris Van Hollen Meets With Wrongfully Deported Man in El Salvador.”
Amid covering the controversial issues, NOTUS apparently is still able to remain impartial without getting booted out of the media ranks by the White House.
THE ISRAEL FACTOR
Allowing these new media companies to compete with the conventional media on a more or less even playing field is a positive development, but the “Israel factor” can gum up the works, due to the considerable bias many of these new media outlets have in favor of Israel, often defending Israel’s ruthless bombing of defenseless Palestinian citizens.
Consequently, some of these new media outlets tend to paint those critical of Israel’s actions, especially protesters at various U.S. university campuses, as being pro-Hamas—as if opposing the incessant bombing of Gaza automatically makes you a Hamas sympathizer.
The ultimate irony is that, on the one hand, free speech is enhanced by the very act of getting fresh media voices into the White House loop, but the free speech and assembly rights of protesters under the First Amendment is effectively nullified.
For example, “The Daily Wire,” one of the White House’s new media outlets—co-conceived by the rabidly pro-Israel journalist Ben Shapiro—on Jan. 29 ran a pro-deportation article labeling student-protesters with the slur “anti-Semitic” if they demonstrated against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “The Daily Wire” story was headlined, “Trump to Sign Executive Order to Deport Anti-Semitic Foreign Students and Protesters.”
The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) news outlet was also recently admitted to cover the White House. The Catholic organization, however, has published articles critical of Israel’s Gaza attacks, documenting that Israel is violating long-established “just war” principles.
Other new media allowed to cover the White House in the White House press room include: “Washington Free Beacon,” unabashedly pro-Israel, somewhat skeptical of Big Pharma but blames nearly every pandemic problem on Joe Biden; Epoch Times, which is solid on opposing “woke” social engineering and long-known for exposing China’s tyranny, but it tends to downplay Israel’s sins, amid appreciable skepticism of drug companies; “Semafor,” whose co-founder and CEO Justin Smith is a lifetime Council on Foreign Relations member (a conflict of interest for any serious journalist); and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), a stridently pro-Israel news organization founded by the late Dr. Pat Robertson.
On a positive note, gone are the days when nearly all White House media are strident purveyors of the stale one-sided narratives regarding climate change, abortion on demand, world government, wokeness, globalist free trade, and open borders.
