Donald Trump

President Trump accused the media of making up a majority of stories about his administration without providing evidence to back up his claim. 

NBC Chairman of Broadcasting and Sports Mark Lazarus said the network isn’t worried about its broadcast licenses facing revocation following President Trump’s threatening tweets. “We feel very confident … that the FCC will support the First Amendment,” he said.

Jimmy Kimmel — mouthy, mean, and quick to cry — is the perfect foil for Donald Trump. But how long can he play the hero?

The top U.S. communications regulator on Tuesday declined to criticize President Donald Trump’s attacks on broadcasters. In his first public appearance since Trump tweeted that Comcast’s NBC and other broadcasters should lose their licenses for reporting “fake news,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai instead noted that his agency could not do what the president wanted.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is facing increasing pressure to distance himself from President Donald Trump’s threats against NBC — a course of action that would risk provoking the president’s Twitter-fueled wrath.

Donald Trump’s Twitter feed has become a news service for political junkies. It’s also raised a tangle of new ethical and legal questions for reporters covering the White House.

During an interview on CNN this past weekend, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the FCC must abide by the First Amendment. The FCC, she said, “will not revoke a broadcast license simply because the president is dissatisfied with the licensees coverage.”

A group of 21 free speech activists, including three former FCC commissioners, called on the FCC chairman to publicly repudiate President’s Trump tweeted suggestion that the FCC revoke broadcast licences for airing “fake news” about him. “Such threats are what you would expect to hear in a dictatorship, not a democracy, and they must be condemned in the strongest possible terms,” they say in an open letter.

You shouldn’t get too excited about about President Trump’s tweeted threats against NBC’s broadcast licenses. He can weaponize the FCC to punish stations and networks for his bad press, but not by using license renewal challenges. He could pressure or cajole FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to act as his enforcer, but I don’t see that happening.

A pair of top House Democrats are calling for Congress to hold public hearings on President Trump’s threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of media outlets he doesn’t like. Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. and Mike Doyle said today that they want all five members of the FCC to testify before Congress to disavow the president’s comments “publicly and under oath.”

President Trump is doubling down on his suggestion that the federal government “challenge” the broadcast licenses of networks that report what he deems “fake news.”

Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017

Two former FCC threw cold water on President Donald Trump’s suggestion today to “challenge” the broadcast licenses of networks over news reports he considers to be “fake” and “bad for country.”

The reaction came after President Trump this morning tweeted his displeasure with NBC News, first denying a report that he wants to dramatically expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal and then suggesting FCC action against NBC’s station licenses.

With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2017

The president mocks a Republican senator’s height, challenges his secretary of state to an I.Q. contest and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.

President Donald Trump is suggesting the U.S. change its tax laws to punish organizations like the NFL if members are “disrespecting” the national anthem or flag.

President Trump thinks latenight comedy is no laughing matter. He slapped back at TV hosts and their snarky monologues on Twitter Saturday morning — and hinted at regulatory retaliation. “Late Night host are dealing with the Democrats for their very ‘unfunny’ & repetitive material, always anti-Trump!” he complained at 8 a.m.. “Should we get Equal Time?”

The RTDNA Voice of the First Amendment Task Force is calling on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to ignore a tweet from President Trump seeking an investigation into what he called “Fake News Networks.”

A former producer on The Apprentice has said President Donald Trump made “unfathomably despicable” racist comments while on the set of the show. The news about the remarks was disclosed by Bill Pruitt on NPR’s Embedded podcast released Wednesday. The comments, he said, were allegedly captured on videos that “are somewhere, in some warehouse.”

President Donald Trump urged Congress Thursday morning to launch an investigation of the news media, wondering online “why so much of our news is just made up.” He did not single out a specific story or media outlet that he believed to be guilty of inaccurate reporting.

Americans are increasingly confident in the news media and less so in President Donald Trump’s administration after a tumultuous year in U.S. politics that tested the public’s trust in both institutions, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released Tuesday. The poll of more than 14,300 people found that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48% in September from 39% last November. Earlier this year, Trump branded the entire industry as the “enemy of the American people.”

During the early days of the administration, similar storylines covered across outlets, but types of sources heard from and the assessments of Trump’s actions differed.

Fox News Channel has announced that President Donald Trump will sit down for an interview with Sean Hannity on the host’s evening show.

Sunday morning, President Trump essentially called for a boycott of the NFL in response to players using the national anthem to protest police profiling of African-Americans. Should Trump’s supporters respond to that call, the medium-term effects could be serious for the NFL. But the impact would be at least as bad, and much more immediate, for the broadcasters who pay to air games.

In her 60 Minutes debut as a special correspondent, she talked to 14 Americans about how they feel about the president — the results were decidedly mixed.

He was the evening’s absent star, but the president waited until after his bellicose U.N. speech to deliver his verdict on the awards show that skewered him so thoroughly. “I was saddened to see how bad the ratings were on the Emmys last night – the worst ever,” he tweeted. 

The POTUS hit Twitter hard Friday morning with a salvo aimed at ESPN and its anchor Jemele Hill, who called Trump a white supremacist earlier on the platform. “ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers,” Trump exclaimed. 

Hope Hicks, a longtime member of President Donald Trump’s communications team, will assume the role of White House communications director on a permanent basis, a senior administration official confirmed Tuesday morning. Hicks had taken on the role of communications director on an interim basis last month.

The two most prominent media companies that program to a Spanish-speaking audience criticized the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, announced Tuesday morning.

How the administration has changed the game between investigative reporters and their government sources.

Legendary NBC broadcaster Tom Brokaw blasted President Trump’s criticism of the news media on Thursday, firing back after Trump questioned at a rally earlier this week whether members of the press liked the country.

Members of the media blasted back at President Trump on Wednesday after he railed against the press at a rally and called journalists “dishonest people” who “don’t like our country.” Acrimony between the Trump White House and the media has been escalating for months, but the latest round of attacks and counterattacks was notable for its bare-knuckle ferocity.

The new system laid out by Chief of Staff John Kelly, laid out in two memos circulating in the West Wing this week, is designed to ensure that the president won’t see any reports or documents that haven’t been vetted.

The presidency of Donald J. Trump and his penchant for using his personal Twitter account has led to a political climate where a 24-hour news cycle is often whittled down to a scant six hours or so. For most of the Emmy-nominated variety talk series that means having to be ready to write a new joke or rip up and rewrite an entire monologue at a moment’s notice.

At his rally in Phoenix Tuesday evening, President Trump defended his stance on the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., and accused the “dishonest media” of distorting his words. (AP photo)