On Friday (28), the White House launched a page on its official website called “Media Offender of the Week”, which will list press organizations and journalists that it claims have published “misleading and partial” news about the Donald Trump administration.
The first list included the broadcaster CBS News, the American newspaper The Boston Globe and the British newspaper The Independent.
The White House alleged that these three press organizations had “distorted” a post on the Truth Social network, dated November 20, in which Trump called “seditious behavior, punishable by the death penalty” the calls that Democratic congressmen made for American military personnel to disobey “illegal” orders from the Trump administration.
“The media distorted President Trump’s call for members of Congress to be held accountable for inciting sedition, claiming that he called for their ‘execution,’” the White House alleged.
“Democrats and the fake news media subversively insinuated that President Trump had issued illegal orders to military personnel. All orders issued by President Trump were legal. It is dangerous for sitting members of Congress to incite insubordination in the United States Armed Forces, and President Trump has called for them to be held accountable,” the Republican president’s government said.
The three press organizations mentioned have not yet commented on the matter, but the NGO Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) criticized the measure in a statement.
“The Trump administration’s page creates a dangerous framework for allowing attacks on journalists and an attempt to undermine newsrooms across the country. This type of behavior is more befitting an authoritarian regime and has no place in a democracy,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator.