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The Federal Communications Commission under Trump has tried to target news outlets for spreading ‘fake’ news.

United States President Donald Trump says he will report a prominent NBC television journalist to the federal agency in charge of regulating broadcast news outlets for “rebuke or punishment”.

In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump took issue with Kristen Welker’s characterisation of his endorsements of electoral candidates as having “mixed results” in the primaries leading up to November’s elections.

“How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given public airwaves?” Trump wrote. He also posted, without any attribution of where he got the data, a chart showing 98 percent of the candidates he endorsed had won their elections.

“Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC,” the Federal Communications Commission, he said.

Welker hosted the 2020 presidential election debate between Trump and former President Joe Biden and currently hosts NBC’s weekly news programme Meet the Press.

‘Crooked networks’

In June, Welker had a one-on-one interview with Trump that ended in a heated exchange as she pressed the Republican president on continuing to claim the Democratic Party had cheated in the 2020 presidential election, in which Biden defeated Trump.

“Your elections are crooked, and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked and so is ABC and CBS and CNN. You’re one-sided crooked networks,” Trump said shortly before pulling off his microphone and leaving the interview.

Trump, who has long had a tumultuous relationship with those US television news networks, has increasingly threatened to use the FCC to target what he says is false news.

This month, ABC News’s owner, Disney, sued the FCC, saying the agency was conducting an early licence review of eight of the network’s stations, a move that it said was “retaliation” against it. ABC said the FCC was seeking “a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely”.

The review followed a row between the network and the FCC after Trump and his wife Melania called on it to fire late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he had made about her.

President Trump has also filed several multibillion-dollar civil lawsuits against news outlets alleging defamation. Last year, he filed a $10bn lawsuit against the BBC, which he said unfairly edited a clip of him speaking just before his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to make it seem like he had called for violence.

Trump sued The New York Times for $15bn and The Wall Street Journal for $10bn, alleging defamation over reporting on issues such as how he amassed his wealth and his relationship to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A judge threw out the case against The Wall Street Journal. Trump refiled the case against The New York Times after a judge dismissed the first complaint against the newspaper last year.

Attempts to compel reporters to reveal sources

The warning from Trump also comes as his administration has taken the rare step of using the courts to try to pressure journalists into giving up confidential sources for stories that have pointed out wrongdoing.

This month, The New York Times said agents from the FBI showed up at the home of one of its reporters in February to deliver a subpoena seeking cooperation for an investigation into a story that revealed how a secret US Navy SEALs mission in North Korea had ended up with them opening fire on a North Korean boat.

In July, the US Department of Justice also tried to subpoena three other journalists from the newspaper after they reported on security concerns with the president’s new Air Force One jet. Investigators were seeking phone records of the journalists but withdrew the requests after a federal judge upbraided the tactic in court, saying they were violating the First Amendment, a provision in the US Constitution that protects freedom of the press.

Reporters at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have also been subpoenaed in recent months for national security coverage, including for reporting on internal Pentagon warnings about the US-Israel war on Iran.

News media freedom groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists have criticised the Trump administration for targeting critical media. In April, the group Reporters Sans Frontieres, or Reporters Without Borders, said the US has fallen to a “historic low” in its annual global press freedom rankings, dropping from 57th in the world to 64th.

Sunday Brunch suffered an unexpected live TV mishap when a phone began causing a stir behind the scenes

The hit show Sunday Brunch suffered a major blunder.

The Channel 4 hit cooking chat show was thrown into chaos after a phone began causing a commotion behind the scenes during the live broadcast.

The awkward moment happened just before stand-in presenter Yinka Bokinni and Simon Rimmer were due to chat with Anita-Joy Uwajeh.

Yinka, who was filling in for regular host Tim Lovejoy, appeared to notice the noise coming from somewhere off-camera and could be heard receiving text alerts.

She turned to Anita and asked, “Before we get into speaking to you, what was happening? Because I could hear texts. What is going on?”

Anita then explained that there had been a technical issue while jokingly refusing to reveal exactly who was responsible.

“I don’t want to grass anybody, I don’t want to give anyone up, but we had a bit of a technical situation,” she said. Yinka then appeared to work out what was behind the disruption, asking: “Su, was on her phone?”

A clip then showed some of the celebrities laughing as Anita continued to explain what had happened. She said Grace, better known as GK Barry, was “really enjoying it” before revealing that Su Pollard had been trying to work out how to operate the device.

Anita joked: “It was Su trying to figure out this sort of… It’s more like a portable machine, that phone. It’s not really like a modern-day technology thing.”

The exchange left the studio in fits of laughter before Yinka turned her attention to the production team to find out whether the problem had finally been resolved.

“Can we just check in? Have we managed to silence the device?” she asked. After appearing to get confirmation that the noise had stopped, Yinka simply shrugged off the interruption. “Yeah? It’s the beauty of being live,” she said. Anita agreed, replying: “Exactly.”

The incident provided one of the more unexpected moments from Sunday’s edition of the Channel 4 favourite, with the presenters forced to deal with the problem in real time before getting on with the interview.

Yinka was standing in for Tim Lovejoy on the programme, joining Simon Rimmer at the helm for a packed edition featuring a host of familiar faces.

Among the guests was legendary singer Paul Heaton, while Su Pollard appeared to discuss her memoir. GK Barry was also on the show to talk about her new book, while Everlast, Gary Wilmot and Anita-Joy Uwajeh were also part of the line-up. Casualty star Elinor Lawless also joined the programme to discuss the soap’s 40th anniversary special.

Despite the unexpected phone drama, the show quickly returned to its usual mix of celebrity interviews, entertainment, music and conversation.

And with the programme being broadcast live, Yinka was able to turn an unplanned technical problem into another memorable Sunday Brunch moment before carrying on with the show.

Sunday Brunch airs every Sunday from 10am on Channel 4.