President Donald Trump’s razing of the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom has put some news organizations following the story in an awkward position, with corporate owners among the contributors to the project — and their reporters covering it vigorously.
Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC, has faced on-air criticism from some of the liberal cable channel’s personalities for its donation. Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, is another donor. The newspaper editorialized in favor of Trump’s project, pointing out the Bezos connection a day later after critics noted its omission.
It’s not the first time since Trump regained the presidency that interests of journalists at outlets that are a small part of a corporate titan’s portfolio have clashed with owners. Both the Walt Disney Co. and Paramount have settled lawsuits with Trump rather than defend ABC News and CBS News in court.
“This is Trump’s Washington,” said Chuck Todd, former NBC “Meet the Press” host. “None of this helps the reputations of the news organizations that these companies own, because it compromises everybody.”
Companies haven’t said how much they donated, or why
None of the individuals and corporations identified by the White House as donors has publicly said how much was given, although a $22 million Google donation was revealed in a court filing. Comcast would not say Friday why it gave, although some MSNBC commentators have sought to fill in the blanks.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle said the donations should be a concern to Americans, “because there ain’t no company out there writing a check just for good will.”
“Those public-facing companies should know that there’s a cost in terms of their reputations with the American people,” Rachel Maddow said on her show this week, specifically citing Comcast. “There may be a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.”
NBC’s “Nightly News” led its Oct. 22 broadcast with a story on the East Wing demolition, which reporter Gabe Gutierrez said was paid for by private donors, “among them Comcast, NBC’s parent company.”
“Nightly News” spent a total of five minutes on the story that week, half the time of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” though NBC pre-empted its Tuesday newscast for NBA coverage, said Andrew Tyndall, head of ADT Research. There’s no evidence that Comcast tried to influence NBC’s coverage in any way; Todd said the corporation’s leaders have no history of doing that. A Comcast spokeswoman had no comment.
Todd spoke out against his bosses at NBC News in the past, but said he doubted he would have done so in this case, in part because Comcast hasn’t said why the contribution was made. “You could make the defense that it is contributing to the United States” by renovating the White House, he said.
More troubling, he said, is the perception that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had to do it to curry favor with the Trump administration. Trump, in a Truth Social post in April, called Comcast and Roberts “a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!” The president cited the company’s ownership of MSNBC and NBC News.
Roberts may need their help. Stories this week suggested Comcast might be interested in buying all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would require government approval.
White House cannot be ‘a museum to the past’
The Post’s editorial last weekend was eye-opening, even for a section that has taken a conservative turn following Bezos’ direction that it concentrate on defending personal liberties and the free market. The Oct. 25 editorial was unsigned, which indicates that it is the newspaper’s official position, and was titled “In Defense of the White House ballroom.”
The Post said the ballroom is a necessary addition and although Trump is pursuing it “in the most jarring manner possible,” it would not have gotten done in his term if he went through a traditional approval process.
“The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past,” the Post wrote. “Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”
In sharing a copy of the editorial on social media, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote that it was the “first dose of common sense I’ve seen from the legacy media on this story.”
The New York Times, by contrast, has not taken an editorial stand either for or against the project. It has run a handful of opinion columns: Ross Douthat called Trump’s move necessary considering potential red tape, while Maureen Dowd said it was an “unsanctioned, ahistoric, abominable destruction of the East Wing.”
In a social media post later Saturday, Columbia University journalism professor Bill Grueskin noted the absence of any mention of Bezos in the Post editorial” and said he wrote to a Post spokeswoman about it. In a “stealth edit” that Grueskin said didn’t include any explanation, a paragraph was added the next day about the private donors, including Amazon. “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post,” the newspaper said.
The Post had no comment on the issue, spokeswoman Olivia Petersen said on Sunday.
In a story this past week, NPR reported that the ballroom editorial was one of three that the Post had written in the previous two weeks on a matter in which Bezos had a financial or corporate interest without noting his personal stakes.
In a public appearance last December, Bezos acknowledged that he was a “terrible owner” for the Post from the point of view of appearances of conflict. “A pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would probably be, from that point of view, a much better owner,” the Amazon founder said.
Grueskin, in an interview, said Bezos had every right as an owner to influence the Post’s editorial policy. But he said it was important for readers to know his involvement in the East Wing story. They may reject the editorial because of the conflict, he said, or conclude that “the editorial is so well-argued, I put a lot of credibility into what I just read.”
Bauder writes for the Associated Press.
Kansas county agrees to pay $3 million over law enforcement raid on a small-town newspaper
TOPEKA, Kan. — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom.
Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the Marion County Record’s parent company, the paper’s publisher, newspaper employees, a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided, and the estate of the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, the paper’s co-owner, who died the day after the raid. An attorney for the newspaper, Bernie Rhodes, released a copy of the five-page signed agreement Tuesday.
Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told the Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future. Legal claims against the city and city officials have not been settled, and Meyer said he believes they will face a larger judgment though he doesn’t expect those claims to be resolved for some time.
“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”
The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan, lived with him and died of a heart attack that he blamed on the stress of the raid.
Three days after the raid, the local prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to justify it. Experts said Marion’s police chief at the time, Gideon Cody, was on legally shaky ground when he ordered the raid, and a former top federal prosecutor for Kansas suggested that it might have been a criminal violation of civil rights, saying: “I’d probably have the FBI starting to look.”
Two special prosecutors who reviewed the raid and its aftermath said nearly a year later that the Record had committed no crimes before Cody led the raid, that the warrants signed by a judge contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation” and the searches were not legally justified. Cody resigned as police chief in October 2023.
Cody is scheduled to go to trial in February in Marion County on a felony charge of interfering with a judicial process, accused by the two special prosecutors of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct. He had pleaded not guilty and did not respond to a text message Tuesday seeking comment about the county’s agreement.
Attorneys for the city and the county and the county administrator did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Sheriff Jeff Soyez issued an apology that mentioned the Meyers by name, along with former council member Ruth Herbel and her husband.
“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion County Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the sheriff’s statement said.
The Marion County Commission approved the agreement Monday after discussing it in private for 15 minutes.
A search warrant tied the raid — which was led by Marion’s police chief — to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record.
Meyer has said that he believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s work history.
Hanna and Hollingsworth write for the Associated Press.
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Why news outlets struggle with credibility when their owners fund Trump’s White House project
President Donald Trump’s razing of the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom has put some news organizations following the story in an awkward position, with corporate owners among the contributors to the project — and their reporters covering it vigorously.
Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC, has faced on-air criticism from some of the liberal cable channel’s personalities for its donation. Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, is another donor. The newspaper editorialized in favor of Trump’s project, pointing out the Bezos connection a day later after critics noted its omission.
It’s not the first time since Trump regained the presidency that interests of journalists at outlets that are a small part of a corporate titan’s portfolio have clashed with owners. Both the Walt Disney Co. and Paramount have settled lawsuits with Trump rather than defend ABC News and CBS News in court.
“This is Trump’s Washington,” said Chuck Todd, former NBC “Meet the Press” host. “None of this helps the reputations of the news organizations that these companies own, because it compromises everybody.”
Companies haven’t said how much they donated, or why
None of the individuals and corporations identified by the White House as donors has publicly said how much was given, although a $22 million Google donation was revealed in a court filing. Comcast would not say Friday why it gave, although some MSNBC commentators have sought to fill in the blanks.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle said the donations should be a concern to Americans, “because there ain’t no company out there writing a check just for good will.”
“Those public-facing companies should know that there’s a cost in terms of their reputations with the American people,” Rachel Maddow said on her show this week, specifically citing Comcast. “There may be a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.”
NBC’s “Nightly News” led its Oct. 22 broadcast with a story on the East Wing demolition, which reporter Gabe Gutierrez said was paid for by private donors, “among them Comcast, NBC’s parent company.”
“Nightly News” spent a total of five minutes on the story that week, half the time of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” though NBC pre-empted its Tuesday newscast for NBA coverage, said Andrew Tyndall, head of ADT Research. There’s no evidence that Comcast tried to influence NBC’s coverage in any way; Todd said the corporation’s leaders have no history of doing that. A Comcast spokeswoman had no comment.
Todd spoke out against his bosses at NBC News in the past, but said he doubted he would have done so in this case, in part because Comcast hasn’t said why the contribution was made. “You could make the defense that it is contributing to the United States” by renovating the White House, he said.
More troubling, he said, is the perception that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had to do it to curry favor with the Trump administration. Trump, in a Truth Social post in April, called Comcast and Roberts “a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!” The president cited the company’s ownership of MSNBC and NBC News.
Roberts may need their help. Stories this week suggested Comcast might be interested in buying all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would require government approval.
White House cannot be ‘a museum to the past’
The Post’s editorial last weekend was eye-opening, even for a section that has taken a conservative turn following Bezos’ direction that it concentrate on defending personal liberties and the free market. The Oct. 25 editorial was unsigned, which indicates that it is the newspaper’s official position, and was titled “In Defense of the White House ballroom.”
The Post said the ballroom is a necessary addition and although Trump is pursuing it “in the most jarring manner possible,” it would not have gotten done in his term if he went through a traditional approval process.
“The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past,” the Post wrote. “Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”
In sharing a copy of the editorial on social media, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote that it was the “first dose of common sense I’ve seen from the legacy media on this story.”
The New York Times, by contrast, has not taken an editorial stand either for or against the project. It has run a handful of opinion columns: Ross Douthat called Trump’s move necessary considering potential red tape, while Maureen Dowd said it was an “unsanctioned, ahistoric, abominable destruction of the East Wing.”
In a social media post later Saturday, Columbia University journalism professor Bill Grueskin noted the absence of any mention of Bezos in the Post editorial” and said he wrote to a Post spokeswoman about it. In a “stealth edit” that Grueskin said didn’t include any explanation, a paragraph was added the next day about the private donors, including Amazon. “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post,” the newspaper said.
The Post had no comment on the issue, spokeswoman Olivia Petersen said on Sunday.
In a story this past week, NPR reported that the ballroom editorial was one of three that the Post had written in the previous two weeks on a matter in which Bezos had a financial or corporate interest without noting his personal stakes.
In a public appearance last December, Bezos acknowledged that he was a “terrible owner” for the Post from the point of view of appearances of conflict. “A pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would probably be, from that point of view, a much better owner,” the Amazon founder said.
Grueskin, in an interview, said Bezos had every right as an owner to influence the Post’s editorial policy. But he said it was important for readers to know his involvement in the East Wing story. They may reject the editorial because of the conflict, he said, or conclude that “the editorial is so well-argued, I put a lot of credibility into what I just read.”
Bauder writes for the Associated Press.
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