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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.

Tension between Indiana University and its student newspaper flared last week with the elimination of the outlet’s print editions and the firing of a faculty advisor who refused an order to keep news stories out of a homecoming edition.

Administrators may have been hoping to minimize distractions during its homecoming weekend as the school prepared to celebrate a Hoosiers football team with its highest-ever national ranking. Instead, the controversy has entangled the school in questions about censorship and student journalists’ 1st Amendment rights.

Advocates for student media, Indiana Daily Student alumni and high-profile supporters including billionaire Mark Cuban have excoriated the university for stepping on the outlet’s independence.

The Daily Student is routinely honored among the best collegiate publications in the country. It receives about $250,000 annually in subsidies from the university’s Media School to help make up for dwindling ad revenue.

On Tuesday, the university fired the paper’s advisor, Jim Rodenbush, after he refused an order to force student editors to ensure that no news stories ran in the print edition tied to the homecoming celebrations.

“I had to make the decision that was going to allow me to live with myself,” Rodenbush said. “I don’t have any regrets whatsoever. In the current environment we’re in, somebody has to stand up.”

Student journalists still call the shots

A university spokesperson referred an Associated Press reporter to a statement issued Tuesday, which said the campus wants to shift resources from print media to digital platforms both for students’ educational experience and to address the paper’s financial problems.

Chancellor David Reingold issued a separate statement Wednesday saying the school is “firmly committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media. The university has not and will not interfere with their editorial judgment.”

It was late last year when university officials announced they were scaling back the cash-strapped newspaper’s print edition from a weekly to seven special editions per semester, tied to campus events.

The paper published three print editions this fall, inserting special event sections, Rodenbush said. Last month, Media School officials started asking why the special editions still contained news, he said.

Rodenbush said IU Media School Dean David Tolchinsky told him this month that the expectation was print editions would contain no news. Tolchinsky argued that Rodenbush was essentially the paper’s publisher and could decide what to run, Rodenbush said. He told the dean that publishing decisions were the students’ alone, he said.

Tolchinsky fired him Tuesday, two days before the homecoming print edition was set to be published, and announced the end of all Indiana Daily Student print publications.

“Your lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable,” Tolchinsky wrote in Rodenbush’s termination letter.

The newspaper was allowed to continue publishing stories on its website.

Student journalists see a ‘scare tactic’

Andrew Miller, the Indiana Daily Student’s co-editor in chief, said in a statement that Rodenbush “did the right thing by refusing to censor our print edition” and called the termination a “deliberate scare tactic toward journalists and faculty.”

“IU has no legal right to dictate what we can and cannot print in our paper,” Miller said.

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said 1st Amendment case law going back 60 years shows student editors at public universities determine content. Advisors such as Rodenbush can’t interfere, Hiestand said.

“It’s open and shut, and it’s just so bizarre that this is coming out of Indiana University,” Hiestand said. “If this was coming out of a community college that doesn’t know any better, that would be one thing. But this is coming out of a place that absolutely should know better.”

Rodenbush said that he wasn’t aware of any single story the newspaper has published that may have provoked administrators. But he speculated the moves may be part of a “general progression” of administrators trying to protect the university from any negative publicity.

Blocked from publishing a print edition, the paper last week posted a number of sharp-edged stories online, including coverage of the opening of a new film critical of arrests of pro-Palestinian demonstrators last year, a tally of campus sexual assaults and an FBI raid on the home of a former professor suspected of stealing federal funds.

The paper also has covered allegations that IU President Pamela Whitten plagiarized parts of her dissertation, with the most recent story running in September.

Richmond writes for the Associated Press.