The lack of regulations on the cameras showing the House floor last week was “a good thing,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said Sunday, leaving himself open to the possibility of continuing to allow C-SPAN to document proceedings, Politico reports,
Said Roy: “Let me go look into the ins and outs of all of that. But I think it is — what the American people were able to see unfold on the floor was a good thing for our democracy and our republic, right?”
Washington Post: “The typical live stream from the U.S. House is focused on the dais and the desks from which members of each party address the chamber. But this week brought an unusual amount of drama as the American public watched lawmakers struggle to select a new speaker.”
Donald Trump offered a “media availability” at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s eve and not a single cable news outlet — including Fox News and Newsmax — covered it, the HuffPost reports.
However, fringe conservative media outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network posted a video of Trump speaking for just minutes to what sounded like a very few reporters outside.
It turns out that the North Shore Leader, a local Long Island newspaper, did raise questions about Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) before the election, the Washington Post reports:
“It was the stuff national headlines are supposed to be built on: A hyperlocal outlet like the Leader does the leg work, regional papers verify and amplify the story, and before long an emerging political scandal is being broadcast coast-to-coast. But that system, which has atrophied for decades amid the destruction of news economies, appears to have failed completely this time.”
“An increasingly sour relationship between former President Trump, Fox News and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that has been building for months has come to a head in the weeks following the midterm elections,” The Hill reports.
“It is a rift that is being watched closely in political and media circles given the power of Fox News and other media entities owned by Murdoch in potentially shaping the race for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.”
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and media mogul, is interested in acquiring either Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones or The Washington Post, Axios reports.
“An internal investigation by ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees,” Forbes reports.
New York Times: “Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.”
“The high legal standard of proof in defamation cases makes it difficult for a company like Dominion to prevail against a media organization like Fox News. Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were, in effect, saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite.”
“ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative news outlet, will return the $1.6 million in funds it received from Sam Bankman-Fried’s family foundation,” Axios reports.
Rolling Stone: “More than seven months after ABC producer James Gordon Meek was the subject of a dramatic Federal Bureau of Investigation raid, an indictment is being prepared by the Department of Justice to present to a grand jury.”
“Twitter suspended the accounts of roughly half a dozen journalists on Thursday, the latest change by the social media service under its new owner, Elon Musk,” the New York Times reports.
“The accounts suspended included Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; and the political journalist Keith Olbermann. It was unclear what the suspensions had in common; each user’s Twitter page included a message that said it was suspended for ‘violating the Twitter rules.'”
Washington Post: “The suspensions Thursday evening came without warning or explanation from Twitter.”
Rolling Stone: “The Twitter account encouraging users to join rival social network Mastodon has been suspended.”
The Guardian: “Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.”
“Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.”
“Cathy Areu, a journalist and former periodic Fox News guest known as the ‘Liberal Sherpa,’ has been arrested in Miami on accusations that she kidnapped and financially exploited her elderly mother,” the Miami Herald reports.
“Investigators say they believe Areu may have made off with over $224,000 of her 88-year-old mother’s finances, including proceeds of a reverse mortgage from the mother’s house.”
Oliver Darcy: “What’s Fox News really good at doing? Ignoring important news stories. The right-wing channel has largely turned a blind eye to former President Donald Trump’s disturbing call to terminate the U.S. Constitution and install him as president or hold a new election.”
Matt Gertz reports that up until noon Monday, the channel had “spent just over one minute on the story.”
Semafor’s climate editor Bill Spindle said he left the new publication over Chevron ads that appeared with his stories, Heated reports.
“Rupert Murdoch, the 91-year-old chairman of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, will be forced to answer questions under oath next week about his network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election,” the Washington Post reports.
“Murdoch will be deposed on the mornings of Dec. 13 and Dec. 14 as part of election technology company Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News… The lawsuit alleges that the network purposely aired false claims about Dominion’s role in the 2020 presidential election to boost ratings and fight off competition from more-conservative-leaning television networks.”
“Lara Trump, a vociferous supporter of her father-in-law and his policies when he campaigned for re-election to the White House in 2020, is parting ways as an official contributor to Fox News Channel,” Variety reports.
“Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of the Fox Corporation, is expected to be deposed on Monday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News for amplifying bogus claims that rigged machines from Dominion Voting Systems were responsible for Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Murdoch will be the most senior corporate figure within the Fox media empire to face questions under oath in the case so far. And his appearance before Dominion’s lawyers is a sign of how unexpectedly far and fast the lawsuit has progressed in recent weeks — and how contentious it has become.”
“Fox and Dominion have gone back and forth in Delaware state court since the summer in an escalating dispute over witnesses, evidence and testimony. The arguments point to the high stakes of the case, which will render a judgment on whether the most powerful conservative media outlet in the country intentionally misled its audience and helped seed one of the most pervasive lies in American politics.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
