What do you do when the president drops an f-bomb?

“F-bomb” was trending on X on Tuesday. Not the word that “f-bomb” stands for, but the actual phrase: the letter f dash bomb.

Of course, it was trending because someone said the actual word that the f-bomb stands for. That someone? The president of the United States. On live television. In what could be considered an official statement.

Stopping on the White House lawn to briefly speak to reporters on Tuesday morning, Trump aired his frustrations over the fact that Israel and Iran appeared to be violating the ceasefire that Trump helped put in place, a ceasefire that Trump celebrated in a social media post Monday night.

Clearly exasperated, Trump said, “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the (expletive) they're doing.”

It was a startling moment, even coming from a president who has publicly used that word, and other crude language, in the past.

Media outlets were faced with a tough decision: What do you do when the president swears while talking about something so newsworthy?

My colleague, Angela Fu, chronicled how major news outlets handled Trump's R-rated language on Tuesday. The decisions varied. Some ran the clip unedited. Some censored it. Some did both.

For example, in a video on The New York Times’ homepage, Trump could be heard saying the word. But the captioning that ran along with the video censored the word. In the actual story online, the Times avoided the word by writing, “Using an expletive in remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump said that the two adversaries did not know what they were doing.”

Kelly McBride, Poynter’s senior vice president and the chair of the institute’s Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, told Fu that sometimes it’s necessary to include an expletive to convey the severity of a moment to the audience. This was one of those times, McBride said, adding, “When you’re covering the president, there are very few moments that are completely unpredictable and unscripted — many more with this president than most, but still — and that was one of them. And I think the record should reflect the entire moment.”

McBride said if she were in charge of a broadcast outlet, she would have aired the word without censoring it.

And so would I. In fact, I think the Times handled it just right.

I am typically very conservative when it comes to the use of curse words in news stories. Perhaps that’s my upbringing and career working at “family newspapers,” as they came to be known. I am a firm believer that someone’s message can be delivered to the audience without including R-rated language, or, at the very least, by saying they used expletives in their quotes without revealing what those words were.

However, in this case and this critical moment, I think it was important for the audience to see and hear the genuine anger and frustration in Trump’s words. Even bleeping out or silencing that word would have ever-so-slightly softened Trump’s message. It needed to be heard.

Now, as far as putting it in print? Here’s where I might sound contradictory. I would edit it out, as I did in this newsletter. I believe that actually seeing a curse word spelled out, especially in a place where you don’t expect to see it, is so jarring to the reader that it then overwhelms the message. In this case, since the reader can’t actually read the anger of Trump’s delivery, spelling out the curse word really adds nothing extra to the story. That is a moment when an outlet can still inform the reader without the risk of offending them.

This might not make sense, or you might not agree, but this is how I see it:  When you see a clip of Trump saying it, you are hearing it directly from Trump himself. But when a news outlet prints what Trump said, it feels as if it’s the outlet that is using the bad language. And, as McBride noted to Fu, news outlets have an implicit — and sometimes explicit — contract with their audience, which includes a general promise not to offend them.

In the end, even though Trump has used harsh language in rallies before, this still was a rare moment — which is why it has become such a topic for those of us fascinated by the media.

The question media outlets must think about now is what happens if Trump, or other major news makers, start using this kind of language regularly?

Be sure to check out Fu’s story for more on how the media handled Tuesday’s news.

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The fact of the matter

In Tuesday’s newsletter, I mentioned how it’s important for news organizations to continue to do independent reporting about the various aspects of the U.S.’s involvement in the war between Israel and Iran, as opposed to simply taking the government's word.

For example, last Saturday, the U.S. military said it struck three of Iran’s nuclear sites. President Trump said in a national address that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” In a press conference Sunday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the mission an “incredible and overwhelming success.”

However, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen broke the story Tuesday that an early U.S. intelligence report suggests Iran’s nuclear sites were not destroyed as originally claimed by Trump and others.

The New York Times and The Washington Post also reported on the matter.

The headline in the Times was “Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says.” Based on a preliminary classified U.S. report, a team of Times reporters wrote, “The findings suggest that President Trump’s statement that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated was overstated, at least based on the initial damage assessment.”

The Times went on to write, “The report also said much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Some of that may have been moved to secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran. Some Israeli officials said they also believe that Iran has maintained small covert enrichment facilities that were built so the Iranian government could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at the CNN report in a post on X. Leavitt called CNN “fake news.” Leavitt wrote, “This alleged ‘assessment’ is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program.Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

However, you will notice that in that post, Leavitt blasted everyone, but did not deny the existence of the report.

The news outlets all stressed that this is only an initial report.

“But,” the Times wrote, “the Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped, and that Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly.”

However this shakes out, good work by the news outlets to continue digging into the story as opposed to merely accepting claims made in addresses and press conferences.

Not paying for it

If you are a news consumer, you likely often come across a paywall. In other words, if you want to view a news story online, you have to pay for a subscription.

The latest survey from the Pew Research Center shows that, yes, most online news consumers run into paywalls. But the survey also found that most consumers won’t pay for their news.

The survey shows that 74% of those polled say they run into paywalls extremely often/often or sometimes. However, 83% said they have not paid for news in the past year. Pew’s Emily Tomasik and Michael Lipka wrote, “Another 17% say they have directly paid or given money to a news source by subscribing, donating or becoming a member during that time.”

What happens when consumers run into paywalls? According to the survey, 53% try to find the information somewhere else, 32% give up trying to access it and 11% try to access the information without paying for it. Only 1% actually pay for the access.

Of those who don’t pay for news, 49% said there are plenty of other places to find the information and 32% said they aren’t interested enough to pay for it. Ten percent said it’s because it’s too expensive, while 8% said the news is not good enough to pay for.

On their own

If you follow the media, you’ve likely noticed this trend: a high-profile name from a well-known media outlet leaves that media outlet and then, essentially, goes into business for themselves. That business being, well, the media. Many start a podcast, or go to YouTube or Substack.

The Associated Press’ David Bauder does a solid job looking at this trend in “Life on the other side: Refugees from ‘old media’ flock to the promise of working for themselves.”

Bauder writes, “YouTube, Substack, TikTok and others are spearheading a full-scale democratization of media and a generation of new voices and influencers. But don’t forget the traditionalists.”

Bauder talks to such recognizable journalists as Katie Couric, Chuck Todd and Jim Acosta. Check out his interesting story.

Media tidbits

• For Poynter, Loreben Tuquero with “How to spot fake war footage after the US strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.”
• The New York Times’ Tiffany Hsu with “As U.S. Dismantles Voice of America, Rival Powers Hope to Fill the Void.”
• The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr writes about the NewsNation host in “Ex-Fox host Leland Vittert is going for ‘balance’ in a divided America.”
• Interesting job posting. The New York Times is looking for a Texas editor. The posting says, “Texas is at the forefront of politics, culture, and business, and plays an essential role in the national discourse. While we have grown our coverage there in recent years, we're eager to expand further.” Times managing editor Marc Lacey said in a statement, “Texas is an important, influential and innovative force on so much that's central to American life, public policy and private industry today. The state plays an essential role in our national discourse, and there is nothing better to bring a region to life than more on-the-ground reporting by journalists with close expertise and understanding of the parts of America they cover.”
• I’m admittedly a sports media fanatic, but this is my favorite story so far this week: The Washington Post’s sports and media reporter Ben Strauss with “Trips, gifts, scoops: The billionaire’s son driving fellow NFL reporters mad.”

Hot type

• The Washington Post’s Emily Yahr with “This songwriter shaped today’s country music. You’ve never heard of him.”
• The New York Times drops another 20 in the list of the “100 Best Movies of the 21st Century.” The list was voted on by more than 500 influential directors, actors and other notable names in Hollywood. By the way, the latest reveal includes a journalism movie at No. 66.

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• Learn how to “lead your leaders” in this virtual intensive for journalism managers handling big responsibilities without direct reports. Apply today.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].

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