It’s another day that ends in Y as Trump attacks the media

OK, CNN. It’s your turn. And The New York Times? You’re up after that.

President Donald Trump is constantly attacking the media. Sometimes he goes after a particular journalist. Sometimes it’s a specific news outlet. Maybe it’s a wire service. Maybe it’s a public broadcaster.

On Wednesday, it was CNN’s turn to feel Trump’s wrath, followed quickly by the Times. The president was upset over a report that … came from his own administration.

Over the weekend, the U.S. attacked several nuclear sites in Iran. Trump said at the time, “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.”

But it might not have been a total success.

As mentioned in Wednesday’s newsletter, 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.

Other news outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, also reported on the report, which suggested that the attacks only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months, if that.

And Trump was furious about it.

In one Truth Social post, Trump called for Bertrand to be fired and then to be “thrown out like a dog.” He added, “She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!”

CNN defended Bertrand in a social media post, writing, “We stand 100% behind Natasha Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence. We have extensively covered President Trump’s own deep skepticism about it. However, we do not believe it is reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest.”

And that’s the point. Trump’s anger should be directed at the report, not those who reported on the report. But that didn’t stop him.

In another Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “We just caught the Failing New York Times, working with Fake News CNN, cheating again! They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did, and they were wrong in doing so. These reporters are just BAD AND SICK PEOPLE. You would think they would be proud of the great success we had, instead of trying to always make our Country look bad. TOTAL OBLITERATION!”

Again, CNN, the Times and the Post didn’t make up the story. They weren’t the ones questioning the success of the mission. They were merely quoting from an early U.S. intelligence report. Trump and the administration insist the report is wrong.

Trump then reacted angrily during a back-and-forth with NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell during a press conference on Wednesday. O’Donnell was merely trying to ask Trump about the intelligence report, but Trump then accused O’Donnell of trying to “demean” the pilots who carried out the mission.

Trump said, “Those pilots flew at great risk, a big chance that they’d never come back home and see their husbands or their wives.”

O’Donnell responded by saying, “Nobody is questioning the skill of those pilots.”

But Trump kept going: “Let me just tell you, you and NBC, fake news, which is one of the worst. And CNN … New York Times are all bad. They’re sick! There’s something wrong with them. You know what? You should be praising those people instead of trying to find something. By getting me, by trying to go and get me, you’re hurting those people. They were devastated.”

Trump continued to ramble, at one point claiming he received a call from someone in Missouri — and pausing to note that he won the state “by a lot” in all three presidential elections.

Meanwhile, what Trump is likely most upset about is that CNN, the Times, the Post, and others got hold of the early intelligence report in the first place.

Axios’ Marc Caputo reported Wednesday that the FBI is investigating how the report got out and that the Trump administration plans to limit sharing classified information with Congress.

A senior White House official told Caputo, “We are declaring a war on leakers.”

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Kari Lake tells Congress USAGM should be eliminated and its mission given to the State Department

For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague Angela Fu, who has been extensively covering the threats to press freedoms in the U.S.

United States Agency for Global Media senior adviser Kari Lake testified before Congress Wednesday that her agency is a place “rotten to the core” that needs to be eliminated.

“Within days in my role as senior adviser, it became increasingly clear that reform was nearly impossible,” Lake said during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing titled “Spies, Lies, and Mismanagement: Examining the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s Downfall.” “The agency was incompetent and mismanaged and deeply corrupt, politically biased and, frankly, a serious threat to our national security.”

USAGM, which Lake helps oversee, is an independent agency that runs two media organizations — Voice of America and Office of Cuba Broadcasting — and funds three others: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Its journalists provide reporting to audiences in authoritarian nations that lack a free press — all in service of the agency’s mission to “inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”

Since joining USAGM in March, however, Lake has overseen widespread cuts that have decreased the agency’s workforce by 85% and forced its affiliated media outlets to severely reduce their programming. Though her actions — all prompted by a March 14 executive order from President Donald Trump — have resulted in multiple lawsuits, Republicans largely cheered on the cuts at Wednesday’s hearing.

“USAGM is a government agency tasked with promoting American ideals,” said committee chair Brian Mast, a Republican representative from Florida. “But instead, it’s hired foreign adversaries with your tax dollars who promoted anti-American propaganda.”

Lake and several Republicans repeatedly alleged that the agency has worked with foreign adversaries. For example, a former Voice of America freelancer, Pablo González, was eventually exposed as a Russian spy. (Voice of America has previously stated that González worked with the outlet for a “relatively short period of time” and did not have access to the newsroom’s systems. After learning of the allegations against him, Voice of America removed his material.)

At times, Lake acknowledged the importance of USAGM’s mission, and she said she was “proud” that Voice of America had translated and broadcast Trump’s Saturday speech about the U.S. strikes on Iran into Farsi. At other times, she diminished USAGM’s work, claiming its reach is limited.

Ultimately, Lake said she supports Trump’s goal of eliminating USAGM and allowing the State Department to take over “whatever we can salvage.” She suggested that “America’s story” could be told cheaply via social media, ignoring the resource-intensive work Voice of America and its sister outlets do to gather and report the news.

“In the media landscape, the trends have been that newsrooms are getting smaller. We don't need as many people. Where it used to take a team of six or seven to get a story out in a live shot, one person can do that now,” Lake said. “Joe Rogan — he reaches hundreds of millions of people with each of his podcasts, and he doesn’t have a staff of 1,100.”

Democrats on the committee pushed back, criticizing Lake for quickly executing mass layoffs instead of working with USAGM employees to eliminate the corruption she claims to have seen. Several also pointed out that Lake’s antagonistic view of USAGM is the same as that of foreign authoritarian leaders, who have celebrated the cuts to the agency’s affiliated newsrooms.

Some attacked Lake’s credibility, stating that she has repeatedly promoted election conspiracy theories. Lake previously ran for governor of Arizona in 2022 and refused to concede the race when she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Instead, she filed multiple lawsuits. In a heated exchange, Arizona Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton pointed out that one of her lawsuits prompted the Arizona Supreme Court to sanction her attorneys for making false statements.

“My concern is that the leader of this agency, which is supposed to disseminate truth about the United States, is an adjudicated liar.”

My thanks to Angela. Now onto the rest of today’s newsletter …

What’s the number?

A mediator is proposing that President Donald Trump and Paramount settle Trump’s lawsuit against the company for $20 million, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Toonkel and Josh Dawsey.

This goes back to when Paramount-owned CBS and its news magazine program “60 Minutes” interviewed then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris last October. Trump claimed CBS News edited clips of the interview in such a way as to help Harris defeat Trump in the election.

Toonkel and Dawsey previously reported Trump’s team rejected Paramount’s offer of $15 million, and is believed to have wanted more than $25 million. (He is suing for $20 billion — with a B.)

In addition to the financial aspect, Toonkel and Dawsey report that the Trump camp wants an apology. Sources told Toonkel and Dawsey that Paramount isn’t prepared to make an apology. The Journal reporters added, “Settlement talks are still fluid and an agreement might not be reached.”

The Journal story also included this eye-opening paragraph: “Over the past few months, Paramount leaders have been wrestling with how to pay to settle the lawsuit without exposing directors and officers to liability in potential future shareholder litigation or to criminal charges for bribing a public official. By settling within the range of what other companies have paid to end litigation with Trump, some Paramount executives have said they hope to minimize such liability, people familiar with the matter said.”

The story then added, “A potential settlement of $20 million, including legal fees, would be in line with what other media and tech companies have paid to settle lawsuits from Trump.”

This case has been a dark cloud over CBS News for a while now. Legal experts have called Trump’s suit baseless, and just this week, attorneys for CBS and Paramount urged a federal court to toss out Trump’s suit because it was “meritless” and an attempt to “evade bedrock First Amendment principles.”

Yet Paramount is in negotiations to settle the case. Why? Well, in part, it’s believed it’s because Paramount and Skydance are in the midst of a merger and need government (i.e., Trump) approval for the sale to go through.

In the meantime, the real damage is that two major executives — highly respected “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens and Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News and Stations — have left, partly in protest.

On one hand, you can see why CBS and Paramount want this thing to just be over. But it’s hard to calculate the long-term damage done by settling. Perhaps realizing this is the reason why, at least according to the Journal story, Paramount is so resistant to apologizing.

Fighting for the truth

GlobalFact 12, the world’s largest annual gathering for fact-checkers, is now underway in Rio de Janeiro. More than 350 fact-checkers, policymakers, academics and platform representatives, including from TikTok, are gathering through Friday.

Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, writes for Poynter: “The truth is still worth fighting for.”

Her whole column is worth your attention, but I did want to point out this passage: “When information is distorted or suppressed, people lose the ability to form authentic opinions — they can only choose between pre-selected falsehoods. And when people are inundated with competing claims without any assurance of factuality, they become confused and cynical, doubting truth can even be known. But there is objective truth about factual matters. Sometimes the facts can’t be documented, but they do have an independent existence that can’t be fictionalized. Many facts can be known, proven, and often replicated by honest investigators. That’s the work of fact-checkers, and fighting cynicism about knowledge itself is one of our most important tasks.”

Media tidbits

• The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin with “The Washington Post Will Ask Some Sources to Annotate Its Stories.”
• The Los Angeles Times’ Stephen Battaglio with “Cable’s civic-minded C-SPAN looks for help as streaming takes a toll.” Battaglio writes, “As consumers drop their traditional cable and satellite TV subscriptions for streaming platforms, C-SPAN’s main funding source is shrinking. The trend poses a threat to one of the rare media institutions that has bipartisan political support, including a fan in the Oval Office.” C-SPAN CEO Sam Feist told Battaglio, “It’s not a sustainable situation.”
• This falls under the category of “Hmm, interesting”: Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf with “Kyle Rittenhouse Steps Away From Public Eye, Deletes Social Media Accounts, Leaves Gun Shop Job.”
• The Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop with “Old Media Meets New on Primary Day in New York.”
• The Washington Post’s Andrew Jeong with “Federal court says copyrighted books are fair use for AI training.”
• The Athletic’s Brendan Quinn writes about legendary sports columnist Art Spander in “One more story from the last of his kind.”
• This is a good read. In a guest essay for The New York Times, author Amy Odell with “The Bezos-Sánchez Wedding and the Triumph of Tacky.”
• Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod with “Pat McAfee explains why he’s taking a break from WWE, fires back at critics.”

Hot type

• The New York Times continues with its weeklong series: “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century.”

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

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