The White House’s ‘media offender’ list will fizzle. The reporting won’t.

We’re back after the Thanksgiving break, and what did we miss?

President Donald Trump attacking the media. Again.

With each passing day, Trump and his administration get more and more brazen in their all-out assault on the press. Trump has gone after the media with threats, lawsuits, bans, more threats, more lawsuits and insults. Lots and lots of insults.

Trump has always had a habit of name-calling organizations and reporters who have the temerity to ask him fair, but tough questions. He calls outlets “fake news” and then gets even more personal when it comes to reporters, often calling them “terrible” or “nasty.” Just recently, he referred to a female reporter as “piggy” while telling her to be quiet when she asked a legitimate question about the Epstein files.

Almost daily, Trump does something to assail the media — as my colleague Angela Fu continues to track in our Press Freedom Tracker.

Trump’s latest aggression?

Last week, the White House launched a page, as The Washington Post’s Scott Nover aptly put it, that is “devoted to naming and shaming media outlets and reporters that publish stories it disagrees with.”

The page has a blaring headline that says “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.”

Then they list what they call their “Media Offender of the Week.” As of Sunday evening, the names of those the White House claims to be “exposed” include The Boston Globe, CBS News, and The Independent. The site also includes the names of the reporters at those outlets that the White House claims misrepresented or exaggerated something that Trump said or did. Then there’s their explanation of what they think the media got wrong.

Then, further below on the homepage, there is a list of dozens more stories that the White House has issues with. The page refers to it as the “Offender Hall of Shame.” That, too, includes the names of the news organizations and their reporters.

The White House called out four articles from The Washington Post. A spokesperson for the Post told Nover, “The Washington Post is proud of its accurate, rigorous journalism.”

This new White House page likely will fizz out at some point as the Trump administration gets distracted and moves on to other matters. Until then, it won’t stop news outlets from vigorously reporting on the president.

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Even kids know better

Last week, the president of the United States used the R-word — a slur that likely would get most of us fired (or certainly put on notice) if we used it in our workplace.

Trump used the word to describe Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in a Truth Social post in which he said Somali refugees are “completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota.”

Appearing on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Walz said, “This is what Donald Trump has done. He has normalized this type of hateful behavior and this type of language. At first, I think it’s just because he’s not a good human being. But secondly, (it’s) to distract from his incompetency."

As USA Today’s Kathryn Palmer explained, “While the word was introduced as a medical term in 1961, it has evolved over the decades to become a slur used to demean people with and without disabilities. Disability advocates seek to end its use, and the president's post has ignited backlash.”

Does anyone not know that?

Walz told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, “I think we all know, both as an educator for a couple decades and as a parent, using that term is just so damaging. It's hurtful. We have fought three decades to get this out of our schools. Kids know better than to use it.”

Walz went on to say, "This is cruelness. This is meanness.”

Trump was given a chance to walk back his insensitive comments on Sunday night, but didn’t. In fact, he doubled down. When a reporter on Air Force One asked Trump if he stood by using the R-word, Trump said, “Yeah, I think there’s something wrong with him. Absolutely. Sure. You have a problem with it? You know what? I think there’s something wrong with him. Anybody that would do what he did, anybody that would allow those people into his state and pay billions of dollars out to Somalia. … We give billions of dollars to Somalia. It’s not even a country because it doesn’t function like a country. It’s got a name but it doesn’t function like a country.”

Trump added, “Yeah, there’s something wrong with Walz.”

Noem’s claims

In another notable “Meet the Press” moment on Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed without evidence that the former CIA asset accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., last week had been “radicalized” since arriving in the United States.

Noem told Welker, “We believe he was radicalized since he’s been here in this country. We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state, and we’re going to continue to talk to those who interacted with him.”

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who served alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan, came to the U.S. in 2021. That was during the Biden administration — a point that Noem and the Trump administration continue to stress. However, according to several reports, Lakanwal was granted asylum during the Trump administration. In fact, it was Noem’s department that would have approved that asylum.

MS NOW’s Erum Salam reported, “Noem repeatedly avoided directly answering questions from NBC’s Kristen Welker on that point. The Trump administration was not given enough information to properly vet people like Lakanwal, Noem said, but she did not detail specifically what information was lacking. ‘That’s the Biden administration’s responsibility,’ Noem said.”

West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed in the shooting, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was critically wounded. Lakanwal, 29, has been charged with first-degree murder.

The Associated Press’ Farnoush Amiri wrote Sunday, “The Afghan man accused of shooting two National Guard members blocks from the White House had been unraveling for years, unable to hold a job and flipping between long, lightless stretches of isolation and taking sudden weekslong cross-country drives. Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s behavior deteriorated so sharply that a community advocate reached out to a refugee organization for help, fearing he was becoming suicidal. Emails obtained by The Associated Press reveal mounting warnings about the asylum-seeker whose erratic conduct raised alarms long before the attack that jolted the nation’s capital on Wednesday, the eve of Thanksgiving. The previously unreported concerns offer the clearest picture yet of how he was struggling in his new life in the United States.”

An unflattering view

Good stuff here from David Bauder, media writer for The Associated Press. Well, I say good stuff. It’s actually a tad depressing: “A lost generation of news consumers? Survey shows how teenagers dislike the news media.”

Bauder writes:

Asked by the News Literacy Project for one word to describe today’s news media, 84% of teens responded with something negative — “biased,” “crazy,” “boring,” “fake, ”bad,” “depressing,” “confusing,” “scary.” More than half of the teens surveyed believe journalists regularly engage in unethical behaviors like making up details or quotes in stories, paying sources, taking visual images out of context or doing favors for advertisers. Less than a third believe reporters correct their errors, confirm facts before reporting them, gather information from multiple sources or cover stories in the public interest — practices ingrained in the DNA of reputable journalists.

Here’s the survey from the News Literacy Project.

There’s much more to Bauder’s story than just teens’ negative views, so be sure to check it out.

Word of the year

The Oxford University Press — the folks behind the Oxford English Dictionary — have named its 2025 Word of the Year. It’s actually two words:

Rage bait.

It’s defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive.”

Yep, sounds like a good choice.

Rage bait beat out “biohack” and “aura farming.”

The New York Times’ Jennifer Schuessler wrote, “Over the past year, according to Oxford’s data, frequency of use spiked by a factor of three. The two-syllable open-compound word lands with blunt force. It also sparks an immediate ‘aha.’”

Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Languages, told Schuessler, “Even if people have never heard it before, they instantly know what it means. And they want to talk about it.”

Oxford’s experts put together a short list of contending words and then asked the public to weigh in. The winner was then chosen by Oxford’s committee.

Grathwohl told the Times, “The point of the Word of the Year is to encourage people to reflect on where we are as a culture, who we are at the moment, through the lens of words we use. The whole point is to create conversation.”

Media tidbits

• ChatGPT has turned 3 years old. Here’s The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel with “The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT.”
• The Olivia Nuzzi story gets even more dramatic. The Hollywood Reporter with “Ryan Lizza Claims Olivia Nuzzi Would Share ‘Opposition Research’ With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
• Melody Schreiber, contributing editor at The New Republic, with “Olivia Nuzzi’s Real Victims.”
• The Washington Post’s Scott Nover with “Pentagon’s right-wing, pared press corps gets a meet-and-greet.”
• Louis Jacobson from Poynter’s PolitiFact with “Trump says he’s never polled better. But poll averages put him near a historic low.”

Hot type

• For The New York Times Magazine, David Darlington with “The Shocking Crash That Led One County to Reckon With the Dangers of E-Bikes.”
• “CBS News Sunday Morning” and correspondent Ben Mankiewicz from Turner Classic Movies with “The candid Amanda Seyfried speaks.” And here’s Makiewicz’s extended interview with the actress.

More resources for journalists

• Experienced managers: Develop the must-have skills journalists need to lead media organizations of the future. Apply now.
• Gain the skills to spot AI risks like bias, misinformation and hallucinations before they harm your work. Enroll now.
• Join 300 newsrooms receiving free digital preservation training. Apply by Jan. 9, 2026.
• Access a list of mental health reporting resources on funding, source-building and more.

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

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