The White House on Friday unveiled its Media Bias Offender Hall of Shame webpage on its official site as a bookend to another high-stakes week of news stories in the Trump presidency. The week began with President Donald Trump touting “tremendous progress” in sealing his proposed peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, included a message from six lawmakers to the US military telling them they can “refuse illegal orders” that seemed to be a thinly veiled allegation that Trump is giving illegal orders, the dismissal of conflicted Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ lawfare case against Trump, and ended with an Afghani Islamist ambushing two West Virginia National Guardsmen in Washington, DC, shouting “Allahu akbar,” commonly known to be a war cry during Islamic terror attacks. One of the soldiers, Sarah Beckstrom, died on Thursday, while the second, Andrew Wolfe, is still fighting for his life.
The official White House X post announcing the addition of the Media Bias Offender Hall of Shame read: “Tired of the Fake News? We’ve got the place for you. Get the FACTS. Track the worst offenders. See the Fake News EXPOSED.”
The president has been quick to call out what he coined “fake news” on his Truth Social page and in April, the White House posted a list of “100 DAYS OF HOAXES: Cutting Through the Fake News.”
Biggest Bias Offenders
The website reads like a legal case, stating a claim, citing the publication, reporter, category, and sources, and clarifying misrepresentations and omissions of context. Highlighted at the top of the page is the “Media Offender of the Week,” and users can sign up to receive “Offender Alerts” in their inbox every week.
The leaderboard features the biggest offenders, according to the White House: The Washington Post, MSNBC, CBS News, CNN, the New York Times, Politico and the Wall Street Journal. Trump has won a settlement against one of the seven so-called biggest offenders – $36m from CBS and parent company Paramount for “deliberate deception,” – and CNN has had to issue at least ten retractions or significant corrections specifically related to its reporting on Trump or his administration since 2016. Just two weeks ago, Trump said he will sue the British Broadcasting Corporation for one billion dollars over its editing of his January 6, 2021, speech.
There are “Repeat Offenders,” the White House says on the Hall of Shame. “These outlets don’t just get it wrong – they do it over and over again.”
Americans don’t trust the media
That could be why American trust in the media has reportedly fallen to historic lows with just 28% reporting a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in broadcast or print media to report the news fully, fairly, and accurately. That’s according to a September Gallup poll – and it’s down from 31% in 2024 and 40% in 2020. Gallup also reports that seven-in-ten American adults say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%) in the mass media. Compare that to between 68% and 72% American confidence in reporting when Gallup began measuring how much Americans trust the news in the 1970s.
The new webpage comes amid criticism of Trump’s recent responses to reporters.
CBS News' chief White House correspondent, Nancy Cordes, asked President Trump during a Thanksgiving press gaggle at Mar-a-Lago why he blamed the Biden administration for the alleged gunman, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, shooting Beckstrom and Wolfe. Therein lies the reason why American trust in the mainstream media is low and falling.
A better question to ask may be: Why did the Biden administration let roughly 100,000 unvetted Afghan refugees into the country – many reportedly without papers – who could be considered hostile to the United States? What can we do now to prevent more killings by Islamist jihadists, who were brought into the country under the Biden administration? If the media represents the American public, then those are the questions Americans might ask in that press gaggle.
Trump responded, understandably upset at the inherent bias in Cordes’ question, as news had just broken of Beckstrom’s death:
“Because they let him in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came in on a plane along with thousands of other people that shouldn't be here and you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person. And there's a law passed that it's almost impossible not to get them out. You can't get them out once they come in. And they came in and they were unvetted. They were unchecked. There were many of them and they came in on big planes, and it was disgraceful.”
Cordes, too, has a page in the Media Bias Offender Hall of Shame.
It is the level of Americans’ distrust of the mainstream media that has given rise to alternative media outlets, independent journalists, and podcasters, who are doing the real job of asking the tough questions, investigating for facts, and following the data.
