A story about Donald Trump Jr. at Business Insider has set off a new and vicious wave of attacks on the press from the White House with one official calling a recent article written about Donald Trump's eldest son "illegal foreign political meddling.”
Add to the network and cable TV networks being threatened by the Trump White House, Axel Springer, a Mathias Döpfner-led German media conglomerate has been served notice that critical stories could lead to legal repercussions.
As media analyst Oliver Darcy wrote for his Status newsletter, a story that accused Trump Jr. of cashing in on his father's name and position, and was titled, "Don Jr. Is the New Hunter Biden,” was nothing more than what Darcy called a "fairly standard piece of political reporting."
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Nonetheless, White House insiders rushed to Breitbart's Matthew Boyle, long a go-to pro-Trump insider himself, to complain and deliver a message.
As Darcy wrote, Boyle quoted "something more serious" than the standard complaints about the mainstream media.
"The unnamed [White House] official suggested the company’s journalism might not just be biased (which it wasn’t), but illegal (which it also wasn't). It was a not-so-subtle warning to the company to fall in line or it might seek to pull government levers that would be damaging to its business," Darcy wrote before highlighting the official stating, "Axel Springer, a foreign-based media organization, is brazenly weaponizing its platforms to sow political division and spread disinformation in a manner that may well stretch beyond journalism, into illegal foreign political meddling.”
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According to the media analyst, the message was received loud and clear at Axel Springer which previously was involved in a fight with Trump-supporting billionaire Bill Ackman over a report on his wife being accused of plagiarism.
As Darcy explained, "Notably, the White House did not dispute any of the facts reported by Business Insider. Instead, it equated unflattering reporting with foreign subversion and deployed the weight of the executive branch in an effort to silence it. The message wasn’t just aimed at Business Insider. It was aimed at every newsroom under the Axel Springer umbrella—and, more broadly, at any journalist thinking about covering the Trump family with rigor."
You can read more here.