Media Industry

US President Donald Trump has issued an executive order calling for all federal funding to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) to be blocked.

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board of directors to "cease federal funding for NPR and PBS," the nation's primary public broadcasters. Trump contends that news coverage by NPR and PBS contains a left-wing bias. The federal funding for NPR and PBS is appropriated by Congress.

Network insiders have hit back at claims that ABC megastars David Muir and George Stephanopoulos have been snubbed from an upcoming interview with Donald Trump. 

The stars were reportedly benched due to their bitter histories with the president, Page Six reports, even though Muir hosts flagship show World News Tonight and Stephanopoulos is a co-anchor on Good Morning America. 

A network source has since hit back at the original Page Six report.

ABC News has a blockbuster interview with the president of the United States airing Tuesday. But neither of its superstar journalists will be doing the primetime tête-à-tête with Donald Trump, Page Six has learned, because of their bitter histories with POTUS.

 During a contentious exchange about deportations in his interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran this week, President Donald Trump brought up — from his perspective — how Moran had gotten into the White House in the first place.

“They’re giving you the break of a lifetime, you know,” Trump said in Tuesday’s prime-time broadcast. “You’re doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that’s OK.”

Emphasizing again that it was his choice that Moran was there, the president scolded, “You’re not being very nice.”

The White House launched a Drudge Report-style website on Wednesday designed to be a “hub to trusted news sites and resources.” 

As of Thursday, links on the site direct readers to updates from the White House’s Rapid Response X account and news stories from sources such as Fox News, Breitbart, the New York Post, and more.

Key Trump administration officials appeared on Fox networks over 500 times in his first 100 days in office. President Donald Trump's “border czar” Thomas Homan led all officials with at least 59 appearances while Fox News' Hannity led all shows with 71 interviews.

Just over a year ago, in April 2024, ABC News’s The View announced that they had “stopped asking” President Trump to be on the show and said they had banned election deniers. But what if the moderator of the show was an election denier? During Thursday’s opening segment, Whoopi Goldberg suggested that Trump had rigged the 2024 presidential election.

North Carolina football coach Bill Belichick defended girlfriend Jordon Hudson for interjecting during a CBS interviewer’s questions about their relationship and said she was “simply doing her job.”

For the second day in a row on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a press briefing exclusively for members of what she called the “new media,” claiming she was fulfilling a promise she made at the start of the Trump administration to speak to “all media outlets.”

Of course, as she laid bare at the start of Monday’s presser, these sessions are mostly a way to take softball questions and applause lines from a host of MAGA sycophants who are absolutely ecstatic to be given the opportunity to sit in the White House and play reporter.