Media Industry

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.”

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.

Donald Trump has never been a huge fan of journalists—unless they say nice things about him, that is. His relationship with the press was probably much better in the days when the only threat he posed to the country was in the form of a brain-cell-killing reality show. Since becoming president, however, the media has been increasingly hard on Trump, and Trump, in turn, has been increasingly hard on the media.

A “new media” briefing held by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday started with a bang as one of the attendees thanked Leavitt for bringing back English-speaking Uber drivers.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held court with social media influencers as part of a special new media briefing before President Donald Trump commemorates his first 100 days of his second administration.

Among those in attendance on Monday before Tuesday’s anniversary were Sean Spicer, Trump’s first-ever White House press secretary, who now hosts a YouTube show.

Mr. Spicer, it’s good to see you here, my predecessor,” Leavitt said.

The Trump White House hosted its first official influencer briefing on Monday, April 28. The event marked a shift from traditional media engagement to include modern digital creators. The briefing, typically limited to credentialed journalists, opened its doors to content creators, political commentators and social media personalities.

Expanding beyond legacy media

Since becoming FCC chairman in late January, Carr has repeatedly poked the corporate owners of ABC, CBS and NBC — networks the president dislikes.

Conservatives have said they believe major networks suffer from extreme liberal bias and an intolerance toward opposing points of view. That has harmed America and resulted in a plummeting public trust in national news outlets, they assert, adding that FCC intervention may be justified.

CNN’s unintentional acts of public service deserve recognition.

Network anchor Abby Phillip, for example, alleged in total earnestness last week that the erosion of media credibility is driven largely by right-wing rhetoric, as opposed to anything members of the press have said or done.

Fox News was the most-watched network on an off-night for cable news. FNC saw its primetime numbers dip below 3 million total viewers and into the low 300,000s in the Adult 25-54 demo. MSNBC finished second in primetime in both total viewers and the demo with 1.53 million viewers and 129,000 viewers, respectively. Meanwhile, CNN fell below 500,000 total viewers and under 100,000 A25-54 viewers during primetime.