Upping the Ante, White House Launches ‘Media Offender of the Week’ Page
In the latest escalation of the long-running feud between the executive branch and the press, the White House recently unveiled a new section of its official website dedicated to tracking and criticizing what it labels as “misleading” and “biased” media coverage. Dubbed the “Media Bias Portal,” the site features a rotating “Media Offender of the Week” and a “Offender Hall of Shame.”
The portal, which debuted over the Thanksgiving weekend, is presented with the bold heading: “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.” It functions as a public database where the administration names specific news outlets, articles, and reporters it disagrees with. Categories used to label the alleged offenses include pointed phrases like “bias,” “malpractice,” and “left wing lunacy.” The portal even features a “leaderboard” that ranks news organizations based on the number of flagged stories, with The Washington Post, MSNBC, and CBS News taking top positions.
The Purpose and The Pushback
The White House press team framed the move as an effort to hold the “Fake News Media” accountable and provide the “truth” directly to the American people. The portal is not just a passive list; it actively solicits the public to submit their own examples of “biased or undeniably false articles,” effectively deputizing private citizens in the administration’s ongoing campaign against critical journalism.
The first news organization that the White House took aim at is The Washington Post and reporter Alex Horton over the claim that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered a Joint Special Operations commander to “kill everybody” during an anti-terrorist operation in the Caribbean Sea.
The White House disputes that with the following paragraph on the page;
The Department of War killed 11 narcoterrorists in a coordinated strike designed to “kill the narcoterrorists who are poisoning the American people.” This attack was the first in a series of lethal kinetic strikes against Designated Terrorist Organizations. The Washington Post published this unsubstantiated claim in an attempt to discredit the United States’ war fighters and inflame anti-American sentiment.
Unsurprisingly, critics have condemned the new site and called it a political tool designed to discredit reporting that is simply unflattering to the administration. Up to now, the White House has left such criticism to the many conservative media critics that exist today, but this move is likely to make a testy relationship even testier.
Don Irvine
Donald Irvine is the chairman of of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. Irvine follows his father’s legacy, Reed Irvine, to critically analyze the liberal media’s bias and brings over thirty years of media analysis experience. He has published countless blog posts and articles on media bias, in context of current events, and he has been interviewed by many news media outlets during his professional career. He currently hosts a livestream weekly show on AIA’s Facebook page which discusses current events.
Irvine graduated from the University of Maryland and rose up the ranks to become chairman of Accuracy in Media until his transition to AIA.
He resides in the suburbs around the nation’s capital and is a proud father and grandfather.
