SUMMARY: At Facebook, there are two competing goals; keep the platform free and open to a broad spectrum of ideas and opinions, while reducing the spread of misinformation. The company says it's not in the business of making editorial judgments, so they use fact-checkers, artificial intelligence and their users. Can they stop junk news from adapting? Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.
SUMMARY: The Washington Post says it was targeted by a conservative group when a woman came forward claiming that Roy Moore got her pregnant as a teen. Reporters found inconsistencies in the woman's claims and observed her at the offices of an organization that targets the news media. Judy Woodruff talks with Margaret Sullivan from The Washington Post and Michelle Holmes of Alabama Media Group.
SUMMARY: Longstanding rules that prevented an individual or company from owning broadcast stations and newspapers in the same local market have been abandoned by the FCC. The sweeping changes come amid wider transformations in the media and digital landscape, and have raised concerns about their impact. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Keach Hagey of The Wall Street Journal.
SUMMARY: Brennan Gilmore filmed the moment when a car plowed into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, killing one woman and injuring 19 others. When he made his video public and spoke out to the news media, he became the target of death threats and conspiracy theories. A former foreign service officer and a Democratic campaign aide, Gilmore joins Judy Woodruff to recount his experience.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the difficulty Republican leaders are having getting enough support for the Senate health care bill, including tense relations between the White House and Congress, plus the political reaction to President Trump's tweets about two cable news hosts.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Well, speaking of the tweets, David, we have seen some eyebrow-raisers. We have heard some gasps. But I guess the president's tweet yesterday morning about the “Morning Joe” MSNBC cable hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, where the president tweeted very personal insults, low I.Q., face-lift, and so forth, it seemed to reach a new low.
Do we learn anything new about this President at this point?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Well, one of the nice things, if we can find a silver lining here, is, it's possible for everybody to be freshly appalled, that we are not inured to savage, misogynistic behavior of this sort.
And I saw a lot of people around. And I certainly felt in myself a freshness, a freshness of outrage.
And I must say, when I hear Roy Blunt say it's unhelpful to himself, well, that's true, but it's more than unhelpful to Donald Trump to tweet in this way. It's morally objectionable. And I do wish more Senators would say that. Lindsey Graham and Ben Sasse have said it, but a lot of others, oh, it's just not helpful.
It's more than that. And the issue here is the corruption of our public sphere. And that's what Donald Trump does with these things. And it makes it harder for us, our country, to ever get back to normal, when these things are corrosive to just the way people talk to each other.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Corruption of the public sphere, Mark.
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: I think David is guilty of understatement.
No, I think he put it very well. This is hateful and it's hurtful. Judy, I don't know what a parent or a grandparent is supposed to say to a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old who said anything comparable to this and was sent — banished to their room or whatever else for it, I mean, that the President of the United States can talk this way, and there are no consequences.
The irony is that he's more engaged on the back-and-forth with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on this than he has been on health care or any other issue. He obviously — this is what matters to him. And it's just that classic — not to be sectionally biased, but it's sort of a New York bully approach to life, I mean, that you say anything, you do anything, because the important thing is winning.
And I just — you know, I don't know what else there is to say, other than you want to put yourself through a car wash after you listen to the President talk this way.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Are there consequences, David? I mean, I heard what you said about some senators are just saying, well, it's not helpful, but other senators are going further and saying, this is really wrong.
But are there ever consequences? Do we just go on like this?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, we will see if people eventually get disappointed and get tired.
I do think if it — one of the things that may begin to offend people is potential mafioso behavior. One of the things we heard this morning in the op-ed piece in The Washington Post by the two hosts was that the White House sort of threatened sort of extortion, that, if the show becomes more Trump-friendly, then a National Enquirer investigation into their relationship will be spiked.
And that's sort of mafioso, extortion behavior. That's beyond normal White House behavior. It's beyond political hardball. It's sort of using your media allies, The National Enquirer and the Trump administration, to take down enemies. And that's not something we have seen in America since maybe Nixon, or maybe never.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's true, Mark, we haven't seen anything like this in a while.
MARK SHIELDS: We haven't.
But I think David's point about extortion certainly strengthens the position of James Comey, that threats and extortion or a hint of extortion is part of the modus operandi.
To Republicans …
JUDY WOODRUFF: I mean, we should say the White House is denying it.
MARK SHIELDS: The White House is denying it. Jared Kushner, I guess, is denying it, or perhaps somebody else through him is denying it.
But the fact that there's negotiations going back and forth or communications on this subject, you do this and we won't print an injurious and harmful article in The National Enquirer, one of the great publications of our time.
But, Judy, I remember when Republicans used to get upset and angry at Bill Clinton because he didn't wear a suit and tie in the Oval Office. And Donald Trump, who is supposed to be this great deal-maker, I mean, Joe and Mika Brzezinski have a morning show which is a show that watched very much in this area, but it doesn't have a great national audience, and probably 1 percent of the people.
And he [Trump] just made them a national — everybody now knows about this show. It's probably increased their ratings, juiced them up. So I don't understand where — if anything, it's but counterproductive in every sense.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it is true, David, that this is — it's hard to find you said there may be a silver lining in fresh outrage, but beyond that, I'm not sure where it is.
DAVID BROOKS: No.
And, you know, the big question for me is, do we snapback? Do the norms that used to govern politics reestablish themselves after the Trump administration, or are we here forever?
And I hope, from the level of outrage, that we have a snap back. But the politics is broken up and down. And Trump may emerge from a reality TV world that is much more powerful than we think. And there is the prospect that this is where we are, which is an horrific thought.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Horrific thought.
MARK SHIELDS: Yes, it is that.
SUMMARY: Investigators say they have "very important" clues to what drove an attacker to bomb a concert in Manchester, England. But they face an unwelcome obstacle; intelligence leaks to the American press, fueling a diplomatic fight, and a pause in intelligence sharing. Ciaran Jenkins of Independent Television News reports, and William Brangham talks to former FBI counterterrorism investigator Ali Soufan.
SUMMARY: President Trump has given a flurry of interviews in the past week and made a dizzying amount of news, offering controversial and sometimes contradictory comments on topics ranging from North Korea to the Civil War. Judy Woodruff tries parsing the President’s words with Lisa Desjardins, Yeganeh Torbati of Reuters, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times.
SUMMARY: These days, where Americans get their news is as different as how they vote. Researchers have found that the proliferation of news sources on cable TV and the internet has upended the relationship between news outlets and their audiences. John Yang takes us to Arizona to examine how people pic their news sources and the impact that has on how they perceive the world around them.
SUMMARY: As Donald Trump chooses members of his upcoming administration and begins to outline his plan for once he takes office, Judy Woodruff speaks with Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report and NPR's Tamara Keith about his avoidance of press conferences, his penchant for unpredictability and his first staff picks.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Time for Politics Monday.
I'm joined by Tamara Keith of NPR and Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report.
And welcome to both of you.
AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Thank you.
TAMARA KEITH, NPR: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, we just a few minutes ago saw this video the Trump transition team released, telling us what Donald Trump plans to do in the first — in the early part of his administration after he's inaugurated.
He talked about trade. He talked about energy and investigating people who abuse their visas, trying to make sure people aren't here taking jobs away from Americans.
Amy, this is unusual, isn't it? I mean, the election is almost two weeks ago. He has not had a news conference yet. He's done some tweeting. We have seen him greeting people coming to Trump Tower, and now this.
AMY WALTER: And now a video, where, obviously, you cannot do questions and answers.
The only thing he — interestingly he said in the video is the things he was going to do by executive order, not things that he would — here is what I'm going to work on with Congress in my first three days. Here are the things that I'm going to do as President.
And, again, each President has come in with the ability for executive orders to roll back the previous administration's executive orders, right, because they're not a rule of law in the same way as if they were passed by Congress.
That said, to your other point about this being unusual, we have to stop treating Donald Trump like this is just a traditional, normal, political candidate who's now going to be a traditional, normal President.
The fact that he did tweet out this weekend, get in something of a fight with the cast of “Hamilton,” as well as the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” this now as president-elect, not just as a candidate, the fact that he's just using video, instead of having an actual press conference, so the role that Donald Trump carved out as a candidate is the same role that he's going to play as President.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What does it tell us, Tam, about how he relates to the public and to the news media?
TAMARA KEITH: Yes. So, he hasn't held a press conference since July.
This goes way, way, way back to the campaign. And he has not related to the press or the public in a traditional way ever. And he's had an incredible skill at distracting, at creating — there was this movie “Up” and there was a dog who gets distracted, and, squirrel, squirrel.
That's what happens. Every time there is a story that is not favorable to him, like settling the Trump University lawsuit for $25 million, suddenly, there is a Twitter fight.
Meanwhile, he has skillfully avoided sort of the type of environment that a press conference creates, the environment where you get asked a question, and then somebody else asks a question, then somebody else asks a question, it builds on it, and you really can't escape.
And so there is nothing like a press conference. And his transition team is saying, well, you know, don't tell him what's traditional and what is conventional. This is Donald Trump.
SUMMARY: Turkey's main opposition newspaper is the latest target of a Turkish government purge. Some 170 news outlets have been shuttered since July, just one facet of a crackdown on anyone suspected to support an Islamic cleric accused of fomenting a coup attempt. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Amberin Zaman of the Woodrow Wilson Center about the consolidation of power by the Turkish president.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): It's been more than three months since a coup sought to depose the Turkish president. The attempt failed quickly, but the crackdown in its aftermath continues, alarming many of Turkey's allies.
Readers have opened Turkey's main opposition newspaper to find blank columns this week, a protest against jailing its editor in chief and a dozen staffers. Their arrests Monday were part of an ongoing purge against perceived opponents by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since a failed coup last July.
On Tuesday, his prime minister brushed off European criticism.
PRIME MINISTER BINALI YILDIRIM, Turkey (through translator): Today, somebody from the European Parliament says the detention of journalists from that newspaper is a red line. Brother, we don't care about your red line. It's the people who draw the red line. What importance does your line have?
HARI SREENIVASAN: Across Turkey, some 170 outlets have been shuttered since July, leaving 2,500 journalists out of work. The U.S. State Department has raised its concerns repeatedly, as it did again Monday.
JOHN KIRBY, State Department spokesman: Suppressing speech and opinion and the press doesn't support the fight against terrorism and only encroaches on the fundamental freedoms that help ensure democracies remain strong.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But silencing Turkey's media is only one facet of a crackdown on anyone suspected of supporting Fethullah Gulen, the Islamic cleric whom Erdogan accuses of fomenting the coup attempt. Gulen lives in exile in Pennsylvania.
A staggering 100,000 civil servants have been fired, including 10,000 more just last weekend, and 37,000 people have been arrested. President Erdogan has even voiced support for reinstating the death penalty, though it would dash hopes for Turkey's European Union membership bid.
Meanwhile, as he consolidates his internal power, the Turkish leader is waging war along his borders. This week, Turkish tanks massed at Silopi, near the Iraqi frontier, to press the fight against the Kurdish separatist group known as the PKK. Southeastern Turkey is a largely Kurdish region, and the PKK maintains bases in Northern Iraq.
In Ankara, the defense minister said there is — quote — “no obligation to wait for threats to rise.”
FIKRI ISIK, Defense Minister, Turkey (through translator): We have important developments in the region. There is a serious struggle against terrorism inside Turkey and on the other side of the border. Turkey is in the position of making preparations for all kinds of possibilities.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And, in Syria, Turkish forces are looking to retake the city of al-Bab north of Aleppo from the Islamic State. Success would also bar the city to the Kurds, who hope to close a 45-mile gap between their enclaves and create a contiguous Kurdish zone along the Turkish frontier.
Turkey also insists that Syrian Kurdish forces not be part of any campaign to retake the Islamic State's self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa in Syria. All of this has strained relations with Washington. The Obama administration regards the Kurds as among its staunchest allies against ISIS.
We take a closer look at this recent crackdown with Amberin Zaman. She is a Turkish journalist and author and serves as a fellow at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington.
So, 10,000 more civil servants just in the past week that have been fired. Right after the coup, the government said this was to try and root out all the Gulenists at the time. Why now? Why is this happening?
AMBERIN ZAMAN, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Well, as you pointed out, the government has justified these moves on the grounds that it's weeding out the Gulenists, who they say have penetrated the entire government, the judiciary, the army, academia.
But, at this point, when you look at the scale of this purge, you have more than 100,000 people now who have either lost their jobs or who are in jail, I think around 30,000-plus now in jail. And you look at the number of journalists also in jail, the number of media outlets, over 100, well over 100 now shuttered.
It's becoming very clear that this is just not about the Gulenists, but more an effort on the part of the government to stifle all dissenting voices.
