White House launches media bias tracker, escalating Trump’s fight with the press

The White House has created a new section on its official website that publicly catalogs news outlets and reporters it accuses of misleading coverage, a move that supporters frame as media accountability and critics describe as an intimidation tool against the press.

The page, titled “Media Offenders of the Week” and branded with the tagline “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.,” went live Friday and is linked from whitehouse.gov. It features a rotating “Media Offender of the Week,” an “Offender Hall of Shame” and a searchable database of articles, reporters and alleged violations such as “bias,” “lie,” “omission of context” and “left-wing lunacy.”

The Washington Post, MS Now, CBS News and CNN top a running leaderboard the site calls a “race to the bottom.” Visitors are invited to sign up for a weekly email digest of “Offender Alerts” summarizing new examples flagged by the White House.

Launched after ‘illegal orders’ controversy

The tracker debuted days after six Democratic members of Congress released a video urging U.S. service members to refuse illegal orders, prompting a furious response from President Donald Trump and his allies. In a Truth Social post, Trump described their actions as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.”

Many outlets summarized his comments as calling for the lawmakers’ “execution.” The new White House webpage argues that coverage misrepresented what the president said.

“The media misrepresented President Trump’s call for Members of Congress to be held accountable for inciting sedition by saying that he called for their ‘execution,’” the site states, adding: “Every order President Trump has issued has been lawful.”

The first “media offenders of the week” are The Boston Globe, CBS News and The Independent, all cited over their stories on the “illegal orders” video and Trump’s response.

Who is on the ‘Hall of Shame’?

Beyond the weekly spotlight, the page’s Hall of Shame lists dozens of stories and names their authors, drawing from outlets including:

• The Washington Post
• MS Now
• CBS News
• CNN
• The New York Times
• Politico
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Associated Press and others

Each entry displays the outlet, reporter, headline and a short White House rebuttal, followed by tags suggesting what’s wrong with the reporting.

The administration says the page is intended to serve as “a record of the media’s false and misleading stories flagged by the White House.”

The site briefly included Fox News among its repeat offenders but removed that entry after the network objected that a question at a press conference had been wrongly attributed to one of its correspondents, per The Independent.

Reporter and watchdog responses

News organizations and press-freedom advocates reacted quickly, arguing that a White House–run bias tracker blurs the line between criticism and coercion.

The Washington Post — which sits at the top of the site’s leaderboard — said in a statement that it “is proud of its accurate, rigorous journalism.”

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told the Post there is “an obvious conflict inherent in a presidential administration appointing itself the arbiter of media bias,” adding that he expects “after the initial wave of publicity, few Americans will be paying attention to this latest stunt. The gimmick is wearing thin.”

Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta said on MS Now that the “Media Offender of the Week” website has “cracked the code on how to hurt the press in this country,” arguing that Trump’s lawsuits and naming-and-shaming strategy have done “terrible damage to the industry” and are designed to “feed red meat to the base.”

Media-watching organizations have also weighed in. In a commentary published Monday, the Poynter Institute argued that the “media offender” list is likely to “fizzle” while journalists continue their work, calling the site “the Trump administration’s latest attack on reporters” rather than a neutral fact-checking tool.

Part of a long-running clash with the press

The new tracker arrives amid an already tense relationship between the Trump White House and major news outlets. The administration has filed or refiled lawsuits against media organizations including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and has recently secured settlements from ABC and CBS over coverage Trump said was defamatory.

Trump has also stepped up his rhetoric toward individual reporters. In recent weeks, he:

• Told a Bloomberg reporter, “Quiet, piggy,” aboard Air Force One.
• Called an ABC News journalist “a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
• Described a New York Times reporter as “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out” in a Truth Social post.
• Referred to CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes as “a stupid person” when pressed about vetting Afghan refugees.

Supporters of Trump’s approach say the new webpage mirrors independent fact-checking projects that have cataloged false or misleading statements by politicians — including Trump — and argue that newsrooms should be held to account when they get stories wrong or omit key context.

Press-freedom advocates counter that there is a difference between public criticism of the media and a government-run database that ranks “offenders,” collects email addresses and singles out individual reporters by name.

Here’s what some reporters have said on social media about the new tracker: