MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “Major broadcast and cable news networks have agreed to air President Donald Trump’s Tuesday [1-8-19] night Oval Office address on what he has dubbed a ‘crisis’ on the southern border. Trump’s announcement Monday [1-7-19] that he will deliver remarks in prime time prompted debate over whether the networks should provide the president a platform given his propensity for spreading falsehoods, especially in his fight with Democratic lawmakers to secure additional government funding for a border wall. According to The Washington Post Fact Checker, Trump has made 1,130 false or misleading claims about immigration since taking office. Nevertheless, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and Fox Business each confirmed by Monday evening that they would carry the president’s remarks. And though Trump has dubbed the non-Fox networks the ‘enemy of the people,’ he still benefits from networks’ inclination to honor airtime requests for presidential addresses. But the networks haven’t always ceded valuable prime-time coverage to other presidents.”
–Michael Calderone and Quint Forgey, “Major networks to carry Trump’s shutdown address,” Politico, January 7, 2019 8:50 pm