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How Would Tax Evasion Charges Against a Former U.S. President Go? Here’s One Possibility.

Lance Rinker
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How Would Tax Evasion Charges Against a Former U.S. President Go? Here’s One Possibility.

Texas billionaire Robert Brockman has been charged by federal prosecutors with the largest tax evasion scheme in American history. According to Department of Justice officials, Brockman hid capital gains income over two decades through a tangled web of offshore accounts and business entities in Bermuda, Nevis, and Switzerland.

Robert and Dorothy Brockman attend an intimate al fresco dinner celebrating the Rice University groundbreaking of James Turrell’s Rice University Skyspace project at the home of Phoebe and Bobby Tudor, Tuesday evening, May 17, 2011, in Houston. (Dave Rossman/Houston Chronicle via AP)

The 39-count indictment was unsealed on Thursday with the core charges being tax evasion, wire fraud, and money laundering (along with a slew of other offenses).

“Complexity will not hide crime from law enforcement. Sophistication is not a defense to federal criminal charges,” said David L. Anderson, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California. “We will not hesitate to prosecute the smartest guys in the room.”

This indictment and these charges would have never been possible without the cooperation of another billionaire who was involved in the scheme. Robert F. Smith, founder and chairman of Vista Equity Partners, agreed to pay $139 million to settle his own tax probe.

Reports initially surfaced in August that investigators from the IRS and Justice Department were looking into a possible tax fraud scheme involving Brockman. From then until Thursday when charges were formally announced investigators worked on building their case and triple-checking all the information they were receiving from Smith was actionable.

Prosecutors likely would not have announced they were investigating Brockman nearly two months ago had they not already had a strong foundation to charge him with a crime.

Why does all this matter?

If it takes many months (if not longer) to investigate and bring charges against an insanely wealthy private citizen, how long would you suspect it could take if the person prosecutors are investigating for tax-related crimes is the President of the United States?

Well, years. Mostly because as of right now, the common refrain is a sitting President cannot be indicted for criminal offenses. With that said, if Trump loses his re-election bid prosecutors could move very quickly to formally bring charges against him. If that were to happen early on in 2021 then Trump could find himself in an actual courtroom within the next couple of years after that.

As boring as these white-collar crimes can be when you read about them in the news, it’s important to pay attention to them as they could give clues to how prosecutors could potentially handle bringing charges against a former U.S. President.

 

 

Here’s How Twitter Locking White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s Personal Account is Being Reported by News Outlets

Lance Rinker
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Here’s How Twitter Locking White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s Personal Account is Being Reported by News Outlets
Online news publications covering White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany most frequently Oct 1 – Oct 15.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany finds herself at the center of news stories practically every day. This month alone, there have been nearly 200 stories published online from over 130 digital news publications. The latest coverage on McEnany and the controversy she finds herself in has nothing to do with whether she is or isn’t wearing a mask while speaking with reporters or hanging out at Rose Garden events.

This time she’s in the news because Twitter suspended her personal account after violating platform rules regarding sharing hacked material.

The rule specifically states:

“We don’t permit the use of our services to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information, may put people in physical harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.”

The story she shared was one published by the New York Post, which claims Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had been paid by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings in an alleged effort to obtain access to Biden for political reasons.

Biden has repeatedly denied the claims made in the published story, and already reports have surfaced that the material and information used for the story written and published by the New York Post was based on hacked, stolen, and even fabricated information.

McEnany spoke with Fox News’ Sean Hannity after being locked out of her account. However, it appears to have been restored since then and claimed Twitter “essentially had me at gunpoint and said unless you delete a news story published by the New York Post I cannot regain access to my account.”

“This is censorship, it is not the American way. This is not how a freedom-loving democracy operates,” McEnany continued.

“And we have to hold Twitter accountable. And Facebook, too, is banning the transmission of this story simply because ideologically, it hurts the side of the aisle the Silicon Valley prefers. It’s sad, it’s censorship, this is not America.”

Of the digital publications covering McEnany the most, here’s a look at the headlines related to this specific story.

Twitter locks Kayleigh McEnany Out of her account after spreading fake news – alternet.org
Twitter Suspends Kayleigh McEnany’s Personal Account for Sharing Hunter Biden Emails – breitbart.com
Power Mad Twitter Suspends WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s Personal Account – townhall.com
Twitter Locks Kayleigh McEnany’s Personal Account, Trump Campaign Says – dailycaller.com
Kaleigh McEnany’s Twitter is locked until she deletes Biden, she says – dailymail.co.uk

Here we can see that one publication has taken the approach of stating that McEnany’s Twitter account was locked because she was spreading “fake news.” Another describes Twitter as being “Power Mad.” Those two have clearly taken a side in how they are presenting their stories related to the topic and aren’t shy in doing so. Breitbart’s headline sticks to the facts of the story but also leaves out important context because of the questionable methods used to obtain the alleged emails and the legitimacy of the timeline of information presented in the New York Post story.

The other two headlines are fairly straight forward and don’t appear to have a bias either way, regardless of how the stories themselves are written and presented once you click through.

Given the frequency in which news stories are published online, shared on social media platforms, and then commented on and ‘presented’ to the public at large and even by news consumers (yes, to news organizations, you are a consumer), it can be challenging to decipher who’s telling the truth or simply where the truth lies within a story itself.

If you’d like to review the stories being published about this particular topic and McEnany herself, you can do so here. The data is open and free to download.

 

There’s Been a Rise in News Coverage for QAnon and That Should Concern All of Us

Lance Rinker
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There’s Been a Rise in News Coverage for QAnon and That Should Concern All of Us

QAnon has been getting plenty of attention in the news lately, and concerns over the group and its followers have sparked so much attention from legislators, journalists, and anyone with a Twitter account that Congress has written and passed a bipartisan bill rejecting QAnon and condemning the conspiracy theories and violence it promotes. The resolution itself made sure to call out specific examples of the violence and criminal activity perpetrated by the group’s supporters, which has led to an increase in calls for law enforcement – the FBI specifically – to devote more resources towards combatting the conspiracy-driven acts of extremism and violence.

Some of the crimes committed by supporters of QAnon involve kidnapping, murder, and terrorism.

Below is a timeline of news coverage on QAnon from July 11 to October 1.

One thing that you can pick out from the graph is notable spikes in online stories being published. We’re going to take a look at each significant spike in news coverage to get a sense of what prompted the online news industry’s attention.

July 21 – 22

Twitter banned thousands of accounts associated with or directly belonging to QAnon members/supporters. These accounts were spreading conspiracy theories, calling for violence against elected officials of the democratic party or ‘liberals’ in general, and organizing protests against specific people or causes. All-in-all, Twitter banned over 7,000 accounts directly.

Many showed generous support for the move, but some believed even QAnon supporters deserve free speech.

August 11 – 14

Marjorie Taylor Green won her GOP nomination for the northwest Georgia US House seat. Green came out in strong support of QAnon, and in return, QAnon supporters showed great support for her. Despite the multiple racist videos she has made, and her backing of QAnon, President Trump and other prominent Republicans embraced her candidacy and victory. Trump even went so far as to call her a ‘future Republican star.’

Green winning her contest in Georgia was the big news for this period, which contributed to online news publications covering it more than 60 times over three days. However, a woman was also ordered to stand trial for her involvement in a QAnon kidnapping plot. That story was largely ignored and forgotten in favor of coverage on Green, Trump, and politics in general.

August 19 – 25

It didn’t take long for QAnon to begin trending in the news once again. Facebook announced they were following Twitter’s lead and banned over 800 group pages on Facebook, over 10,000 Instagram accounts, and 1,500 ads belonging to QAnon. With QAnon getting this much attention in such a short period of time, journalists began asking relevant and frequent questions to politicians about the group and where they stood on it.

Karl Rove condemned them as ‘a group of nuts and kooks,’ and said Trump ‘ought to disavow them.’

Senator Liz Cheney denounced the group as a ‘dangerous lunacy.’

Vice President Mike Pence said he didn’t “know anything” about QAnon and dismisses it “out of hand.”

President Trump, however, refused to condemn the group and went so far to say they ‘like me very much.’

Congress introduced the bill to condemn QAnon, with sweeping bipartisan support, on August 25

September 2 – 6

Former Vice President Joe Biden called the QAnon movement ‘mortifying’ and ‘dangerous’ and said QAnon conspiracies are a ‘deconstruction’ of our democratic system. Much of this time, news coverage of the group focused on what backers of the conspiracy group were doing. Additionally, supporters of QAnon were:

  • strongly pushing their propaganda around child sex trafficking, which had to be set straight by child sex trafficking organizations
  • publicly naming child molesters in government, without actual proof
  • spreading misinformation around and accusing the CDC of intentionally reducing the death count related to COVID-19

President Trump also spent time amplifying many of these conspiracy theories and messages touted by QAnon supporters on Twitter.

September 9 – 16

The meaningful stories that dropped during this last spike in online news coverage centered around Vice President Pence having been scheduled to attend a campaign rally and fundraiser hosted by QAnon backers in Montana. Pence’s team later stated that the Vice President would still go to the rally in Montana but not the fundraising event. GOP nominee for a Georgia House seat suddenly had a clear path to victory come November with her Democratic opponent, Kevin van Ausdal, suddenly dropping out of the race on September 11. He initially cited personal and family reasons for dropping out only to later clarify his wife served him with divorce papers, and he would be moving out of state. Then, some good ole’ fashioned McCarthyism began to occur when Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Senator Ted Cruz were both accused of ‘going QAnon’ after criticizing Netflix’s ‘Cuties’ film, which was the subject of much backlash for its perceived depiction and sexualization of pre-teen girls.

With a recent poll finding that a third of Republicans believe in all or parts of the QAnon conspiracy theories, it’s fair to wonder just how serious the threat of radicalization through QAnon is in the United States. They’ve found a way into being covered by mainstream media – online news publications, cable news outlets – as well as having supporters winning political campaigns that could potentially put them in Congress.

At what point does the QAnon conspiracy theories further erode our necessary faith in the goodness of others? Given our current political climate, it doesn’t seem as if it takes much to radicalize ordinary everyday folks anymore.

After all, could QAnon be the new Tea Party or even replace White evangelicalism to some degree among conservatives across the country, in turn invading our politics and government even more than it already has?

President Trump Provides the ‘Gaffes’ in First Debate

Lance Rinker
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President Trump Provides the ‘Gaffes’ in First Debate

What in the hell was that? The first debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was a train wreck. It wasn’t completely useless, though. The President provided many opportunities for Biden to clap back at him with surgeon-like precision only to choose to do so a handful of times. When he tried to respond, Trump would simply shout him down and talk over him so you couldn’t actually hear what he would say.

But, this isn’t about what we heard or couldn’t hear from Biden. This is about the flow of gifts Trump provided Biden and his campaign directly from his mouth. One of the biggest takeaways from the debate was Trump seemingly unwilling to publicly denounce far-right domestic terror groups such as The Proud Boys and other white supremacists/nationalist organizations.

As a result, the Biden campaign has quickly capitalized on Trump’sTrump’s blunder (even though many were expecting Biden to supply all the gaffes) and released this ad.

This new ad successfully demonstrates a clear and obvious distinction between Biden and Trump. Biden is effectively highlighting how the president sides with violent, far-right organizations with a history of racism, misogynistic behavior/attitudes towards women, and threats of violence or actual physical violence against minorities or those with opposing political views.

Taking video clips from news stories concerning the protests, marches, and riots along with violent acts committed by those far-right groups with audio of Chris Wallace asking Trump to condemn those types of groups and his inability or outright refusal to do so reinforces a belief among many Americans that the President is a white supremacist himself, will use violence against all who oppose him and will encourage his coalition of white nationalist, militia group supporters to hurt those who try to vote him out of office.

How much of that is based in reality and what would actually happen versus being straight hyperbole doesn’t matter. What matters are the optics, and the President did himself zero favors during the debate with this one exchange. Whether he really is a closeted racist or just someone willing to use whatever ”tools” are at his disposal to get re-elected matters not. Politics is a blood sport. Trump should know that considering that’s how he’s treated his own business interests his entire career.

How to Make Researching Topics for Your Podcast (and even your blog) a Cinch

Lance Rinker
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How to Make Researching Topics for Your Podcast (and even your blog) a Cinch

How much time are you spending researching the outlining/scripting phase for your podcast?

Having created, hosted, produced, and been involved in numerous podcasts or radio shows for others and myself, I can say the research process can become quite involved at times. And, as we all know, the quality of your finished product will have a direct correlation to the amount of time you invested in preparing for each show. This preparation involves quite a bit of research in many cases.

That means you need to gather all the relevant information you can so you can comfortably, and with confidence, speak about that topic at length. It doesn’t matter whether you can accomplish that last part in as little as 30 minutes or as much as 2-4 hours. What matters is being able to get to the information you need as quickly as possible.

Let’s say you have a 30-minute show. That’s half an hour of airtime you need to fill in some way. Let’s also say, in this hypothetical scenario, that your format is one where you (and probably a co-host) discuss current events. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in sport, politics, entertainment, or another category or industry. You’re covering and providing commentary on things that are happening or have happened recently.

A typical research process involves searching for what you need to know about something online through Google or other search engines and social media platforms. How quickly you can locate the information you need and determine how relevant it is to your show will help determine how much time you have to spend on that one part of creating your show before moving onto actually recording it.

What if you could take a shortcut and avoid going down those rabbit holes of useless information?

Search engines are useful, but there’s so much information being spat out at you. Not all of it is entirely relevant.

Social media platforms can be an excellent source for hot takes, statements made by athletes, politicians, entertainers, or other notable figures you may be covering, but social media platforms are rife with false information and outright fake news.

There’s a reason why you can’t trust everything you read on the internet.

I used to have many of those same issues. Whether my show was about sports, politics, tech, or current events in general – one problem I continuously ran into was the quality of the information I could get to and absorb promptly. Having to spend an hour or more researching relevant information to fill a 12-minute segment (or less in some cases) would only delay when I could be ready to record my show because it was never just one topic I needed to do research and gather news on.

Next thing you know, you’ve spent anywhere from a couple of hours to a dozen or more hours merely doing the necessary research to flesh out your script or outline so you could move onto the next phase in the production process.

Instead of resigning myself to the fact that I would forever be overly dependent on the information search engine algorithms would provide me based on what I’m searching for and leaning too heavily on questionable sources of information and news on social media, I refused. I knew there was value in being able to streamline my research activities. Doing so would help me get to the actual recording part of my shows sooner and alleviate a ton of stress around spending so much time doing one thing while trying to stick to a consistent publishing schedule.

My whole goal was to spend less time researching, still get all the information I needed, and spend more time recording, publishing, promoting, and moving onto the next one.

To accomplish that, I decided to help create and co-found a news media company that brings transparency to the digital news world. And would also make researching the news that much easier. Konsume.com helps bloggers, journalists, podcasters, and other media professionals gain insight into topics and trends that matter to them.

You’ll be able to very quickly see what is trending in the news that day, that week, and all the coverage in between. If your show is all about covering current events or trending topics, our trending tool will help you with that. If you need to find out exactly what’s being reported on a political figure, sports team, entertainer, or something else entirely, you can use the search tool.

And the same can be said if you want to quickly dive into what specific online news publishers report on and how.

It’s all right there for you. It’s also completely free.

For example, let’s pretend your podcast is one that covers politics, and on your next show you are doing a deep dive into former Vice President Joe Biden and his campaign for president. An initial search on Konsume would already highlight essential information for you. You’ll know right from the top that there have been nearly 5,000 news stories published from almost 400 online news publishers within the last 90 days. You also have a timeline of recent news coverage you’d be able to review quickly.

A Google search for “Joe Biden,” for example, would have netted you nearly 200 million results with the top ones being his campaign website and Wikipedia page. That doesn’t exactly tell you much about what he’s been up to lately or what he’s been in the news for.

Something else that would be immediately available to you is a timeline chart showing you the ebb and flow of news for this particular topic or person.

Now you have insight into what recent coverage looks like, the volume and frequency in which coverage is taking place, and how many different online news publishers drive these stories.

While that’s all super helpful, you’re also able to see which online news publications create those news stories quickly. This gives you a bit of a jump on knowing whether certain publications could have a particular bias in their reporting if coverage is largely being driven and over-saturated by one publication and if there’s even any balance.

There would be a list of recent stories published you can quickly scroll through. Not only does all of this make it so much easier for you to conduct meaningful research on a specific topic in the news, but it can also be a significant benefit to you when it comes time to think of other topics that are gaining traction online you could potentially cover. There’s also an ‘export’ function on these search results pages so you can download the data and view it in excel or another data visualization tool to take a more in-depth look into practically anything you would want.

Go ahead and give it a try for yourself. You might find it a useful tool that helps streamline your research process, if not act as an easy to use ‘idea factory’ for future shows. If you have any questions about using Konsume as a useful research tool or news platform yourself, let me know. I’m happy to answer any questions or help in any way I can. If you’d like to talk about your starting a podcast or growing the one you currently have – I’d love to talk about that too.

Online News Publishers Already Choosing Sides in Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS Nomination

Lance Rinker
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Online News Publishers Already Choosing Sides in Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS Nomination

The mix of online news publishers covering Amy Coney Barrett and her nomination for the Supreme Court vacancy left behind by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is quite telling. More than 300 stories have been published about Barrett since September 18 and 22% of that coverage has been produced by the 12 online publishers highlighted in the chart above. However, the bulk of this coverage comes from news outlets or publishers with very conservative leanings or bias in their reporting. Either through the stories they choose to publish or how they choose to ‘present’ the news to readers.

Just in this top 12 list half are right-leaning (designated with red), one is a religious publication (green), and one traffics mostly in misleading or false claims with a hard pro-life, anti-abortion slant (yellow). The remaining three (white) are neutral or local publications.

The way Barrett’s nomination is being covered by online news outlets right now really boils down to a pro-life versus pro-choice stance. Journalists, or perhaps it’s a direction chosen by the publisher in some cases, are casting Barrett as a devout catholic and proven conservative who will help overturn Roe -v- Wade. But, the key difference In those narratives is whether these stories published add in the ‘flavor’ of casting Barrett as either a villain to liberals and women’s rights or a hero of conservatives and family values.

Filling this SCOTUS vacancy would always be about pro-life or pro-choice, regardless of which party was doing the nominating. The type of demonization we see by those in the news media before Barrett’s nomination has even been taken up in the Senate is done as a way to serve specific types of newsreaders. In many ways, it just feels like another attempt at pandering to a divided nation and creating an ‘us versus them’ mentality even more than is already currently taking place due to the political and societal climate.

Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence will Test Newsrooms and Advertising Agencies

Konsume Media
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Soon, the next great news story you read may not be written by an actual journalist. Or even a human being, for that matter. Instead, one day you might read important news content written by artificial intelligence programs that exceed your average journalist’s capabilities. What’s scary? You might not even know it.

Natural language processing, or NLP, is an AI discipline focused on understanding human speech and cognition. More recent developments now allow for computers to take over much of the work that humans do. Specifically, writing.

Recently a college student created an entirely fake blog post using GPT-3, OpenAI’s machine learning language model, creating a buzz in the data science community.

The blog post quickly hit the top of Hacker News, and signaled a tipping point in the so-called “Turing Test”, where machines are capable of outsmarting people in various human interactions such as imitation games, chess, and chat bot interactions.

This technological advancement in NLP has the potential to write just about anything. This includes writing code and blog posts alike, deflating high-demand jobs by providing synthetic news stories, social media content, powering chat bots and spun website content, a form of re-purposing text from others and changing it just enough to pass for original content.

This is a disaster for anyone who makes their living programming code, marketing copywriters, journalists and an untold number of white collar professionals. Humans may no longer be the gatekeeper when it comes to writing intelligent copy that everyday people can understand. In fact all signs point to AI exceeding journalists’ capacity to quickly tell concise, fact-driven stories in the next five years.

While there is speculation about using GPT-3 to replace journalists and creating whole newspapers by itself, some have questioned OpenAI’s decision to restrict who has access to the GPT-3 technology.

In the next decade, we are going to see this and similar technologies changing not only the way we access the internet but also how we consume news media itself.

News Coverage of the Culture War the GOP and President Trump are Fighting Over The 1619 Project

Lance Rinker
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News Coverage of the Culture War the GOP and President Trump are Fighting Over The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project is an ongoing project started in 2019 by The New York Times Magazine with the goal to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of [the Unites States’] national narrative.”

There’s been much criticism and debate among well-known and highly respected historians. They have expressed “strong reservations” about the project and the fact that the recommended factual corrections have not been taken into strong consideration or implemented. Some historians and political commentators have accused the publisher and the journalists and researchers who worked on the project of putting ideology before historical understanding.

Given that there’s been a backlash to the project, especially by prominent conservative voices on cable television, elected officials, and academia, we decided to look at online news stories covering the project over the previous 90-day period. With over 80 stories published in this timeframe, one of the immediate things that stood out were three discernible spikes in coverage. The first occurred on July 23rd, the second on July 27th, and the last on September 6th.

The first spike on July 23rd came as a result of Senator Tom Cotton introducing a bill to prohibit federal funds from being sent to any school district using ‘1619 Project’ curriculum. On July 27th, the second spike was a direct result of comments he made about slavery being a “necessary evil,” per the Founding Fathers of America. Here is the full statement he made to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  

“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the founding fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”

Cotton distanced himself from those comments on Twitter and in interviews immediately following the backlash but still held firm he was expressing the views of the Founding Fathers.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the landmark 1619 Project, responded to Cotton on Twitter with this.

Cotton’s effort to defund school districts where ‘1619 Project’ curriculum is being taught, coupled with his comments and assuming the views of the Founding Fathers, helped propel this story into national headlines for several days. Things began to quiet down, at least in the news cycle, until September 6th, when President Trump announced the Department of Education would be ‘looking at’ 1619 Project implementation in schools nationwide and openly threatened to defund schools teaching it. Trump singled out California specifically and dismissed the project as merely ‘revisionist history.’

Fast-forward to September 17th, and we are likely on the upswing of witnessing another spike in online coverage of this issue again now that the President has announced executive action on creating a commission to promote “patriotic education” as well as a grant to develop “pro-American curriculum” in schools. Critics have already slammed the decision saying it sounds eerily familiar to state-run education the likes of North Korea and Nazi Germany.

While highlighting how online news publishers cover a divisive topic such as this, it’s also important to point out just how significant a small number of news publishers can influence public perception or sentiment one way or the other.

Sixty online news publishers wrote at least one story covering this topic in the previous 90-days, per the Konsume news engine, and 26% of all stories published came from the top six. That means that just 10% of online news publishers covering this topic accounted for over a quarter of the coverage related to the 1619 Project.

This helps highlight how a handful of news publishers can dominate the news coverage on a particular topic to skew reporting or perception on a specific issue or set of issues.

Check out the news coverage for The 1619 Project here. You can also search for related topics using our search tool.

Jim Carrey Sees Jump in Media Coverage with Saturday Night Live Announcement

Lance Rinker
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Jim Carrey Sees Jump in Media Coverage with Saturday Night Live Announcement

It’s official. Jim Carrey, who is known for his wacky brand of comedy and impressive range as an actor, is in agreement to join Saturday Night Live. He’ll be taking on the role of Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

SNL producer Lorne Michaels told Vulture that Carrey actually asked to play the role.

“There was some interest on his part. And then we responded, obviously, positively. But it came down to discussions about what the take was,” Michaels said, adding that Carrey will give the Biden role “energy” and “strength.”

The announcement naturally increased Carrey’s presence in the news as news stories about the actor spiked on September 16. Before the announcement, you can see that Carrey wasn’t covered by online news publishers quite as much.

Before the coverage spike, these are the news headlines associated with the actor.

Jim Carrey Channels Dead Veterans in Anti-Trump Art Based on Atlantic Story

Jim Carrey: “Americans Support Trump Because He Appeals to Their Basest and Most Primitive Urges”

Jim Carrey calls Trump ‘a bourgeois New York con artist’

Comedian Jim Carrey has one big idea for restoring America’s “decency and humanity”

As you can see, Carrey’s major focus has been on politics and current events which isn’t getting quite as much news coverage as his acting and entertainment endeavors. If you’d like to take a closer look at how online news publishers have been covering Carrey you can check out his profile page.

A Look at How Online News Publishers Are Covering the E. Jean Carroll Lawsuit Against Donald Trump

Lance Rinker
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A Look at How Online News Publishers Are Covering the E. Jean Carroll Lawsuit Against Donald Trump

Jean Carroll is a former renowned advice columnist for Elle who alleges then private citizen Donald Trump raped her in the mid-’90s. The statute of limitations has since passed so the president can’t have criminal charges brought against him for the alleged rape, but Carroll is suing him for defamation. The President denied having ever met Carroll and subsequently claims he did not sexually assault her while questioning her motives and character.

In her fight with Trump, Carroll has since been fired from Elle and been subjected to countless threats against her online.

Before this week, Carroll received previous news coverage from digital publishers in August when a judge ruled that her defamation suit against Trump could continue. Fast-forward to this week and the Department of Justice is stepping in to potentially represent the president and have the case end up as Carroll vs The United States, as opposed to Carroll vs Donald Trump.

More than 30 digital news publishers have covered this story since August. Here’s a visualization of the headlines written by those publishers and journalists.

As you can tell just from the headlines the overwhelming focus on the story and case itself is the bombshell that the Department of Justice is attempting to take over the case. Let’s highlight the publishers and headlines that deviate from the typical “Trump can’t stop lawsuit..” focus in August and the “DOJ defending Trump..” approach now in September.

 The Independent

‘Bring It’: Trump rape accuse E. Jean Carroll defiant over Justice Department move to defend him

The overall content of this story isn’t much different than what was published by every other digital publisher reviewed. However, it does offer up the perspective and response from Carroll and her legal team which helps bring another element to a fairly straight forward story at the time.

Hollywood Life

Jean Carroll: 5 Things On Writer Facing Off With Justice Dept. Over Her Trump Rape Charges

This publication chose to do a human interest story on Carroll in an effort to educate the public and readers on who this person actually is. Carroll’s backstory, personal and professional life are highlighted as are the allegations she has brought against the President when he was a private citizen.

Newsweek

DOJ defending Trump in rape accuser’s defamation lawsuit would cost taxpayers

Jean Carroll “happy to take them all on” after Barr’s DOJ moves to defend Trump

Newsweek published two stories detailing the lawsuit against Trump. One is focused on Carroll’s ‘take on the world’ mentality upon learning the DOJ is trying to intervene to defend the President. The Independent also took a similar approach.

The other story published has a headline that tells you everything you need to know right from the jump – which is if the DOJ successfully defends Trump it will be taxpayers footing the bill. Of the 30+ publishers reviewed in our data, they are the only one to focus on the impact this will have on taxpayers with the DOJ now trying to get involved.

 

If you would like to explore the publishers and journalists covering this ongoing lawsuit and related stories, you can find the data here.

 

Are you interested in discovering more about what digital news publishers and journalists are covering and how they are covering it? Konsume makes it easy to uncover key news media insights and perform meaningful data analysis. Register for a free account and try the tool for yourself and download the data. Follow us on Twitter @KonsumeHQ.
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