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    Inside CNN’s Debate Over Airing Trump’s Iowa Caucus Victory Speech

    Tensions within CNN over coverage of former President Donald J. Trump burst into the open on Thursday during an internal call with the network’s journalists, as an executive candidly questioned the approach of the channel’s new chief executive, Mark Thompson.CNN aired roughly 10 minutes of Mr. Trump’s victory speech after he won the Iowa caucuses on Monday before cutting away. The decision to cut him off prompted derision from the former president and his allies, although critics on the left questioned why CNN had taken Mr. Trump live in the first place, given his tendency to spread falsehoods and conspiracies. MSNBC chose not to take any of his remarks live.Mr. Thompson opened his morning conference call on Thursday by acknowledging a debate within his newsroom, saying he believed the network had a journalistic obligation to broadcast the remarks of the leading Republican candidate for president.After a period of silence, a senior vice president of programming, Jim Murphy, jumped in, telling Mr. Thompson that the network had given Mr. Trump too much airtime when the network aired Mr. Trump’s live news conference last week after his civil fraud trial. Mr. Murphy said that CNN should cover Mr. Trump’s comments when he makes news, not when he is repeating political talking points.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Ron DeSantis and Fox News, Old Friends, Hit Turbulence

    When the Fox News host Laura Ingraham urged Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “to step aside and endorse Trump” on Tuesday night, it was the latest sign of a sharp deterioration of relations between the Republican presidential hopeful and the network that made him a star.Ms. Ingraham’s exhortation, in the wake of Mr. DeSantis’s second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, was met with mockery and derision by two of the governor’s most prominent aides.“Why would DeSantis take advice from the opposing campaign?” Christina Pushaw, the campaign’s rapid response director, wrote on X, to which Mr. DeSantis’s spokesman in the governor’s office, Jeremy Redfern, chimed in.“The Fox News PAC,” he wrote.It was the latest broadside from Mr. DeSantis’s inner circle against the cable network that until recently had been among the loudest advocates of his candidacy.But Mr. DeSantis lashed out last week, accusing Fox News of bias toward his rival, former President Donald J. Trump. Speaking to reporters in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis said that conservative media outlets, including Fox, had acted as “a Praetorian Guard” for Mr. Trump. “They just don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers,” Mr. DeSantis said, “and they don’t want to have the ratings go down.”The governor’s campaign manager denounced Fox as “full blown Trump TV, honesty thrown to the wind.” On caucus night, Ms. Pushaw assailed Fox News for projecting a victory for Mr. Trump only a half-hour after Iowans began to caucus. “Corporate media election interference,” she wrote on X.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Trump’s Press Conference Aired as His Civil Fraud Trial Comes to a Close

    CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all carried a live news conference by Donald J. Trump on Thursday on the final day of his civil fraud trial, a stark reminder that the former president’s legal troubles offer a uniquely outsize media platform as he pursues the Republican nomination.His appearance lasted only a few minutes, but viewers were treated to an unfiltered fusillade of incendiary and misleading comments, with Mr. Trump assailing President Biden as a “crooked” politician who “could not string two sentences together.”Fraud charges against a former president are undoubtedly newsworthy, but Mr. Trump has seized on the legal proceedings as a chance to hog the media spotlight — a notable advantage over rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, who can struggle for similar airtime.Trump campaign aides took particular pleasure that CNN carried Mr. Trump live and allowed him to deliver his talking points, unmediated, to the American public. This framing — on Mr. Trump’s own terms, with TV cameras capturing his every word without real-time fact-checking — is exactly how Mr. Trump and his allies envisage they can exploit any criminal trials that might be held during the election season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Fox News and Trump Go Live Wednesday for First Time in 2 Years

    A town hall in Iowa on Wednesday is the network’s first live interview with the former president in nearly two years, the latest twist in a long-running drama.One of television’s longest-running soap operas is about to start a new chapter.Donald J. Trump has not appeared for a live interview on Fox News since April 2022, a nearly two-year stretch of chilliness between the former president and the channel whose airwaves he once relied on to cement his status atop the American right.In that period, all of Mr. Trump’s Fox News interviews were pretaped, a notable precaution for a network that paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit fueled by the former president’s mendacious claims about the 2020 election. That changes on Wednesday, when Mr. Trump will appear live on the network for a town hall in Des Moines ahead of the Iowa caucuses.The relationship between Mr. Trump and the Rupert Murdoch-owned network has featured more drama than a season of “Real Housewives.” But Wednesday’s event is not only a turning point and a potential ratings winner for Fox News: It is also the former president’s first live interview on any major news network since he went on CNN last May, an event that drew harsh criticism for the volume and velocity of his unfiltered false claims.Mr. Trump has not exactly been silenced. He refused the invitations of several networks to participate in live Republican primary debates. And he has agreed to numerous pretaped interviews, including an appearance on NBC in September that also prompted complaints from viewers who berated the network for providing him a platform.His relationship with Fox News, however, is especially complicated. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago when parts of the network seemed to be moving on.Back in 2022, Fox News snubbed Mr. Trump’s rallies while offering admiring coverage to a rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. After Mr. Trump announced in November 2022 that he would again run for president, the network kept him off its airwaves for a full five months. When Mr. Trump did return, for a taped interview last March with Sean Hannity, he received a cool reception from other Fox hosts; one network contributor called his appearance “absolutely horrific.”The slights angered Mr. Trump, who has harbored resentment toward Fox over its early projection of Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020. Over the past year, the former president has lobbed crude insults at Mr. Murdoch and denounced Fox as “fake news” and “hostile” in posts on Truth Social, his preferred social media platform. He has also grumbled to allies that the network erred in settling the defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, saying it offered ammunition to other potential litigants.In an interview, Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, who is moderating the Wednesday event alongside the anchor Martha MacCallum, did not shy away from acknowledging the volatility of the relationship.“We’re one Truth Social post away from some different feeling,” he said.Despite the wariness, both sides found reasons to agree to Wednesday’s town hall.Judging by his poll numbers, many conservatives remain enthralled by Mr. Trump, and keeping the potential Republican nominee at arm’s length would erode Fox News’s credibility with a core audience. While Mr. Trump has told confidants that he believes Fox News has lost some influence with Republican voters, it remains the highest-rated cable network and home to influential conservatives like Mr. Hannity and Jesse Watters.Furthermore, the town hall gives Mr. Trump a chance to dunk on both his presidential rivals and one of his media bêtes noires: CNN.CNN had previously announced that it would sponsor a Republican debate in Iowa on the same night, in the same city, at the same time (9 p.m. Eastern). Mr. DeSantis and Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s closest rivals in state polls, will be at that debate, but Mr. Trump boycotted. Fox’s town hall allows him to siphon away attention and potentially deliver a TV ratings victory over CNN — which would also please Fox News.Given the rough-and-tumble nature of a presidential campaign, Wednesday’s telecast is unlikely to represent a lasting détente. One person with direct knowledge of interactions between the Trump camp and Fox News, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the relationship remained chilly.The televisions on Mr. Trump’s plane once constantly aired Fox News, but that is no longer the case, the person said. The former president often requests to watch Mr. Hannity’s program, but sometimes prefers Newsmax, particularly its host Greg Kelly, an old acquaintance from New York political circles. Mr. Trump remains a fan of Mr. Hannity — and of Mr. Watters and Maria Bartiromo — but he has soured on the “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy, whom he recently described as “not nice like he should be.”Mr. Baier said he had studiously courted Mr. Trump in recent weeks, pitching him on the idea of a town hall over the phone and at least once in person at his Florida mansion, Mar-a-Lago.“It’s not easy,” he said of the efforts required to coax Mr. Trump into an interview. He said he had encouraged the former president to take “tough but fair” questions in a live setting.“This is getting to the playoffs,” Mr. Baier said. “This is a time when voters need to see him live, in person, when it happens.”So what happens if Mr. Trump repeats on live TV his baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged?“We’re ready to deal with it,” Mr. Baier said, noting that he disputed Mr. Trump’s claims when the subject arose at their pretaped interview last June. “But if he’s spending all of his town hall time dealing with 2020, and not talking about what he wants to do as president, he’s got other issues.” (At the time, Mr. Trump was not thrilled about Mr. Baier’s real-time fact-checking, calling it “nasty.”)For Mr. Baier, the next person on his list for a live, unfiltered interview is President Biden. “We’ve had a request in every two weeks since South Carolina, when candidate Joe Biden won the primary,” he said. “We would love to do a town hall with the president. We would do that in a heartbeat.”Jonathan Swan More

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    ¿Cómo cubrir a Trump? Univision, como otros medios, busca una respuesta

    Los reclamos contra Univision comenzaron en cuanto se emitió su entrevista con Donald Trump. Un mes después, aún no han cesado.Para los críticos de Univision, la entrevista del 9 de noviembre —con sus preguntas fáciles y pocas preguntas de seguimiento del entrevistador, Enrique Acevedo— ha confirmado sus temores desde que la cadena, tradicionalmente de tendencia de izquierda, se fusionó con la cadena mexicana Televisa a principios del año pasado en un acuerdo de 4.800 millones de dólares. La cadena, argumentan ellos, estaba dando un preocupante giro a la derecha con sus nuevos propietarios, que tienen fama de cultivar relaciones con los principales políticos de México, donde Televisa ha sido un temido artífice de figuras de influencia durante más de 50 años.Las maniobras de última hora de Univision levantaron aún más sospechas. Pocas horas antes de la emisión de la entrevista, la cadena retiró su invitación a la campaña de Biden para emitir anuncios durante el especial de una hora con Trump, citando lo que parecía ser una nueva política de la empresa. Apenas una hora después, Univision canceló abruptamente una entrevista con el director de medios hispanos de la campaña de Biden.Pero la razón de los cambios en la cadena no puede explicarse solo por consideraciones políticas, según las entrevistas con más de una decena de periodistas y ejecutivos actuales y retirados de Univision, entre ellos Acevedo y Daniel Coronell, presidente de noticias de la cadena.Los medios de comunicación hispanos son susceptibles a la misma inquietud que afecta a otras redacciones estadounidenses. Las audiencias de las noticias de televisión en español están en declive, lo que se suma a la presión de una economía desigual. Y el dilema sobre cómo cubrir a Trump —¿debe tener una cobertura exhaustiva, mínima o incluso alguna?— preocupa a Univision tanto como a sus homólogos en inglés.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    ‘What the Heck?’ CNN’s Debate Plans Leave New Hampshire Officials Confused.

    The news network said it would host a Republican primary debate in New Hampshire at Saint Anselm College. That was news to Saint Anselm.With great fanfare this week, CNN announced it would host the network’s first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, gathering the Republican candidates for a marquee event on Jan. 21 at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.There was only one problem: Saint Anselm had no idea what CNN was talking about.“We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, said in a statement on Friday.The chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, Chris Ager, went a little further.“The CNN thing came out and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’” Mr. Ager said in an interview. “I’m still scratching my head. And I still haven’t been contacted by CNN at all.”There is, however, a competing debate scheduled to take place three days earlier, hosted by CNN’s rivals at ABC News. The ABC debate, on Jan. 18, is set to be held at Saint Anselm, and it has the approval of both the college and state Republican officials. “We’ve been working for months planning with ABC,” Mr. Ager said. “We’ve already done a run-through of the facility. We’ve agreed on a lot of the details.”The CNN announcement, Mr. Ager said, caught his team off guard. “For a big, professional organization like that, putting out a location on this date and the location doesn’t know — something’s not quite right,” he said.A CNN spokeswoman said on Friday: “We can’t speak to any miscommunication within Saint Anselm, but we are moving forward with our plans to host a debate in New Hampshire on Jan. 21.”ABC is the traditional host of presidential debates in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Its local station, WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., which is a co-host of the Jan. 18 debate, is New Hampshire’s only affiliate of the Big Three broadcast networks.Mr. Ager said he also had concerns about CNN holding a debate just two days before the Jan. 23 primary, which he said would leave candidates little time to respond to any major moments onstage.“In New Hampshire, we like to give everybody a fair shot as much as possible,” he said.The apparent debate snafu came as the Republican National Committee announced that candidates were free to appear at any debate, eliminating a previous requirement that the candidates could participate only in debates formally approved by the party. The rule change, announced Friday, will potentially offer more national exposure to the remaining candidates, as they try to make inroads against the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump has so far refused to appear at any of the four televised Republican primary debates. He has not signaled if he will appear at the ABC event in New Hampshire on Jan. 18.CNN also said this week that it would host a televised debate in Des Moines on Jan. 10 at Drake University, ahead of the Iowa caucuses.Drake University issued a news release promoting that event, so it appears the institution was aware of the network’s plans.Shane Goldmacher More

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    Conundrum of Covering Trump Lands at Univision’s Doorstep

    The howls of protest against Univision began as soon as its interview with Donald J. Trump aired. A month later, they still haven’t stopped.To critics of Univision, the Nov. 9 interview — with its gentle questioning and limited follow-ups from the interviewer, Enrique Acevedo — has confirmed their fears since the traditionally left-leaning network merged with the Mexican broadcaster Televisa early last year in a $4.8 billion deal. The network, they said, was taking a troubling turn to the right under its new owners, who have a reputation for cultivating relationships with leading politicians in Mexico, where Televisa has been a feared kingmaker for more than 50 years.Last-minute maneuvering at Univision raised further suspicions. Just hours before the interview aired, the network reversed its invitation to the Biden campaign to run ads during the hourlong special with Mr. Trump, citing what appeared to be a new company policy. Scarcely an hour later, Univision abruptly canceled an interview with the Biden campaign’s director of Hispanic media.But the reason for changes at the network can’t be explained by political considerations alone, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Univision journalists and executives, including Mr. Acevedo and Daniel Coronell, the network’s president of news.Hispanic media is proving susceptible to the same upheaval straining other American newsrooms. Spanish-language television news audiences are in decline, compounding pressure from an uneven economy. And the dilemma over how to report on Mr. Trump — should he get exhaustive, minimal or even no coverage? — is vexing Univision just as it is its English-language counterparts.Univision executives have said they are making a pivot toward the center — a strategy that reflects the split political preferences of the Hispanic electorate and the need to broaden their audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Megyn Kelly Returning to Debate Spotlight on NewsNation

    Wednesday’s Trump-less debate is a breakthrough moment for a fledgling cable network — and a comeback of sorts for Ms. Kelly, a former Fox News star.Eight years ago, Megyn Kelly’s turn as a debate moderator made headlines around the world. Before an audience of 24 million Fox News viewers, she confronted Donald J. Trump about his history of misogynist remarks, setting off a well-publicized feud that helped her leap from cable news to NBC.This week, Ms. Kelly returns to television as a moderator of Wednesday’s Republican debate. A breakout moment may be harder to come by.For one thing, Mr. Trump is almost certainly not going to appear, despite Ms. Kelly’s warm entreaties. (“Mr. President,” she wrote on X, “you would be more than welcome and we would love to have you.”) And her appearance will be seen by a fraction of her old audience: The debate will air on NewsNation, an upstart cable network unfamiliar to many Americans.It is still a milestone for Ms. Kelly, whose career imploded when NBC canceled her show in 2018, after she mused on air about whether white people could wear blackface on Halloween. The ouster followed weak ratings and a series of incidents that suggested her punchy and confrontational style was a poor fit for the serene pastures of morning TV.Ms. Kelly, 53, gradually re-emerged as a conservative podcaster and radio host, stoking the culture war grievances that were her stock-in-trade at Fox. (Her recent posts on X refer to “mask fascists” and denounce the use of the term “pregnant person.”) She signed a deal with SiriusXM in 2021 and has since broken into Top 10 charts for news podcasts and booked big guests — including, in September, Mr. Trump.During that interview, Mr. Trump scolded Ms. Kelly for their famous debate moment, saying, “That was a bad question.” Ms. Kelly gamely replied: “That was a great question!” A few days later, at a rally in Iowa, Mr. Trump called her “nasty.”Ms. Kelly declined to speak for this article. In an interview with Real ClearPolitics, she admitted that she had doubted if Wednesday’s debate, with its undercard lineup, was even worth her time. “Does it matter at all?” she said she asked herself.Ultimately, she said, she decided to participate, suggesting that one of the candidates onstage — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy — could, in the event of a Trump criminal conviction or perhaps a health scare, end up as the nominee. “It’s not likely, but who am I to rule it out?” she said.Her attitude is something of a contrast to the unvarnished enthusiasm of anchors and executives at NewsNation, who consider Wednesday’s event, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., a breakthrough moment. NewsNation, which is owned by the Nexstar Media Group and airs 24-hour news coverage on weekdays, outflanked better-known outlets like ABC and Newsmax to secure the broadcast rights for this week’s debate.Elizabeth Vargas, a NewsNation anchor and former ABC News personality.John Lamparski/Getty ImagesEliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site.Taylor Glascock for The New York Times“We’re a brand-new news network, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for us,” said Elizabeth Vargas, a NewsNation anchor and former ABC News personality. Ms. Vargas will serve as a moderator with Ms. Kelly and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site.NewsNation, which started in 2021, has fashioned itself as an independent alternative to more partisan, opinion-fueled channels. “The moderate middle may be quieter or may not make as much of a fuss, but they’re a powerful voting bloc,” Ms. Vargas said. “Those are the viewers we serve.” The network has hired prominent journalists like Dan Abrams, Ashleigh Banfield and Chris Cuomo, the former CNN anchor who was fired over ethics concerns and who now hosts NewsNation’s 8 p.m. hour.Ratings remain low. Year-to-date, NewsNation’s prime-time audience has averaged 109,000 viewers on weeknights, compared with 2.2 million for Fox News, 650,000 for CNN and 264,000 for Newsmax, according to Nielsen. The network says that it has a growing fan base — that prime-time figure is up 73 percent from a year before — and that Wednesday’s showcase can reel in new viewers. The debate, which begins at 8 p.m., will also be shown online and on local affiliates of the CW, a broadcast network owned by Nexstar.The stage for the December 2023 Republican presidential candidates debate, which will be shown on Wednesday on NewsNation.via NewsNationMs. Kelly is not the only Fox News veteran with a major role in the NewsNation debate.Cherie Grzech, who produced 15 primary debates for Fox News before leaving in 2021, now runs NewsNation’s news and political programming. Chris Stirewalt, best-known as the Fox News analyst who defended the 2020 election night call for Arizona — a projection that enraged Mr. Trump, alienated viewers and led to Mr. Stirewalt losing his job — is NewsNation’s political editor.Mr. Stirewalt said he believed in the mission of his new employer. “The shortest distance to securing a habituated audience is to cosset them and flatter them and to reinforce their prejudices,” he said. “The harder thing is to try to be aspirationally fair, and try to report and analyze honestly, not to reinforce existing opinions. It’s a substantially underserved market.”This may be a counterintuitive business model, given the nation’s polarized state, but NewsNation is not alone in trying it out. Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, is aiming to acquire The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, in hopes of expanding its reach to center-right consumers in the United States.Similar experiments have struggled. Shepard Smith, another anchor who left Fox News, created a straightforward newscast on the financial network CNBC in 2020; it was canceled after two years. Chris Licht, who succeeded Mr. Zucker at CNN, promised to dial back partisan opinion, but his programming efforts failed to jell and ratings plummeted.Ms. Kelly, who has no qualms about expressing strong views, is more opinionated than her temporary partners at NewsNation. Eric Bolling, a former Fox News colleague who is now an anchor on Newsmax, said that would work to her advantage.“She will be the biggest viewer draw of all Wednesday night,” Mr. Bolling wrote in a text message. “Unless Trump shows up!” More