Media Moves: CNN Cuts Lord, NYT Snags Swanson from WaPo, Press Freedom Tracker Debuts

CNN cuts ties with conservative commentator and Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord. Lord, who served as an associate political director in the Reagan Administration, was let go for using the words “Sieg Heil” in a tweet to Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. The riposte was in response to a tweet to Lord from Carusone complaining about the misspelling of Carusone's name in an earlier post. Lord is the third commentator to recently leave CNN. Kayleigh MeEnamy left the cable network last week to the Republican National Committee, and in June Reza Azlan was let go for referring to the President as a “piece of shit.”

The New York Times snagged Ana Swanson from the Washington Post, where she covers trade, the Federal Reserve and the economy. Swanson, who has spent eight years in China, was editor-in-chief of China Economic Review magazine from 2011 to 2013. She has written for Foreign Policy, Forbes, CNN and The Atlantic; is a regular contributor to American Public Media’s “Marketplace," and is founding VP of the International China Journalists Association (ICJA). Swanson's first day at the Times will be Sept. 11.

The National Press Club Journalism Institute and the Media Law Resource Center created a way for journalists to report and monitor roadblocks facing them in covering federal, state and local governments. The Institute has an online form that can be filled out any time a public official is muzzled, government data is denied or other types of information that belong to the public are kept from the public. The Institute intends to share the tracking data with other organizations, including the partners on its newly launched Press Freedom Tracker as well as Investigative Reporters and Editors, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the quality of investigative reporting. For those who are worried about leaving a digital fingerprint, reports can be mailed to Press Freedom Fellow, National Press Club Journalism Institute, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045.