Trump Tweet Database
Beginning in 2017, I manually catalogued every tweet posted by then-President Donald Trump that referred to a journalist, outlet or the media as a whole in a negative or demeaning way. Because of its subjective nature, the database was made publicly viewable and to maintain consistency over time I was the only person cataloging. In addition to the articles I authored examining the database, it was cited in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ report “The Trump Administration and the Media,” as an exhibit for the defense in Julian Assange’s extradition trial, highlighted in Jeremy Singer-Vines’ “Data is Plural” database newsletter and by outlets and organizations including CNN, Freedom House, and Editor & Publisher magazine, among others.
Publications:
– January 2021 | The Last Trump Tweet Against the Media
– October 2020 | Rather than denounce attacks on press, Trump doubles down on negative tweets
– April 2020 | Trump, in crisis mode, tweets his 2000th attack on the press
– January 2020 | Back on the campaign trail, President Trump increases his anti-press tweet offensive
– June 2019 | Trump opens reelection campaign week with escalating rhetoric against the media
– January 2019 | From fake news to enemy of the people: An anatomy of Trump’s tweets
Border Stop Report
As the primary reporter and researcher behind the report, I created an initial survey which we shared with foreign correspondents and distributed to newsrooms and media organizations across the U.S. When individuals responded that they had experienced secondary screenings or intensive questioning about their journalistic work, I conducted detailed interviews with them about each incident. Once the interviews were completed, I compiled the information obtained into a database in order to analyze the incidents and identify trends or patterns. My supervisor, Alex Ellerbeck, co-authored the report: Ellerbeck wrote the introduction and advocacy recommendations while focusing on the overall structure, while I wrote the narrative and analysis sections. Following the completion of the report, I also authored entries on each border stop for publications as part of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker’s database.
The report: Nothing to declare: Why U.S. border agency’s vast stop and search powers undermine press freedom
Related publications:
– Journalists fleeing threats at home trapped in ICE detention over US asylum seeker policy
– Al Jazeera journalist stopped and questioned at JFK airport
– Public radio reporter stopped for secondary screening while crossing U.S.-Mexico border
– Reporter flagged for additional screening when leaving the U.S., questioned about work
– Journalist stopped for secondary screening, cell phone searched
– Al Jazeera journalist stopped and questioned in Los Angeles airport
Trump Administration Report
Over the course of eight months, I worked with former-Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. conducting research on and initial interviews about the Trump administration’s relationship with the press. I investigated reports of retaliation, FOIA compliance issues, chilling statements from officials and changes to policy or practice for each federal department and agency, as well as those from the White House. I produced initial analyses which became the basis of a 40-page reported published by the Committee to Protect Journalists: “The Trump Administration and the Media.”
The report was cited in articles published by Al Jazeera, Deadline, The Independent, USA Today, Voice of America, and The Washington Post, among others.
Reporting on governance, ethnicity and memory in Bosnia-Herzegovina
I studied abroad in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2013, as Bosnia was undergoing its first census since the war that divided Yugoslavia and the genocide against Bosnian Muslims. I reported on the census and the campaigns surrounding how to identify one’s identity for my final project and began to learn how ethnic politics were — and in many ways still are — the only politics in the country. I returned to Bosnia again the following summer for four months of research and interning, digging deeper into the political structure and issues around ethnicity since the 1990s. And, for my graduate thesis in journalism school, I returned for another few months to revisit some of my sources and cultivate new ones, trying to understand what had (and had not) changed as the 25th anniversary of the end of the war drew closer. I kept my passion for these topics and the country alive while living in New York, covering the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival and social and political events there and abroad.
Publications:
– June 2019 | Young Bosnians use art, activism to address past, try to change the country’s future
– May 2018 | Bosnia’s millennials: The discontented, the discouraged and the diaspora-bound
– September 2017 | Conflict prevention: will the United Nations return to its roots?
– August 2017 | Recounting the Batajnica Mass Graves through the Art of Film
– June 2017 | Analysis: Ethnic politics are destroying Bosnia
– April 2017 | Review: Sarajevo’s overwhelming past and uncertain future
– February 2017 | Bombed, burned and razed in the Balkans
– February 2017 | LGBTQ advocates face uphill battle in the Balkans
– March 2015 | ‘You Are Who We Say You Are’: The Politics of Ethnicity in Post-Genocidal Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina
– December 2013 | The Power to Unite and Divide: The Census, Identification, and Ethnopolitics in Bosnia-Herzegovina