THE FOUNDATION OF DEMOCRACY IS BUILT ON FREEDOM OF THE
PRESS!
Journalism has survived dictators, despots, and others who have tried to control the Fourth Estate. It will survive Donald Trump too. He can expel reporters from the White House, but the reporting won’t stop. By this point, we all know facts are not this president’s friend. He can lash out, but by every indication a majority of the American people have long since caught on to his act, mostly because of rigorous journalism. The press isn’t looking for a red carpet, but it has a legal right to report from inside the People’s House, whether this president likes it or not. Lately, he’s been hearing about stories from sources he can’t control (i.e., not Fox). When the truth stings, this president tries to slap it away. Nothing makes Trump angrier than not getting his way. He pushes, he belittles, he stomps, he posts, and over his lifetime his rantings have worked more often than they haven’t. But with his political potency weakening, his ability to browbeat people into giving him what he wants is dwindling. The latest dust-up with the news media is a case in point. On Friday, seemingly out of nowhere, the president announced on social media that he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. Trump said no single story prompted the ouster, but that it was a “result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” He then threatened The New York Times and The Washington Post that they could be next. It is troubling that Trump is so oblivious to general news coverage that watching recent cable news clips would send him into a rage. But here we are. He is so isolated from the real world by his sycophants that reality is on the outside looking in. It is not the first time Trump has banished a news organization or a journalist he didn’t like. CNN’s Jim Acosta was banished, and the Associated Press is still in litigation trying to get its access back to the Oval Office. On Saturday, when journalists from the three banned outlets reported for work, they were made to forfeit their press credentials and leave the White House grounds. In a joint statement on Monday, the three media companies announced they were filing suit against the administration, arguing that “the Constitution does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process, based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.” While this is a significant escalation in Trump’s decades-long war with the media, it is not going the way the president apparently thought it would. The White House press pool isn’t cowering. The “pool” is the five news networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN) that provide television coverage of the president on a rotating basis and share their footage with the rest of the press corps. You will note, perhaps surprisingly, that even Fox joined in this effort. In a moment of solidarity, the pool members said on Monday that they would suspend coverage of Trump, effective immediately. This is unprecedented and, unless something changes, will mean there will be no pool cameras covering his trip to New York this week. Print and radio reporters will still be with him. A stronger, much stronger, show of solidarity would be for the whole White House press corps to stop giving the president any television coverage. So far, that hasn’t happened. But the fact that Fox, such a longtime Trump ally, has joined the effort to protest his anti-press action may be an indicator that even they are sensing that he has gone too far and that the public is tiring of him. For all of his adult life, Trump has needed television cameras like the rest of us need oxygen. Since he’s not a peruser of newspapers, he thinks the only way to spew his propaganda is in front of a camera. For now, the medium that made him will not be buckling to his will. Ah, consequences — something Trump rarely considers. He banned the media without telling his closest advisers… his chief of staff wasn’t even in Washington. By doing so, no one could tell him it was a bad idea, unconstitutional, or that perhaps he hadn’t thought it all the way through. Not thinking things through is a signature Trump weakness. An unpopular president just told the world that these news organizations are only airing or writing “negative” stories about him, giving CNN, MS NOW, and Politico some unexpected free publicity. An estimated 60% of the country now has an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Some of them might be interested in what these news organizations have to say. As media-savvy as his supporters claim he is, Trump doesn’t seem to understand that not all real reporting is taking place in the halls of the West Wing. Some of the recent exclusives about Trump were not written by White House reporters. An exposé by The Washington Post about the Trump administration’s secret scheme to pay African countries to take deported migrants was reported by a Justice Department reporter and a national security reporter. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were local metro reporters for The Post when they investigated Watergate. It is doubtful they attended a White House press conference at that time. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, banned all legitimate media from the Pentagon almost a year ago, yet it hasn’t stopped excellent reporting on the failures of his leadership or the war in Iran. Never in the history of our country have journalists uncovered so much corruption from one White House administration, because there’s never been presidential corruption on this scale. And they will continue to do so, regardless of who is allowed into the building. The daily White House briefings, which were little more than a recitation of Trump’s lies, are long gone. The administration doesn’t even have a press secretary. Trump has yet to announce a successor to Karoline Leavitt, who resigned more than a month ago. People will call this a distraction, a descriptor for so much of what Trump does. But it isn’t so much a distraction for us as it is for him. The president has a lot more pressing matters he should be dealing with: gas prices he can’t control, a Congress his party is likely to lose control of, and a war he can’t end. Trump thinks he can stem the tide of bad press by getting rid of the people he believes are responsible, but the most responsible party is Trump himself. A more effective way to garner better coverage would be to stop giving us so much bad news to report.
No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading. Stay Steady, |
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