The cost of sucking up to a dictator is that hardly anyone feels sorry for you when the dictator turns on you.
The mainstream media are learning that right now.
Donald Trump’s regime recently banned three networks from the White House – an autocratic move that was soon blocked in court. But the regime is still keeping CNN off its TV pool, in which networks share duties to cover the president’s public activities. Trump constantly finds new ways to undermine a free press.
By being timid bystanders as Trump and his cadre of liars have assaulted their profession for more than a decade, many journalists have not only enabled this terrible behavior, they’ve volunteered to be victims.
Last year, Trump restricted the Associated Press’ White House access because it called the Gulf of Mexico by the name it’s had for four centuries instead of using Trump’s invented name, the “Gulf of America.” The AP sued and won a preliminary injunction, but the overall reaction from the news industry was underwhelming.
Trump called female reporters “Piggy,” “ugly,” “dumb,” and “stupid,” and the White House press corps did little to defend their colleagues.
Trump and his minions have repeatedly lied to reporters, and instead of treating that dishonesty as an insult to themselves and their audiences, journalists have found cutesy ways to minimize it, such as saying Republicans are “untethered to truth” and show “a penchant for dispensing with the facts.” When regime figures go on TV news shows and lie repeatedly, the hosts thank them for their time and invite them back.
After the regime threatened networks’ broadcast licenses and raided the home of a Washington Post reporter, the White House Correspondents’ Association invited Trump to be the honored guest at its annual dinner. It’s as if the journalists wore “kick me” signs over their tuxedos and gowns, inviting further abuse.
And indeed they got it. About a month after NBC’s Kristen Welker was caught on video laughing with ethnic cleansing czar Stephen Miller at the dinner, Trump became furious at her for accurately stating that his midterms endorsements had mixed results. He called for her to face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission.
Trump feels emboldened to disrespect the press because the press disrespects itself. I’m not saying Trump would suddenly be nice to the news media if they got tougher with him. I’m saying his abuse would be less effective if they put up a united front to defend press freedom and obvious truths. There are ways to do that, such as more aggressive questioning, sticking up for targeted colleagues, and refusing to sip champagne with fascists.
They also must avoid legal settlements with Trump in the vein of the $15 million paid by ABC and the $16 million that CBS forked over after the 2024 election. Those deals signaled weakness and encouraged him to sue other outlets.
I don’t blame the frontline reporters for media submissiveness as much as I blame their editors and producers who are often unknown to the public but are really calling the shots. Corporate media would rather stay out of Trump’s crosshairs than show courage. But for democracy to function, the press need to demand access to public information, not hope for a shower of crumbs from the regime.
There are some signs of pushback, but they’re rare.
ABC, whose shows “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The View” have come under the regime’s regulatory assault, sued the FCC on First Amendment grounds. It also launched a public appeal for viewers to make their objections known to the agency. More of this, please.
Trump’s ban on CNN, MSNOW, and Politico prompted the outlets to sue, and the WHCA joined the case. A judge quickly ordered their access restored, at least for now.
The other networks involved in the White House TV pool initially showed some backbone in support of CNN. ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC refused to do pool duty until CNN’s access was restored. But the judge’s ruling did not explicitly order CNN’s reinstatement, and the White House left the network off Air Force One over the weekend. Sunday was Fox’s turn to serve as the TV pool, and they took it.
The networks’ decision-making on whether to skip the pool appears to be day-to-day, but the New York Times said they see a continued boycott as “untenable.”
That would leave CNN on the outside, at least in the short term, while other major media outlets put their “kick me” signs back on.
This week’s media atrocity
The New York Times wrote another story about former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the weekend as part of major media’s campaign to make him seem like a credible presidential candidate when he isn’t. Is he calling in decades’ worth of favors from the press? Or is something else at work? The NYT story, like many others, ignores the damning issue that Chicagoans know well: the police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and Emanuel’s shameful role in the case. Under his leadership, the city of Chicago tried to cover up a murder.
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I stopped watching the Sunday news shows given the amount of blatant lying & outright propaganda from GOP/trump talking heads. My eyes were in a perpetual state of rolling in disbelief. 🙄 60-Minutes? Dead to me. ☠️
Mark, this is right, and the problem is bigger than any one dinner or pool decision.
I went looking for evidence that national journalism groups, the WHCA, or journalism schools have organized anything sustained over the past decade to back each other up against the lying, the insults, and attacks on the press. The best example I found is from 2018, when the Boston Globe organized more than 350 papers to run editorials on the same day defending press freedom. That was a show of unity. I can't find anything comparable since, even as the attacks have gotten worse.
Since then, it's mostly letters and statements after each escalation. Six journalism groups and 430-plus journalists had to petition the WHCA to use its own dinner to defend press freedom. Retired journalists had to do it again in July. The big newsrooms signed a joint statement only last week, after three networks were barred from the White House.
Outsiders and retirees keep pushing the institutions that should be leading. A profession under a decade-long assault should be running sustained coordination, not a one-day campaign every few years.
Journalism schools should be teaching this too.
The Democratic Party has its own record of thin responses to a decade of material. But the press is supposed to be the institution that names a lie as a lie, and it is still deciding whether to do that.