On a good day, Donald Trump’s relationship with the media makes most celebrity divorces look amicable. He’s called the institution “the enemy of the people,” accused journalists of being “obnoxious,” and routinely describes unfavorable coverage of him as “fake news,” “lies,” or a “complete hit job.” Apparently the president reached his lifetime tolerance limit for several outlets in particular on Friday when he announced that he was effectively banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
There wasn’t a noteworthy precipitating incident. CNN did not run an especially egregious segment calling him a Cheeto-dusted Mussolini. A Politico photojournalist did not ambush him with a wildly unflattering camera angle. No MS NOW reporter threw a pair of shoes at him. When asked what prompted the decision, Trump responded like a seasoned middle school teacher who’s just announced she’s put up with her last armpit fart.
“I dislike dishonest press,” the president said at a press conference. “I think someone has the right to keep them away if they’re going to write false stories all the time… Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine. But I don’t have to let them into my- into the people’s house.”
So, embargo. That’ll show them!
Before the ban, reporters from the three outlets could sit inside the White House and report that Donald Trump is a dangerous authoritarian man-baby with tiny hands who eats democracy for breakfast. But now, the three outlets have to stand outside the White House to report that Donald Trump is a dangerous authoritarian man-baby with tiny hands who eats democracy for breakfast and also kicked them out of the White House.
This does not strike me as an award-winning PR strategy.
Before anyone mistakes this for a defense of the mainstream media: please. Trump has a bottomless list of legitimate reasons to despise the press. It sort of comes with the job. (LBJ famously joked that if he walked across the Potomac, the next day’s headline would read PRESIDENT CAN’T SWIM.)
Yes, Trump has been mocked, misrepresented, selectively quoted, breathlessly catastrophized, and treated with a level of hostility that would make the Hunger Games organizers jealous. Much of the “fake news” he complains about really has crossed the line into flat-out fiction. (If you click any one clip from this post, make it this one). And even when the facts are technically intact, the framing can be so nakedly hostile that one has to wonder how “openly rooting against the guy” can actually be classified as “reporting.”
I’m not suggesting the guy send an edible arrangement every time a reporter fabricates a story about him. Call them out. Call them liars. Make them issue a correction. Take them to court. Just maybe don’t play Oval Office bouncer. Because handing those same people a fresh grievance—and an irresistible new Trump-is-a-dictator storyline—is a magnificently lousy idea. If you believe the media is determined to make you look terrible, maybe stop gift-wrapping the material? Just a thought.
To be fair, White House access is valuable. Reporters inside the building can attend briefings, ask questions, develop sources, and observe Cabinet officials, swollen cankles, and poorly camouflaged hand bruises firsthand. But here’s the hitch: Trump can keep CNN out of the room, but he can’t keep Trump off CNN.
And now—because if somebody doesn’t file a lawsuit, did it even happen?—the trio is suing over the restricted access, accusing the administration of violating their First Amendment rights. Trump, meanwhile, insists that he absolutely cherishes the Free Press—yuge fan, nobody loves 1A more than he does, trust him—he’s just had-it-up-to-here with FAKE NEWS [emphasis his]. The trouble, of course, is figuring out where “Free Press” ends and “FAKE NEWS” begins.
Because there’s an important distinction here. If by “fake news” Trump means coverage he thinks is biased, unfair, vicious, or just spectacularly unflattering, that’s protected speech. If an outlet gets something factually wrong, it should be called out and corrected. If he believes these organizations are knowingly publishing false, defamatory statements of fact about him, he can sue them—as he has, repeatedly. That would still produce a week of “Trump attacks press freedom” coverage, obviously. But it would at least force an actual claim, actual evidence, and an actual judge into the argument, instead of letting the president appoint himself White House Hall Monitor.
Nobody is arguing that every reporter in America has a constitutional right to an Oval Office invitation or a seat on Air Force One. They don’t. Presidential proximity is a privilege and there are only so many asses you can safely allow within shouting distance of the Commander-in-Chief. The issue here is whether the First Amendment protects journalists’ right to piss off the president without losing their press passes.
The outlets are asking a federal judge to immediately restore their access while the case proceeds; a hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. While lawyers prepare to duke it out, the television networks have apparently entered the Fine, be that way phase of the dispute.
CNN was scheduled to handle television-pool coverage of Trump’s trip to New York yesterday, a task complicated somewhat by being banned from the man’s general vicinity. Ordinarily, one of the other four networks would jump in. This time, however, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News all declined to replace it. It’s actually an almost wholesome show of solidarity—albeit hardly a crippling one. Because print reporters are still covering the president. So are wire and radio correspondents, independent journalists, and podcasters. Photographers are still showing up for work. The networks remain perfectly capable of detailing Trump’s doings, they just can’t do it from a folding chair fifty feet away.
It’s the Washington equivalent of taking your ball and going home, only everyone else brought balls, too.
TRUMP: “CNN said nasty things about me so they’re not invited to my birthday party!”
TV PRESS POOL: “Oh yeah? Well then NONE of us are coming to your stupid party!”
TRUMP: “Good! You’re all nasty anyway! More cake for ME!”
TV PRESS POOL: [congregates on Trump’s lawn; continues to say nasty things]
And lest anyone mistake this particular circus for a uniquely Trumpian invention, presidential administrations have been trying to manage—and occasionally punish—the press since America’s first newspaper was shut down after one issue.
Within a week of taking office in 1993, Bill Clinton’s team had already royally ticked off the White House press corps by restricting reporters from areas they’d previously been free to roam. George W. Bush’s administration took a different tack, tightly controlling who reporters could talk to and instructing staffers not to speak to the press without authorization. In 2009, the Obama administration was openly arguing that Fox News wasn’t really a news organization and tried to exclude it from a round of network-pool interviews. (When the other networks refused to participate without Fox, officials backed down—a remarkably familiar little drama, only with the jerseys reversed.) Four years later, major news organizations protested the Obama White House for shutting independent photographers out of presidential events while distributing its own official photos instead.
So, yeah. Presidents want favorable coverage. Reporters want maximum access. Presidents complain about reporters. Reporters complain about presidents. And maybe that’s the real problem with trying to punish the press in public: it requires announcing that you are trying to punish the press in public. Trump tried to shame CNN, MS NOW, and Politico into submission. What he wound up doing is making them the protagonists in the latest episode of The President Versus Anyone Who Has Ever Used an Adjective.
And because he is Donald Trump, he did it in a way that guaranteed extensive, unflattering coverage from every other outlet, too. So congratulations to the White House: you just gave the fake-news industrial complex a motive and a megaphone.
Story at six.
Today’s poll, for folks with finicky phones (with apologies for forgetting yesterday!):
TRUMP’S MEDIA BAN IS…
long overdue.
constitutionally questionable.
perfectly pointless.
all of the above, somehow.
*unsure/other/Sorry, I’m British
“Waaaaah, we have to be in the room so we can ask snarky, loaded questions, talk over the answers, then “report” on them in the worst way possible!” We don’t loathe the press enough.
The MSM is really mad now. WaPo said they are boycotting the Whitehouse, taking their toys and going home. That will show the mean, orange man.