Pompeo has escalated the war against NPR by barring a different NPR reporter (Michele Kelemen) from covering his trip to Europe and Central Asia. Here’s the strongly worded statement from the State Department Correspondents’ Association:
“The removal of Michele, who was in rotation as the radio pool reporter, comes days after Secretary Pompeo harshly criticized the work of an NPR host. We can only conclude that the State Department is retaliating against National Public Radio as a result of this exchange,” Shaun Tandon, the association’s president, said in a statement.
Let’s just file that under “N” for “No Shit, Sherlock”, or perhaps “G” for “Get a Fucking Clue”, and move on.
Of course, as far as we know, every other reporter is staying on the trip. I gotta go set up my positive pressure room so I can hunker down through the coming plague that will be spread by McDonald’s Happy Meal toys and contaminated dog food, so I’ll just bullet point this one (as Mayor Pete would say):
- No major news that isn’t predictable will be generated on this trip. Sending a couple of pool reporters and photographers to transcribe the lies and cover the protests and photo ops, would keep us as informed as we need to be about this event. (cf. Jay Rosen, mutadis mutandis)
- Therefore, the right response is to send a pool and let Pompeo pack the plane with Fox News, Breitbart and similar scum, but the press won’t because of a few reasons:
- The press is addicted to “scoops” that are regularly spun off from the leaky scow that is Pompeo’s State Department. What counts as a scoop is generally a lie reported first and/or gossip that has no real news value, generated by people who would be on this trip and drunk in the hotel bar at night. The value of the scoop is to help the scoop recipients to attain the aura of a “connected insider” so they can get Twitter followers and clicks from people who give a shit about what just happened 5 minutes ago, i.e., not normal people.
- Reporters and their editors are under massive financial pressure to get clicks and eyeballs, blue checks, and all that shit, but in the current Internet environment, it’s not clear that clicks, being a “thinkfluencer”, etc. is really worth anything. The new working model for media is subscriptions and a tight paywall, and it’s not at all clear that the kind of gossipy scoops that fuel the Twitter fire translate into subscribers.
- To be fair to the media, it’s hard for competitors to join together to fight an existential thread, so if Fox gets on the plane, and predictably is the recipient of tons of bullshit “scoops”, other outlets would perceive that as a competitive loss. This ignores the fact that that Fox and mainstream media compete for a completely different set of eyeballs. Fox et. al. has a lock on ~40% of the population. The rest of the media is fighting for the other 60%.
- Whether or not the “scoops” that would be gotten on this trip would actually help the publications sending reporters on the trip, it is fucking lunacy for the press not to clap back hard at stuff like this, because it’s clear that any press outlet connected with the real world is an enemy of Trumpland, and the Trumpers will continue to pick off “lieberal” outlets like NPR whenever they need to make noise with their base. Perhaps a really strong response would help, probably not, but a weak-ass response definitely won’t do shit. So, fucking fight.
If that all makes sense or not, it doesn’t matter, because no organization venerates bullshit traditions and status quo like the DC media, and they’ve all convinced themselves that things will be back to normal once the Trump storm blows over.
In conclusion, we’re all going to die. Thank you for your time, and don’t miss the snacks on the buffet table on your way out of the auditorium.
Kay
I sort of loathe NPR, but I hope they fight this and win. The screaming, unhinged male Trumpist bullying people into submission is turning into a real problem.
I love, love, love that this low quality hire is supposedly a “diplomat”. He can’t manage his own daily workday without pitching a three day fit, let alone international relations.
Yutsano
@Kay: Normally I would root for injuries, but I would just as soon NPR drag the whole administration over the coals. It won’t shake the totebaggers unfortunately.
Kay
Haw, haw, haw.
Gross thugs.
I get that the Trumps and Trump hires are all awful, but why do people humiliate themselves by pretending to laugh at his “jokes”? Good God. Have some self respect.
ET
All news/reporters from around the world – including Fox – should now assume that the USG (at least the political part of it) is now a hostile to any and all professional questioning and act accordingly. Playing the game respectfully by assuming professional behavior on the part of politically appointees regardless of agency, makes you part of the problem. This is the latest sign that you are the enemy and not the Fourth Estate.
sdhays
I’m so old I remember that the press got the Obama White House to back down from moving Fox News out of the front row at the daily press briefings (horrors!). Are you telling me that Fox News won’t have NPR’s back over this?
Kay
@Yutsano:
Can you imagine a second term with these low rent dictators? They’re all full of themselves now, strutting around swearing and barking out orders to citizens. They’ll be unbearable.
laura
@Kay: will no news organization credibly report that he’s a ham-headed bully in a job way above his capabilities and doesn’t deign to answer any questions about matter of public concern especially if the individual questioning him is a female?
Also, on an unrelated topic, Steven Miller, skuzzy racist architect of the dismantling of all immigration except chain-migration for trump family members – how bad should I feel about myself for wishing him extreme ill- miserable, lonely death ill? He makes me think very bad thoughts about what he’s doing in our name with the support of a supine majority of the Supreme Court and what a well deserved outcome would be.
Kent
Pompeo is one of those weird Trumpers who was apparently smart at one time and spent way too much time in Evangelical MAGA land that the brain rot has become excessive. He graduated first in his class at West Point which is no mean feat, and got into Harvard Law as a non-legacy admit. So he must have had some intelligence in his youth. But shit, with the onset of the white pudgy Evangelical obesity, he has lost all of it. I don’t think he is really a faker like Senator John Kennedy from LA who has a graduate law degree from Oxford and puts on the corn pone act. I think Pompeo has truly gotten more stupid over time. I guess the brain does atrophy if you don’t use it.
Kay
It surprised me how easily they folded on the WH press conferences. They were just..cancelled, forever, and they didn’t even object.
Yutsano
@Kay: The country wouldn’t survive intact. I could see that as the Left Coast taking the final push to secession. Honestly I’m still content with Washington solving the old border arguments and joining Canada. At least Point Roberts* would be resolved.
*context
West of the Rockies
@Kent:
Piggy Pompeo has clearly been listening too long to those who tell him he’s amazing. He’s got lazy, greedy, and power hungry.
Kay
@laura:
Enraged conservative men screaming at women has become a real thread running thru the Trump years. Just gross. Get a hold of yourselves you big babies.
Baud
@Kay:
They spent all their objections on Candidate Hillary’s press conferences.
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
I think our next Democratic president should methodically undo (with fanfare) a Trumpian “achievement” every day. Restore press briefings with a clear thumb in the eye of Trump. Everyday, a new thing.
Kent
@West of the Rockies: That’s basically what Trump has been doing on a daily basis since day 1. Undoing every Obama initiative he can. And being shitty about it like overturning Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch initiative on her birthday
That was basically why he wanted to undo Obamacare. If it never had that name he probably wouldn’t have given a shit.
Mallard Filmore
@Kay:
Its because they are the Most Transparent Administration EVER. They don’t need press conferences since we already know whats going on.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Kay:
“Well when Trump is gone and everything goes back to exactly the way it was, they’ll be back,” said the chairman of the White House Correspondents’ Association in an exclusive interview with Axios.
I made that up but you know that’s what they think.
West of the Rockies
@Kent:
Exactly so. We should return serve, a Roscoe Tanner serve to the conservative groin.
Edmund Dantes
https://digbysblog.net/2020/01/and-the-war-criminal-runs-wild/
in the world of least shocking news,
of course he is going to out his former seal teammates including ones that normally don’t show their faces cause of the seal teams they are on.
catclub
to the crematorium
FIFY
JustRuss
@catclub: Is there cake?
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
Can’t some of his Point classmates dish on him? They’re not all active military by now, and surely some are actual, as opposed to self-described patriots.
SiubhanDuinne
Just in: a 7.7 quake midway between Cuba and Jamaica.
Just Chuck
Weak-ass responses is NPR’s stock in trade. They’ve normalized Trump from day 1.
Hoodie
@Kent: Pompeo graduated first in his class by majoring in engineering management, which is a basically a business degree, so discount his class rank a bit in relation to his classmates that majored in GPA-killers such as engineering, physics or chemistry. That said, he is not necessarily stupid. He’s like a lot of guys that go to the dark side because it’s more lucrative and generally requires less effort. In other words, it’s one thing to have talent and another to use it in a productive, or at least non-destructive, manner.
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
Hearing from former West Pointers would be gratifying, but maybe they’re afraid of retaliation. Maybe at 56, they’re not inclined to kick the hornets’ nest? He long has held a reputation as a thin-skinned pissant.
gene108
@Kay:
They have no idea how to handle the Trump admin, from the unending lies to the bullying to the utter shamelessness in everything they do.
From Spicers first press conference on crowd size to Sanders daily lies, I think they just gave up trying to get information from this Administration.
And are probably grateful they no longer have to deal with the daily press briefings
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@laura: Come sit next to me, friend. I have plenty of ideas you might like to consider for Miller’s sad, lonely end.
danielx
But our access…..
wvng
@Kay: watching Trump say that, sneering, with the most malevolent look on his face I think I have ever seen. Just horrifying.
chopper
and root for mechanical failures.
kindness
Why isn’t karma instant? Why can’t bad things come back to bad people right away? John Lennon wants to know.
James E Powell
@gene108:
When I read or hear this, I always respond “Pretend it’s a Clinton, then do what you always do.”
JPL
@chopper: Yup.. trump wants to be on the news and if MSM ignores one of his cabinet members his normal orange skin will turn red.
Redshift
@Kent: I sometimes imagine that Trump is a not-too-bright alien in a bad human disguise who has some kind of short-range mind control powers. It’s outlandish, but it sometimes seems like the most plausible explanation for why supposedly smart people stay doing incredibly stupid things once they’re in range.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@trollhattan:
They won’t dish on him because he graduated #1 and they all suck as people.
if it was up to me, the service academies would be razed and officers would be developed via ROTC programs and mustang promotions.
rikyrah
@Kay:
simply disgusting
Shalimar
I learned from the Netanyahu thread that the Middle East peace plan will be announced soon. If Pompeo is travelling around to sell it, we could get some nice, diplomatically worded Fuck Offs from various countries. That seems worth covering.
James E Powell
@Kay:
Remember in 2000 when the George W Bush campaign said they would refuse to answer any questions about GWB’s “youthful indiscretions” and drug abuse? The entire press/media agreed not to ask any such questions.
Shalimar
@laura: Steven Miller might be the worst person in this administration, but he will lose his power when Trump is gone. If you want to be evil and wish horrible deaths on people, the federalist members of the Supreme Court would most benefit the nation.
Yutsano
@Shalimar: Remember how Justice Roberts had a questionable health history because of seizures? I haven’t heard much about that lately.
Quaker in a Basement
Pompeo is going to Ukraine on this trip, right?
Can’t wait to find out how explains “Do you think Americans care about (expletive) Ukraine?”
A Ghost To Most
“In conclusion, we’re all going to die”.
Yup. I have no intention of dying in fear, or in a cage. YMMV.
Omnes Omnibus
@A Ghost To Most: Yes, you are the bravest person to ever post at Balloon Juice. Congratulations.
Gretchen
Jim Acosta advised that NPR do what he did when banned from a trip. Bought his own ticket and got press credentials from the French government so he got in anyway.
Sab
@Gretchen: Does that work in the Muddle East or Central Europe? France is happy to piss off Pompeo and Trump. Other countries might be a bit more wary.