On Monday, Boris Johnson’s communications people tried to exclude a few reporters from an official briefing. The rest of the reporters boycotted it.
Yesterday, Trump had an “off the record” pre-SOTU lunch reporters and anchors from the major news networks. CNN was excluded, though they’re normally invited. Of course, everyone else showed up.
Add yesterday’s lunch to reporters still traveling with Pompeo after he kicked an NPR reporter off his plane last week, and you’ll see that our press is even worse than Sky News, the Telegraph and the Sun, all of whom boycotted that London briefing. That’s a pretty damn low bar, but they’ve managed to crawl right under it.
Belafon
Pompeo would love it if none of them went along, and Fox would love being the only news network with Trump.
Keith P.
Plus this morning’s “How dare Pelosi tear up Trump’s speech!” kerfluffle
jeffreyw
Trump would like nothing better than for the major players to walk. I just wish they would stay and do their jobs.
germy
Jake Tapper sure was mad at Obama when Fox News didn’t get a front seat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I propose a money bomb for Doug Jones. He may be a long shot, but let’s make he bastards fight
download my app in the app store mistermix
@jeffreyw: I think Trump wouldn’t like it. He’d take it as a personal slight, burn up Twitter over it, and generally poop himself. Similar to what he’s doing about Pelosi ripping up his speech. He is a very thin-skinned person and a slight like that would get his attention.
mad citizen
CNN has put up extremely sycophantic Trump headlines in the last couple of days. Assumed it was just them generating the Horserace again in 2020.
germy
Trump persists in using claims that have been fact-checked repeatedly
Here’s a roundup of 31 dubious statements by the president.
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(Or they could have simply said “Trump Lied Again” in the headline, but that wouldn’t be civil.
Aardvark Cheeselog
Access whores. I think that should be the term for WH journalists going forward.
Citizen Alan
@Keith P.: I just blocked a guy on FB over that not ten minutes ago. Didn’t feel like arguing with him.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good for him. Are Manchin and Sinema the only undecideds in the caucus.
Steeplejack
I found out what the “women in white” were shouting about last night. When Trump said he wanted Congress to send him a bill lowering prescription drug costs and he would sign it immediately, they retorted with “H.R. 3!” That’s a Democratic bill that has already passed the House but, like so much else, has languished on Mitch McConnell’s desk. McConnell called it “socialist price controls.” And supposedly Trump said he would veto that anyway if it got to his desk. (Link to short Post video here.)
Hortense
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God! The White House journalists.
But seeing what they’ll do on purpose
There’s no occasion to make a purchase.
catclub
@Keith P.: I am pretty sure part of the reason she did that is that Trump routinely tears up documents handed to him, after he has used them. Are the news outlets mentioning that?
namekarB
It’s the American way. Hurrah for me and devil take the hindmost. Doncha know anything about Capitalism?
Rina99
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Absolutely. I’m going to sign up for monthly contributions as well.
Van Buren
glory b
I seem to remember that one of Trump’s ambassadors to a European country (can’t remember which one) tried to ignore a question at a news conference and move to the next one. All of the assembled journalists told him they wouldn’t ask any more questions until he answered. They sat there in silence until he stammered out an answer, I think.
hitchhiker
I remember (back when I still used facebook, like a dumbass putting money into zuckerberg’s pocket while having all my data collected and used against me) on New Years Day 2017 getting into a furious rage over images of prominent journalists hobbing and nobbing at trump’s Mar-a-Lago New Years Eve party.
What the fuck was wrong with these people?!
Why would any self-respecting adult with the critically important job of exposing corruption go and party with what even then was obviously one of the most corrupt people in the USA? And then came the months and months of “press conferences” & “briefings,” in which blatant lies would be told and allowed to stand while the team took notes and moved right on. Reporters who happened to be black or Hispanic would be treated with special contempt while the team took notes and moved right on.
The team has let us down, hard. Part of me wonders if the presence of places like this one right here aren’t functioning as a kind of steam valve — a mechanism by which the rage that ought to be channeled straight at these pathetic “reporters” is dissipated into thin air.
Yet another Haldane
It’s a conundrum, especially with the Pompeo trip. Is it really a good idea to send him off with only OANN and FOX, or no coverage at all? I don’t think so, then who would have covered Pompeo giving himself a high five about barring NPR?
But to heck with news anchors sitting down to lunch with Trump (or any President), that’s barely even stenography. Send interns.
sherparick
I remember when all the press rallied around Fox News against the Obama Administration? Not so much now with Trump, who they apparently fear.
“If you need a refresher, the incident Judicial Watch is referring to occurred in 2009, when the Washington press corps decided that they would not take a pool interview with Feinberg unless the Treasury backed off their exclusion of Fox News…” https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/07/16/138168227/new-emails-shed-light-on-2009-fox-white-house-spat
Again, it is not just Trump. The Republicans and Trump represent the majority of white people in the country, and the vast majority of the corporate suits that now run these media corporations. The Obama administration could never get anyone fired and would have been laughed at if they had tried. Now, Trump can call one of his old buddies at NBC Comcast or CBS or Disney/ABC and heads will roll. We living in illiberal, kleptocratic state, that retains democratic and republican forms, like the Roman Senate after the Empire was established.
MattF
@catclub: Also, reportedly, he’s swallowed some particularly incriminating docs. Learned that trick from his mob pals.
Raoul
Based on sycophant Nora O’Donnell and a number of others, the combo of the CNN luncheon snub and Pompeo’s exclusions of NPR is having the effect these authoritarians want (and need).
I said this here last night, and worth repeating: Journalists will not save the republic. We need frequent mass action. Unfortunately I think social media has dulled our impulses to take to the streets.
Raoul
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yup. Just dropped a C note. He’s a patriot and a gentleman.
Elizabelle
@hitchhiker:
Yup. I have long wondered about that one.
And I do not understand why more people are not in the streets. Even in small groups to start — don’t wait on some big movement that may dilute the message.
At least we can vote. And advocate. But I agree on public actions, and not just private ones.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: They are. I am thinking Schumer ought to cut them loose and let them vote however they wish (not that it will matter for their political futures, but they might feel as though it would help). At this point, it’s obvious: Trump will not be convicted and removed, not even if he went on a multi-state meth-fueled killing spree.
GoBlue72
@sherparick:
“The Republicans and Trump represent the majority of white people in the country, and the vast majority of the corporate suits that now run these media corporations.”
That fact cannot be be shouted too loudly or too often enough.
scott (the other one)
@sherparick: Spot goddamn on. Although I disagreed with their stance on the matter, and suspected it was self-interest, I still had just enough respect for the mainstream media to think that maybe, just maybe, their stance in defending their Fox colleagues was actually principled.
I know, I know. Sweet summer child. (aka dumb as a stump.)
Brachiator
Goddamn well said! Trump treats the press like shit and does everything he can to make the public see journalists as enemies of the people. He also has clearly conspired with the right wing media to deceive the country. And still the rest of the media scramble to curry favor and kiss Trump’s ass. It’s disgusting.
cintibud
I can’t help but think that a significant amount of time at the Democratic convention needs to be spent blasting the media and a significant amount of cash (Please Mr. Bloomberg) needs to be spent for ads highlight the media complicity. We really need to wage the war on both fronts.
polyorchnid octopunch
@glory b: That was the Netherlands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thIRJLsnIxY
Jay
@hitchhiker:
@Elizabelle:
there are lots of street actions taking place. Indivisible, Moms, Never Again, sit ins. Find one in your area and take part. Take part in several.
sdhays
I just don’t understand why the network anchors went to a lunch with Dump after CNN was excluded. There is absolutely no news value to it. Just unbelievably disgusting. They should be ashamed.
jonas
You’d think Trump would be more conciliatory towards the network that gave him like a billion dollars worth of unearned campaign donations by breathlessly covering every one of his bullshit rants and raves throughout 2016.
taumaturgo
It used to be called solidarity. I guess it the USA it became a bad word along with liberal and union.
GoBlue72
@cintibud: Its a challenge when the bulk of party leadership & Congresscritters is composed of upper middle class strivers who have spent their entire careers clawing up the ladder to get accepted into “the club”, just to flat-footedly arrive to find that its “the club” that is a major part of the problem.
WaterGirl
@sdhays: Someone on one of the threads called them “access whores”. That pretty much answers your question, I think.
LongHairedWeirdo
In case you’re wondering, that’s the appropriate journalistic response to a politician saying “these reporters aren’t who I want to talk to.”
Why isn’t it that way in America? The GOP practices tight access control. They won’t talk to you at all, unless you agree to give them tongue baths in your reporting. There’s enough right wing media to scoop the conventional media, and the only real hope to get the real story is to provide that coverage; so the honest media have to do what they need to do to get *any* coverage.
The price of that seems to be parroting GOP lies without any editorial context. If a Trumpie says “the clearly criminal behavior displayed by the President wasn’t at all criminal and the Democrat (sic) Party is just being partisan” no one will dare report that Trumpies say, “in the face of clear evidence,” that no wrongdoing occurred. No, they say “Honored and Respected Trumpie says it was all partisan lies, and we present this horrendous liar’s words as if they were as likely to be true as the evidence of the President’s criminality.”
It also seems to be letting the GOP people on “deep background” and such feed narratives that actually don’t make any sense – about how Democrats have to attract Trump voters, for example, or how a flubbed caucus is a horrible situation, rather than a misstep, corrected in a single day. Because why else would you have some people with at least average intelligence reporting like such *morons* about nontroversies like “the President can give his son a name, but can’t grant him a title”.
laura
It’s a doggone shame that there isn’t a current I.F. Stone to call out and shame this pack of supplicants and access whores for the damage they do to the critical need for an informed public.
Each and every one who attempts to profit with their inevitable book-like things can fuck right off.