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Opinion: Why punishing media will backfire on Trump
Why punishing the media will backfire on Trump
Story highlights
- Errol Louis: Excluding select news outlets reflects an administration under siege
- He says news outlets have a basic obligation to point out when the President tells lies
Errol Louis is the host of "Inside City Hall," a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)The
shocking decision by press secretary Sean Spicer to bar CNN, The New
York Times, Buzzfeed, Politico and the Los Angeles Times from a news
briefing Friday signals that, for all its bluster and bravado, the Trump
White House is an administration under siege.
In
the face of the President's many public misstatements, obvious
financial conflicts of interest and troubling ties to Russia, the White
House has decided to launch an all-out attack on the news organizations
that reliably report on the administration's fables and foibles.
Expect
to see the media close ranks and fight for the public's right to
observe and report on government without fear of official retaliation.
To their credit, the Associated Press and Time walked out of Spicer's
briefing when it became clear he was trying to punish selected news
outlets.
Trump slams CNN during speech 03:18
It's reminiscent of a 2009 incident
in which the Obama White House tried to exclude Fox News from
interviewing a newly-appointed administration official, Kenneth Feinberg
-- and got a brusque reply from the bureau chiefs of ABC, CBS, CNN and
NBC that they would skip planned interviews with Feinberg unless Fox was
included.
That professional solidarity will likely reassert itself. The White House Correspondents Association has already announced plans to respond to Friday's antics.
But
don't expect Trump's unhinged attacks on media to end anytime soon. He
gave a typical rant at the Conservative Political Action Conference on
Friday.
"I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news," he said.
"It's fake, phony, fake. They have a professional obligation as members
of the press to report honestly. But as you saw throughout the entire
campaign, and even now, the fake news doesn't tell the truth."
That's
a slightly cleaned-up version of Trump's practice of calling the media
"scum" at his campaign rallies. It echoes the recent statement by
Trump's top strategist, Steve Bannon, who told the Times,
"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut
and just listen for awhile," and, "The media has zero integrity, zero
intelligence, and no hard work."
As
any seasoned reporter knows, that kind of squealing, with pointless
insults, is the sound made by politicians when the truth makes them feel
cornered and uncomfortable. Their bleating, in fact, signals that it's
time to turn up the heat.
Spicer: We have a respect for the press 00:45
And
that is what will happen. In the Trump presidency, there are too many
financial conflicts of interest to ignore, and White House efforts to
spin or suppress coverage of Russian meddling in our elections is
backfiring.
The Trump White House
is a full-employment program for investigative reporters, and they are
building an impressive, devastating body of work, thanks to a President
who routinely invents facts and utters or tweets outright falsehoods
almost daily. News outlets -- including CNN -- have a basic obligation
to point out when Trump is telling lies, and that is where the conflict
begins.
Journalists have reported
that Trump spent years promoting the lie of "birtherism" to discredit
former President Obama, which the new President has never renounced or
apologized for.
When Trump claimed
that he lost "hundreds" of friends on 9/11, columnist Mike Daly
challenged him to name one -- just one -- and never got an answer. When
he claimed to have seen "thousands" of Muslims celebrating on 9/11,
that, too, turned out to be false.
For
weeks, Trump and his aides have been claiming he enjoyed "one of the
biggest Electoral College victories in history," which is close to the
opposite of true. (He actually ranked 46th out of 58 elections).
On GPS: Trump vs. DC's career professionals 00:51
Trump
falsely claimed that intelligence agencies had no idea who tampered
with the November election, at a time when American intelligence already
knew that Russia was the culprit.
The
White House staff, too cowed to break their boss of the habit of making
things up, is stuck cleaning up the President's misstatements, plugging
leaks, and picking pointless, unwinnable fights with media
organizations.
It's a thankless,
hopeless job and will provide journalists -- and the late-night comedy
writers, our wisecracking professional cousins -- with endless
opportunities to tell a modern version of an ancient tale.
We're
chronicling, once again, a strange story about the emperor's new
clothes, and a royal court of flatterers too far gone to recognize that,
sooner or later, people will see the truth.
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