November 20, 2016 | 3:31am
It’s contrary to the laws of nature
for a tabloid writer to tell the gentry media not to go berserk. It’s like a
cat telling his owner to stop coughing up hairballs or Iron Man asking Captain
America to be less arrogant. Here at The Post, our mission statement does not
include understatement. We provide journalistic Red Bull, not Sominex.
Nevertheless, a word of neighborly
advice to our more genteel media friends, the ones who sit at the high table in
their pristine white dinner jackets and ball gowns. You’ve been barfing all
over yourselves for a week and a half, and it’s revolting to watch.
For your own sake, and that of the
republic for which you allegedly work, wipe off your chins and regain your
composure. I didn’t vote for him either, but Trump won. Pull yourselves together and deal
with it, if you ever want to be taken seriously again.
What kind of president will Trump
be? It’s a tad too early to say, isn’t it? The media are supposed to tell us
what happened, not speculate on the future. But its incessant scaremongering,
the utter lack of proportionality and the shameless use of double standards are
an embarrassment, one that is demeaning the value of the institution. The
press’ frantic need to keep the outrage meter dialed up to 11 at all times
creates the risk that a desensitized populace will simply shrug off any genuine
White House scandals that may lie in the future (or may not).
Hysteria is causing leading media
organizations to mix up their news reporting with their editorializing like
never before, but instead of mingling like chocolate and peanut butter the two
are creating a taste that’s like brushing your teeth after drinking orange
juice.
Look at the bonkers reaction to
every move made by Trump’s transition team. “Firings and Discord Put Trump Team
in a State of Disarray,” ran a shrill New York Times headline, though it
took President-elect Obama three weeks to name his first Cabinet pick. “Trump
Transition Shakeup Part of ‘Stalinesque Purge’ of Christie Loyalists,” screamed NBC News.
Hysteria is causing leading media
organizations to mix up their news reporting with their editorializing like
never before.
The Huffington Post noted “Donald Trump’s
Transition Team, Or Lack Thereof, Is Causing Real Panic.” “ ‘Knife Fight’ as
Trump Builds an Unconventional National Security Cabinet,” said CNN. “Trump Transition: ‘Stalled . . .
Scrambling . . . On Pause,’ ” said CBS News.
OK, so Trump was evidently surprised
he won — possibly because he was too credulous toward The New York Times, which
gave him a 15 percent chance of doing so. Still, he has a couple of months to
assemble his team. If Trump rushed to make his picks more quickly than Obama
did, The Times would be yowling that he’s careless and impetuous.
After reports of discord and
disarray dominated the news for a day, later stories suggested that disgruntled
lobbyists who couldn’t get past the doorman at Trump Tower were leaking the
information, meaning that, as Trump tried to drain the swamp in Washington, the
media were taking the side of the swamp. (Note that reporters swooned when
President Obama promised to bar lobbyists from his circle, then shrugged when
Obama reneged.)
After Trump gave the media the slip
Tuesday night and went out for a steak, NBC harrumphed, “With his Tuesday night actions,
the Trump administration is shaping up to be the least accessible to the public
and the press in modern history.” Quite a leap there, especially considering
the wall of opacity erected by the current administration, which has been
stonewalling Freedom Of Information Act requests for years.
REALLY! LEAST ACCESSIBLE! OMG.
Once, hard-nosed city editors told
cub reporters, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Nowadays, all
that really matters is whether your mother advances what longtime New York
Times editor Michael Cieply, a 12-year veteran of that institution, called “the
narrative” — the predetermined party line that Times reporters are expected to
rigorously adhere to and find evidence for. It’s what social scientists call
“confirmation bias,” and if the Times actually cared about being seen as
impartial, it would have fired executive editor Dean Baquet in the wake of
Cieply’s revelations on Nov. 10. It didn’t.
The media are reaping what they’ve
sown, and there’s no law that says President Trump has to hold press
conferences. Trump’s behavior toward the media has been at times scary (such as
when he publicly vilified NBC reporter Katy Tur in front of a restive crowd)
and at times ridiculous (when he sends out dumb-ass tweets about the “failed New York
Times,” which is actually profitable and has gained 41,000 subscribers since
Election Day.)
If anyone should be looking at the
man in the mirror, it’s the media. The media’s approval rating hit an all-time
low of 32 percent this cycle, according to a Gallup poll in September, meaning
the fourth estate are even less loved than Trump, their favorite punching bag —
who, by the way, has 51 percent of Americans feeling more confident, against 40
percent feeling less confident, about him than they did before the election.
The past week of post-election media hysteria is apparently being heavily
discounted by the public.
Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds’
characterization of reporters as “Democratic operatives with bylines” is taking
root in the American mind. Among independents, according to Gallup in
September, the media had an approval rating of 30 percent; among Republicans
14. Almost everyone but Democrats think the media are biased, and support for
that view goes way back.
In November 2008, Washington Post
ombudsman Deborah Howell said readers who complained about shallow coverage and
pro-Obama bias were “right on both counts,” publishing tallies that proved the
paper had been far more critical of Obama’s opponent Sen. John McCain than of
Obama. A few weeks later, “Game Change” co-author Mark Halperin said the media
showed “extreme pro-Obama coverage” in a “disgusting failure.”
In 2012, The New York Times’ public
editor Arthur Brisbane said the paper “basked a bit in the warm glow of Mr.
Obama’s election in 2008” and cited a study that showed the Times’ coverage had
been far more approving of Obama than it had been of President Reagan and both
Presidents Bush.
In January 2008, NBC’s Brian
Williams was honest enough to point out that the network’s reporter covering
Obama had said, “It’s hard to be objective covering this guy.” Williams
immediately demanded the reporter be fired for admitting to being unable to do
his job.
The media should wait for something
to actually happen before it declares the end of the world.
Just kidding: Williams praised the
reporter, calling him “courageous.”
In 2016, the media didn’t even
pretend it wasn’t working in Hillary Clinton’s interests. The blue whale of
information, The New York Times, virtually signaled to the journalistic
universe that it was time to abandon all pretense of objectivity in a now-notorious front-page column on Aug. 8 that
advised journalists “you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has
been using for the better part of the past half-century” and “move closer than
you’ve ever been to being oppositional.” If that result “may not always seem
fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters,” tough tiddly-winks, Times columnist Jim
Rutenberg concluded.
In October, Baquet said Rutenberg’s
column “nailed it” and all but boasted of his paper’s hostility to Trump, in
the process making a gobsmacking claim that the lesson he learned from the
media’s heavily slanted coverage of the 2004 campaign was that they had been
unfair to John Kerry.
In fact the media were so obviously
cheering for Kerry that Newsweek assistant managing editor Evan Thomas said the
coverage was probably worth a 5-point boost in the polls for the Democrat’s
campaign.
This fall WikiLeaks confirmed
everything conservatives have been saying about the media for more than 20
years. CNN, you have been busted. You allowed Democratic Party operative Donna
Brazile to get hold of town-hall questions in advance and
help Hillary Clinton prep with them.
Note that this is not a Donna
Brazile scandal. Brazile did what every party hack is paid to do: She tried to
help her side win. This is all on you, CNN. You should have fired yourselves,
not Brazile.
John Harwood, New York Times/CNBC
reporter and Republican debate moderator, you have been busted. You asked John
Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair, for questions you could pose to Jeb Bush in
an interview.
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
columnist and longtime phony “nonpartisan” political reporter, you have been
busted. You reached out to DNC flack Eric Walker and asked for help putting
together a “Passover-themed 10 plagues of Trump” story.
Not only are you evidently an
undercover Democratic Party operative who should be drawing checks from the DNC
instead of from The WaPo, you’re a tired hack who can’t even come up with his
own column ideas without assistance.
Should the media be antagonistic to
Trump? Yes, they should be antagonistic to all public officials. Their job is
to expose bad judgment and wrongdoing, not to fawn and mewl.
That the media chose to be blasé
about Obama overriding the Constitution and making law via fiat was
reprehensible. It doesn’t mean the media are under any obligation whatsoever to
show deference to Trump should he do the same.
For the good of us all, though, and
in the interest of rebuilding the wreckage of its reputation, the media should
go back to having gradations of outrage. Switching transition chairmen isn’t
the Saturday Night Massacre, and going out for a steak without telling the hacks
isn’t on a par with, say, deleting 33,000 e-mails.
The Trump Era hasn’t even started
yet. The media should wait for something to actually happen before it declares
the end of the world.
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