Why 45 is the Now-Martyred Media’s Fault

“What you don’t do can be a destructive force.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Feel bad for the media kicked out of the press briefings by that brain trust in White House?

Don’t waste your time.

Press briefings are a loss leader. The White House — in any administration — pretends the press has access, while at the same time, making sure the press learns nothing. Interns with recording devices should cover press briefings.

As for Breitbart still being allowed in, good place for them — keeps them off the streets away from decent people.

Important stories do not germinate in press briefings. Once a week, Teddy Roosevelt talked to a handful of reporters — his “newspaper cabinet” — who stood around while he got a shave. These little bull sessions were more about keeping them on his side than anything else.

Not much has changed except the venue.

Woodward and Bernstein did not break Watergate, soon to be the second biggest scandal in Presidential history, in a press briefing. They worked the phones, drank cheap scotch in dark corners of seedy D.C. bars, and cooled their heels in an underground parking lot.

Woodward and Bernstein broke Watergate by working; with help of Time, The Washington Post, and The New York Times who were also on the job.

These were not columnists — everyone wants to be a star — they were shamus-first, writer second. There primary work was finding and proving the story with textbook, step-by-step journalism. Breaking the story came later.

And that is work.

During the 2016 Presidential election, the press didn’t work.

For two years, they stood collectively in a glass box swirling with stories, like one of those 1950s game shows with the $100 bills, just there for the taking.

Instead they moved zombie-like from one non-story to another, like emails, doing little more than regurgitate tropes and gossip.

Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State just a few months before, stood up and said Russia was engaged in espionage against the United States in the form of interference (not “meddling,” a word choice which, in itself, editorializes and softens the action) in our elections and…nothing.

But the press slept through the election, as evidenced by the White House’s current resident and yet now, “suddenly,” they are woke.

Why? Because he’s going after them.

A madman castigates them en masse on Twitter — with such speed that it seems he’s going to blow his Spacely Sprockets and reveal that he was just a robot with “Made in Manchuria” slapped across his sagging ass all along— and the press are ablaze with righteous indignation.

Even George W. Bush is defending the media in his familiar ass backwards way by saying that the press is there to protect America from people like him. Speaking of those epic Fourth Estate misses, he gets it even if they don’t.

In this country — in any country — “Freedom of the Press” is more than a concept, it is our only true fail safe. The system of checks and balances built into the government by our Founding Fathers’ branch concept, is vulnerable as branches are.

Only a free press can truly protect a country and while, on occasion, they may have loathed it, they never wavered about the press’ importance.

In a letter from Paris in 1789 — tough times in Paris, the greedy guillotine’s blade shivering as it dropped savagely, inexorably— Thomas Jefferson defended America’s free press even as he maligned it for erroneously hurting what was, in his opinion, an honest public servant.

*“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. To the sacrifice, of time, labor, fortune, a public servant must count upon adding that of peace of mind and even reputation.”

Ensuring a free press is our collective fight but we might have more impetus to have their back, if they had ours; the last two years in particular. From the day 45 suggested he might run, and certainly when he officially declared his candidacy, the press should have been relentless.

Once Trump won the primary, they should have been dogged in demanding his taxes, outing his ties to Russia, exposing a multitude business conflicts and past proved racism, as well as a host of other issues, not the least of which is that he lacked any ability to run a country.

A few journalists tried. But for the most part, the press just let it roll over them then yammered some more about emails and Bernie Sanders supporters’ disenchantment with Hillary Clinton.

Why, because they did not take Trump seriously? Because they never thought he could win?

No, it’s far more nefarious than that.

The press took him very seriously. With a gimlet eye the media looked past the buffoon, past the mentally ill, narcissist and saw: a cash cow.

A Trump Presidency gave them visions, visions of a lush, steady torrent of ad revenue for four years, maybe less, possibly more.

News, after all, is not about news, new is about money and has been for decades. Now the media has what they wanted: ratings, numbers, viewers, clicks, whatever calibration one wants to use to measure their success.

In the bargain, they get to look like maligned martyrs. It’s quite a deal.

This is not paranoia. That the media is about money is a concept so old it needs a scooter to get around.

In 1987 the plot of, “Broadcast News,” a popular film loosely based on the life of an acquaintance, CBS’ brilliant producer Susan Zirinsky, was that news outlets had already traded in their integrity for profit.

And “Broadcast News,” lest we forget, came eleven years after Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky’s seminal, “Network.”

The truth came to me in a more personal, painful way.

I had the chance to work for a talented television news writer I admired. A woman considered by many — mostly those who didn’t know her — to be a Paragon of Journalistic Integrity.

PJI had become famous for biting the hand that fed her; for humorously pointing out, in an extremely well-written way, that the news industry had long since sold out, sacrificing integrity and a good story for money.

One morning PJI shuffled into the office and announced that we were going to do a segment showing young people how easily the news, in this case television, could be manipulated.

Well, Hell, this is why I left a state, job, “person,” and friends I loved, to come work for Paragon of Journalistic Integrity!

At her command, I called her old television news station — a busy, highly rated and regarded metro local — who kindly obliged to let us shoot the piece there.

Red carpet down, they covered “a story” just for us, one that would resonate with our young audience. This fluff piece could get lost in the typical quaintness of a noon newscast without anyone really noticing, but it was something they would never have otherwise covered.

PJI instructed them how to shoot it in ways that different conclusions could be drawn, depending on what the viewer saw. After a few nights at the Four Season’s in Georgetown, we headed home with our “footage;” the story as it aired and the principles interviewed.

In editing, PJI proceeded to eviscerate the station. Instead of this being a joint effort to help educate kids about news, with several people doing her a solid, I watched as she turned it into a story about how the television station manipulated the “news story.”

Stunned, as much by irony of the entire episode as the lack of integrity in what she was doing, I told her it was wrong — and really wrong.

“They wanted to do this,” said PJI, nastily.

“No,” I correct her, “They wanted to help you teach kids about the subjective nature of news.”

PJI banished me from the edit booth, shaking her head at her dim-witted partner as if I was the idiot.

The fall out was horrible. After it aired, the publicity caused an inevitable raft of demotions and firings at the local station, including the firing of one of America’s few women news directors.

This did not seem to bother PJI, who was famous for her feminism, although the only rights I ever saw her worry about were her own.

For days, I tried to field furious letters and calls from the station’s aggrieved but their pleas for a retraction or, at least, a clarification were ignored.

I’m still embarrassed by my part in the debacle.

A few months later the George Foster Peabody Award Committee, legendary sentinel of journalistic quality, called to say PJI had won a Peabody for the piece; the fake piece that got good people fired.

When I told her she grabbed me, asking if I was kidding. I hoped this meant she knew she was wrong all along, but no. It was April Fool’s Day and she was just afraid a friend was playing a trick on her.

That award, in large part, turned what was supposed to be a few specials, into a series that ran for decades and is precisely the kind of “journalism,” that brought you Donald Trump.

Had she edited the piece properly, as a joint effort at education, instead of as a reporter “bravely” “catching” a news organization in the act of manipulating a story — again, for her — it would have been a nice little piece that did not win one of journalism’s biggest prizes.

Had Trump lost, we would have a solid, steady, quiet Clinton Presidency. Republicans would still be nattering on about emails and they would have obstructed her every order and nomination, no matter how sane and well-reasoned, but it would be safe.

Instead, media conglomerates have the train wreck from which subscribers can’t seem to turn away and that means money, baby, and loads of it.

With a little digging, when the press could have saved us, they might have learned there was a reason Trump kept insisting that if he lost, it was because the election was rigged.

They might have learned a little bit more about Russia…helping rig the election.

The New York Times’ new ad campaign, too little, too late and worse, cringe worthy, states: “The truth is hard. The truth is hard to find. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important now than ever.”

The truth is none of those things.

But you can be sure of one thing, you won’t hear much of it tonight in Trump’s address; an address we should never have had to endure.

Protect the press, yes, at all cost as Jefferson wrote. But in return we must demand it earn that devotion by doing its job — protecting our country by uncovering the truth instead endangering it by evading the truth.

-30-

• https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-09-02-0209
• Addendum 1: https://medium.com/@deborahdiclementi/the-media-grows-their-fatted-cash-cow-more-bigly-d33292e134dd
• Addendum 2: After reading the #JointSession speech and perusing #Twitter, it’s fascinating that the media, like @KatyTurNBC, @anannavarro, and @VanJones68 are calling the speech #Presidential, continuing to keep that bar nice and low so they can cover their cash cow.
• 45 spewed the same venom, the same abject lies about his plans — plans designed to hurt Americans and our environment — that he has been spewing all along, just in a less mad tone because someone wrote him a speech and kept him on the Teleprompter.
• That’s not #Presidential, kids; that’s upping the dosage. Just keep protecting him #media, keep protecting your cash cow. ~~@dd733.