Media dish it out, but can’t take it Declare war on Trump and expect him to play nice
“We are bullied and browbeaten every day, and I pretty much have had enough of it. It’s undermining the Fourth Estate, it’s undermining the First Amendment.”
— Brian Karem, White House reporter for the Sentinel newspapers. Boo-freakin’-hoo. Playboy correspondent Brian Karem (that’s not a lifestyle observation — Karem actually writes for Playboy magazine too) can moan about mean ol’ Donald Trump’s “Fake News” namecalling and how it “speaks to dissolving the independent media,” but he won’t find many shoulders to cry on.
That’s because, unlike the press, most Americans can tell the real news from the fake: The bullying media have declared war on Donald Trump, and now they’re banging their sippy cups because he has the unmitigated gall to fight back.
You want to talk bullying? A study by the conservative Media Research Center found that more than half of all recent evening news coverage of the Trump presidency was on the Russia story alone — 353 minutes. That’s compared to 5 minutes of coverage on the economy and jobs.
The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy — at Harvard’s Kennedy School, no less — found that Trump’s coverage in his first 100 days was 80 percent negative.
Is anybody surprised? Of course not. Any more than we’re surprised that a CNN producer was caught on tape admitting the network’s Russia coverage is a “big nothing burger” and largely motivated by ratings. Hardly breaking news.
What is news is a Republican who’s willing to punch back. Trump’s not necessarily doing so wisely or well (his Twitter feed is a Freudian nightmare), but Republicans — like Samuel Johnson once said of woman preachers — are surprised to find it done at all. And now we learn that liberal journalists have a glass jaw.
After decades of bashing Republicans and conservatives, the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” crowd is crying like a kid who got pushed off the monkey bars over a few presidential tweets.
These are the same reporters who love giving themselves awards (Pulitzers, Peabodys, Polks) honoring their own bravery on behalf of the republic.
At the Peabodys this year, host Rashida Jones said, “We’ve seen journalists attacked as the enemy of the people ... and a straight-up disregard for democracy.” In March, Marvin Kalb of the aforementioned Shorenstein Center bemoaned “President Donald Trump’s troubling, and at times frightening, relations with the American press.”
Frightening? What happened to Dan Rather’s “courage”? If this really is, as John Avlon wrote in the Daily Beast, “Our Murrow Moment,” how about showing some man-parts?
Nothing is worse than a whiny bully. In the media, Trump is regularly called a fascist, racist and homophobe — and that’s just CNN’s Chris Cuomo throwing to the break. And now we get lectures on how free speech itself is endangered by Trump mocking CNN as the “Fake News Network”?
Last month a Mexican journalist who covers the cartels was gunned down outside his newspaper’s offices. Days earlier, the body of a Russian reporter was found in his backyard with five bullet wounds. Since 1992, more than 1,200 journalists have been killed on the job, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
That’s what an assault on independent journalism looks like. Meanwhile we’ve got reporters screaming in outrage about the future of the Fourth Estate because Sarah Huckabee Sanders played a mean video in the press room.
Real profiles in courage . . .