NO PRESS BRIEFING FOR YOU
And of course right after I post about Trump’s War On Media, he goes and escalates by having Sean Spicer cancel a scheduled press briefing and replace it with an informal off-camera briefing - for select media only. Among the not-invited: CNN, the New York Times, Politico, Buzzfeed and the BBC.
And of course everyone’s freaking out about the 1A and free press and democracy, and as usual the reaction - while understandable - seems overblown to me.
This Vox article has a good explanation of what’s going on here - namely, there’s a definite strategy in play here, but it may not be the one you think.
To sum up:
1. Informal off-camera press briefings with select media is nothing new.
2. Furthermore, while access is important, what those media outlets are mainly missing out on is an hour of Spiceworld spinning answers and saying something ridiculous. It’s not exactly the same thing as putting journalists in jail for reporting bad things about you (which is what actual dictators do).
3. That said, you don’t usually change from an official briefing to an informal one at the last minute - unless perhaps yr trying to make a point. Which is what Trump seems to be doing.
4. Trump’s war on the media is motivated by a number of things, starting with the vast number of leaks in his own admin. NO POTUS likes things leaking - President Obama didn’t like it either, and he was pretty harsh on whistleblowers - but Trump is taking it personally, and instead of blaming the leakers, he’s blaming the media - partly to discredit negative stories (or as Spicer calls them, “false narratives”), but also because he thrives on fighting with the media anyway. His fans eat it up and he enjoys giving them what they want. He needs a punching bag, red meat for the base, a distraction from his admin’s problems and someone to blame for them.
5. As Vox points out, the real problem with this strategy is that while it might help Trump please the fans, it won’t help him get anything done:
Picking random fights with the media won’t help the White House get anything through Congress. It won’t make FBI investigations go away. And it won’t help the administration’s arguments in the courts.
Another problem is that if the administration destroys its own credibility by waging a war on the press, it could have a hard time getting its message out later when it truly needs to - say, during a major crisis of some kind.
6. One thing I’d add is this: if the strategy of barring certain media outlets is intended to stop the “false narratives” and “fake news” that upset Trump, it’s kind of a stupid strategy. Those stories are already being written outside of the official-briefing context. Put another way, if these stories literally were “fake news”, then banning media outlets wouldn’t matter because they could just stay home and make up whatever crap they want - which he has already accused them of doing.
7. For all the dithering of this being the beginnings of dictatorship, I think that’s going to depend on what happens next. As I’ve said before, lack of govt transparency with the media has been a problem for a long, long time, and access to a spin-doctoring govt official isn't the same thing as access to the truth. And there’s no actual legal requirement for the POTUS to talk to the press. The real problems will begin if the Trump Dynasty starts actively pressuring media outlets not to run stories, or puts them in jail for doing so. The latter is a grey area when it comes to publishing classified material, but the former is a direct violation of the 1A.
And sure, we don't want to wait until it comes to that, so it’s good to put pressure on the White House and warn people of where this could lead. I just think it’s important to explain the situation factually rather than resort to OMG hysterics. That’s just me.
I hear you knockin’ but you can’t come in,
This is dF
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