I.F. Stone, by Rowland Scherman

On the Media –  
By Glynn Wilson - 

There is a groundswell of public sentiment on social media that perhaps the White House press corps should run a boycott on Trump.

Before we go any further, let me make it clear up front that this is never going to happen, for economic reasons if nothing else. But for the sake of argument, let’s talk about it.

In the Saturday New York Times, the paper’s media columnist Jim Rutenberg talked about it. He failed to mention or flesh out the key reason it will never happen (the money).

But go ahead and read it, if you can afford to pay for a subscription.

Should the Press Boycott Trump?

Let me summarize a few key points for those who can’t or won’t pay for it.

The reason it is being talked about at all is because of a contentious press conference last week in which the president got into a public fight with CNN “star” Jim Acosta, one of the network’s White House correspondents.

I’m sure most of my readers have already seen all the news on Facebook about this, even if they were not watching when it happened live, as I was. So there’s no need to go into all the details about that, except to remind everyone that the White House revoked Acosta’s press credentials, meaning he will not be able to get into the White House or on Air Force One so he can do his job — getting daily head shots in the room while covering what the president is saying and doing, all of which is on Twitter anyway.

Rutenberg described it as a “catch-22.”

“Reporters could stage a group protest. But that would make them look like they’re at war with the president, just as he always says they are. Or they could do nothing and effectively ‘submit to his authority to determine who gets to hold him accountable’…”

Rutenberg’s column focused mainly on how to get Acosta’s press pass back. Not about how to counter Trump’s strategy of weakening the power of the press to hold him accountable and to make his power grow. There’s nothing about how the U.S. government itself and American democracy are being mortally damaged by nearly everything Trump says and does, including attacking the press as “the enemy of the people.”

It is written as “inside baseball” for national press insiders, not the mass public. But for those engaged members of the public, mainly on the left, they might learn a thing or two about how the American press works by reading it. Yet they will still be left confused. There are some good lines, like this one:

“…in bringing a reporter’s notebook to a knife fight, the White House press corps has seemed overmatched in parrying attacks from a man who flummoxed rivals with catchy sobriquets like Low Energy Jeb, Lyin’ Ted and Crooked Hillary.”

He says political strategists “have more experience with this kind of thing than newspaper editors or journalism professors,” but I disagree.

As a long time journalist, editor and journalism professor, I’ve got some better ideas (see below).

Rutenberg quotes Stephanie Cutter, a Democratic strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John Kerry.

“He’s Swift-Boating you guys,” Cutter said, referring to “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” a group that undermined one of Mr. Kerry’s strong points, his stellar war record in Vietnam during the campaign in 2004.

The false accusations presented the Kerry campaign with a classic campaign dilemma. To address them, even to dispute them, would only call more attention to them. And letting them go unmet would let them fester. (Mr. Kerry ultimately responded, but some Democrats complained after his loss that he did so too late.)

In the case of Acosta, the White House ran with the false claim that he placed “his hands” on a young aide who sought to take his microphone away as he (verbally) clashed with Mr. Trump. Everyone by now has probably already seen the doctored video being shown on Fox News, talked about on Rush Limbaugh, and promoted as “truth” by Breitbart News.

Cutter’s advice for the press was to “starve the president’s attacks of attention and keep the focus on the issues.”

“They don’t need to cover a man who is picking fights with them for the purpose of turning out his base,” she said. “It should be about the Justice Department and trying to thwart the Russia investigation.”

Too late. The incident was already all over social media, with Democrats who watch CNN siding with Acosta, and Trump’s fans who watch Fox siding with the president. The incident just became another partisan and divisive distraction. In other words, another win for Trump.

Rutenberg goes on to quote other so-called experts, some calling for some kind of a boycott, some not.

One Republican even said, I kid you not: “Show the office of the presidency the respect it deserves.”

Enough of that.

I could care less at this point about “the office of the presidency.” The current occupant doesn’t care a whit about that. Why should we?

It is worth noting that Rutenberg started his news career as a “gossip stringer” for a New York tabloid. Now he just gossips about the press in the Times.

As for Acosta, unless CNN fires him, he will find another way to cover the White House without actually being in it. He can stand outside in the rain or put up a fake picture of the White House in the background on the screen and say whatever he was going to say anyway about what Trump said on Twitter today. He can shout questions at Trump across the White House lawn and look like a fool, which has never stopped anyone on TV who covers Trump, or any president for that matter. Ronald Reagan made fools out of them on a regular basis while they were doing just that.

Acosta flew to Paris on his own dime and showed himself there with the Eiffel Tower behind him. Everything Trump said he could pull right out of his email feed anyway and read it on the air.

This is not what the public should care about, unless they are just big “fans” of Acosta.

Personally, I stopped paying attention to CNN a long time ago, when it just became painfully clear that the talking heads were going to get every story wrong at first trying to keep little old ladies glued to the screen until real information came in. Take the example of the Supreme Court ruling on the individual mandate under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, in June, 2012.

They literally misinterpreted the ruling for the longest time, until an AP reporter finally got a story written about it for the wires. They never ran an actual correction, just changed their tune in the way they covered it. “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart had a field day that night making fun of it.

While it would be entertaining if the entire White House press corps would stage a walkout during a Trump press conference, I don’t see how that would make a real difference. I think they should do it just for the hell of it. It would make a cool viral video and go crazy on Facebook and Twitter.

Maybe MSNBC could get Michael Moore credentialed. I would like to see him question Trump.

But what’s important to remember is that there are plenty of news reporters in Washington and around the country who are writing about the corruption of this administration without going anywhere near the White House.

Hey, I’ve been in the White House myself, obtaining a . If I had run into Trump, I would have slammed him with a tougher question than anyone in this White House press corps has ever asked. But I didn’t need to go there to write 386 stories about Trump over the past three years.

Perhaps it would help to remind readers of a dogged investigative reporter in Washington who probably never entered the White House.

Older readers might remember the name I.F. Stone, who for years published I.F. Stone’s Weekly, which was ranked in 16th place among “The Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century” by New York University’s journalism department in 1999, and in second place among print journalism publications.

Stone once said:

“I made no claims to ‘inside stuff’. I tried to give information which could be documented, so [that] the reader could check it for himself … Reporters tend to be absorbed by the bureaucracies they cover; they take on the habits, attitudes, and even accents of the military or the diplomatic corps. Should a reporter resist the pressure, there are many ways to get rid of him. … But a reporter covering the whole capital on his own — particularly if he is his own employer — is immune from these [political] pressures.”

The New York Times will never boycott Trump. It fashions itself as the “newspaper of record” for American government, and to do its job, that requires “access” to those in power. If they have to kiss Trump’s ring a little to keep their access, you can bet your bottom dollar they will bow down and do it. You can take that to the bank from someone who used to work for them.

Back in 2007, on my last trip to New York, I toured the new New York Times building after meeting with Joe Conason at The Nation Institute for Investigative Reporting, for which I produced this story: A Whistleblower’s Tale. (Doug Jones is quoted in this story, by the way).

That night, in a bar across the street, I ended up having drinks with a travel writer for the Times. During our conversation, he reminded me of something I already knew.

“The New York Times IS the establishment, man,” he said. “What do you expect?”

In other words, it is not an alternative weekly. It might take on a president in a crisis, but otherwise, the presses roll right on and the money keeps on rolling in. Make no mistake about it. They won’t do anything to jeopardize that.

The Washington Post is too, to a great extent. A Post reporter got kicked off Trump’s plane back during the campaign in 2016, but I’m sure they have a reporter in the White House now. Any other news reporter elevated by any news organization to cover the White House from inside the building would lose their jobs overnight if they did something to piss off somebody and lose their access.

Once again, if I’ve said this once I’ll say it a thousand times more, the primary purpose of mainstream, corporate news reporters — all those who work for newspapers, magazines and TeeVee news shows you love to watch so much — is not about holding politicians or government officials accountable or making government and democracy work. Their jobs are to make money for the name brand corporations that pay their salaries.

If on occasion you get an investigative report from a newspaper or a TV news reporter willing to stand up to a corrupt politician on camera, consider that a gift — and consider paying something for it. As long as this is a primarily capitalist country, that’s the way it is, as Walter Cronkite used to say on CBS.

Everything else is sensational clickbait.

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