It is difficult to decide which spectacle was more amusing this weekend: watching President Trump address the CIA to complain about the National Park Service’s Twitter account or reading an open letter from journalists declaring new rules for coverage of the 45th president.
At first I thought it was a joke. Because adversaries do not reveal strategies to each other. Unless the strategy is terrible.
Let’s set aside the introduction to the open letter, which restates recent historical events that, while egregious, were unimportant to the President’s voters and not a secret to the President’s opponents. Let’s also set aside the question of whether or not President Trump cares about what your new rules are for coverage of his presidency. Based on the behavior you describe in the opening paragraphs, it is clear he does not, or if he does, it is only insofar as the new rules will serve as a guide to remind how to continue to humiliate the press. Because as you remind him:
It is, after all, our airtime and column inches that you are seeking to influence. We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners, and viewers.
Right. No one remembers the cable news networks broadcasting his every tweet under a “BREAKING NEWS” banner (since everyone looks to cable news to learn about what is happening on Twitter, right?). No one remembers CNN hiring the President’s former campaign manager while the campaign manager was still on the candidate’s payroll. Because President Trump is seeking to influence airtime and column inches and it is the media that determines how best to serve its readers, listeners and viewers. Got it.
Access is preferable, but not critical. You may decide that giving reporters access to your administration has no upside. We think that would be a mistake on your part, but again, it’s your choice. We are very good at finding alternative ways to get information; indeed, some of the best reporting during the campaign came from news organizations that were banned from your rallies. Telling reporters that they won’t get access to something isn’t what we’d prefer, but it’s a challenge we relish.
Assuming that by “access is preferable but not critical” you do not unintentionally mean that you prefer access and it will not be critical of those to whom you seek access.
Of course not! Remember, the political press was unable to unearth President Trump’s taxes, unable to uncover his business ties, unable to decipher that so much of the campaign news it regularly reported was part of a propaganda campaign by a foreign government. And the press was unable to do any of this while not attending any Trump press conferences between July 2016 and January 2017, while simutaneously complaining that Hillary wasn’t holding press conferences. And then didn’t get to ask a single question of the new press secretary at the first press conference after the election. Can’t wait to read the first bombshell produced by this group.
Off the record and other ground rules are ours—not yours—to set. We may agree to speak to some of your officials off the record, or we may not. We may attend background briefings or off-the-record social events, or we may skip them. That’s our choice. If you think reporters who don’t agree to the rules, and are shut out, won’t get the story, see above.
This seems promising, from the group who regularly publishes entire stories full of “anonymous sources tell XYZ” and “speaking on the condition of anonymity.” If the business model of media is broken (and it is not, there is no shortage of incredible media available on the internet. It is just the old business model of ad-subsidized-monthly-subscription-to-print-newspapers business model that is broken), a huge reason for it is because of the desire of readers to consume actual reporting, analysis and insight, not rumors and conjecture served by anonymous political hacks with an axe to grind. We see through it immediately. We know you live for off-the-record.
We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates. We will strive to get your point of view across, even if you seek to shut us out. But that does not mean we are required to turn our airwaves or column inches over to people who repeatedly distort or bend the truth. We will call them out when they do, and we reserve the right, in the most egregious cases, to ban them from our outlets.
This is just flat wrong. Have you heard of Twitter? Facebook? Snapchat? There is an endless number of ways for anyone to tell a story without using the traditional media (and again, some of you have paid staff members of the campaigns on your staffs. “Strive to get your point of view across.” Good one!
We believe there is an objective truth, and we will hold you to that. When you or your surrogates say or tweet something that is demonstrably wrong, we will say so, repeatedly. Facts are what we do, and we have no obligation to repeat false assertions; the fact that you or someone on your team said them is newsworthy, but so is the fact that they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Both aspects should receive equal weight.
I was with you until the last sentence. Does anyone agree that the lie and the truth should receive equal weight? Which is a weird thing to say after the immediately preceding sentence states you have no obligation to repeat false assertions. Especially when your entire business model is based on not only repeating the false assertion, but repeating it and repeating it and repeating it with so many “experts” (read: campaign surrogates) without ever trying to determine if there is an objective truth and if so, what it is.
We’ll obsess over the details of government. You and your staff sit in the White House, but the American government is a sprawling thing. We will fan reporters out across the government, embed them in your agencies, source up those bureaucrats. The result will be that while you may seek to control what comes out of the West Wing, we’ll have the upper hand in covering how your policies are carried out.
Is this a new rule? Or are you acknowledging you haven’t previously been doing this?
We will set higher standards for ourselves than ever before. We credit you with highlighting serious and widespread distrust in the media across the political spectrum. Your campaign tapped into that, and it was a bracing wake-up call for us. We have to regain that trust. And we’ll do it through accurate, fearless reporting, by acknowledging our errors and abiding by the most stringent ethical standards we set for ourselves.
Yes. We believe you. After bragging that Trump may not be good for America but is good for CBS and while CNN completed a hall of fame year, booking $1 billion in profits. Maybe the distrust in media came from giving Trump 234 minutes of coverage to Bernie’s 10 minutes? Seriously, this was CNN’s most profitable year ever. Why would you change your standards now?
We’re going to work together. You have tried to divide us and use reporters’ deep competitive streaks to cause family fights. Those days are ending. We now recognize that the challenge of covering you requires that we cooperate and help one another whenever possible. So, when you shout down or ignore a reporter at a press conference who has said something you don’t like, you’re going to face a unified front. We’ll work together on stories when it makes sense, and make sure the world hears when our colleagues write stories of importance. We will, of course, still have disagreements, and even important debates, about ethics or taste or fair comment. But those debates will be ours to begin and end.
Promising. But no one said “boo” when President Trump called CNN “fake news” at his first press conference in six months. Something tells me if you’re getting the same silent treatment again, competing news organizations will be right back to clawing at each other for whatever scraps of stories can be dug up.
We’re playing the long game. Best-case scenario, you’re going to be in this job for eight years. We’ve been around since the founding of the republic, and our role in this great democracy has been ratified and reinforced again and again and again. You have forced us to rethink the most fundamental questions about who we are and what we are here for. For that we are most grateful.
And so is President Trump. For the $5 billion in free advertising you gave him (remember, the traditional media business model is broken. This could be why).
The only rule the media needs to remember during the Trump presidency: he doesn't need you.
But we do.