You know what I'd love to see? I mean, don't hold your breath on this, but I think it would go a long way to healing wounds both in the country as a whole, but especially between the White House and the press. If we could get, I don't know, say 100 plus newspapers or something, to all get together and publish editorials admitting that they gave President Obama a pass when they probably shouldn't have, and yes they're attacking President Trump in ways they would never have even dared in the previous administration. Just admit that, and then maybe we could move forward in honesty.
Maybe the press would have a rebirth in credibility. Heck, maybe the Trump administration would stop calling you "Fake News."
Well, 100 plus newspapers have actually gotten together to make a coordinated statement that will be published in three days. But instead of making any kind of attempt at healing wounds, they've actually decided to do the exact opposite. Led by the Boston Globe, over 100 papers will designate August 16th to attack the President's attacks on them. I'm sorry, but the media in this country gets even more clueless and out of touch by the second. I didn't think it was possible, but they're actually getting dumber.
Now, do I like it when the President attacks the media? Of course not. But the media hasn't done themselves any favors here. They must think we're too stupid to recognize the difference between what Trump has said about the media and what Obama actually did to them. In 2009 Brenda Lee, a reporter with White House press credentials, was dragged away from the press area by the Secret Service for asking the President about traditional marriage. Was there a joint discussion among the media to support reporters in the White House press pool? In 2015 the Obama State Department kicked a conservative journalist out of an Iran nuke deal event for apparently nothing more than being a conservative journalist. Did you ever hear about a media-wide support campaign for the Obama administration not to silence the press?
No one's gonna care if the media suddenly has their feelings hurt.
And those were just the minor cases of attacks on the press. The Obama Justice Department launched an all-out war on the media. They seized phone records from reporters at the Associated Press. They put Fox News reporter James Rosen on surveillance, tracking his movements and seizing his personal emails. Can you imagine if Trump did that today to Jim Acosta? The media would be calling for impeachment. But they barely lifted an eyebrow to eight years of being pushed around, silenced and - in the case of Ben Rhodes and the Iran Deal - straight up lied to and turned into a propaganda machine.
No one's gonna care if the media suddenly has their feelings hurt. I don't like what the President says about the media, in fact, I hate it. But I also hate their blatant one-sided reporting and lack of consistency. 100, 500… they could get a thousand publications to write attack editorials on Thursday. It won't do what they want it to. It's really only going to make things worse. We need to be focused on repairing damage, not adding to it. How about this? Start with an admission of guilt and an apology. Only then will you have the credibility to do your jobs properly.