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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/media-prepares-for-war-with-trump/article/2612013
Media prepares for war with Trump
By Eddie Scarry
1/17/17 12:01 AM
Members of the press are taking a strident tone against the incoming Trump administration, and are talking increasingly of the need to fight or even go to war against President-elect Trump once he takes office.
"Instead of relying exclusively on the traditional skills of political reporting," wrote Politico's press critic Jack Shafer on Monday, "the carriers of press cards ought to start thinking of covering Trump's Washington like a war zone, where conflict follows conflict, where the fog prevents the collection of reliable information directly from the combatants, where the assignment is a matter of life or death."
Calls for heightened scrutiny of Trump and his team come after days of rising tensions between Trump and the press that's preparing to cover him. Over the weekend, incoming press secretary Sean Spicer indicated that he was considering moving the White House press corps to an off-site location that would accommodate more journalists, at least during the first week of the Trump administration.
But that had many reporters fuming, and saying they were ready to fight against that move.
"The White House Correspondents' Association will fight to keep the briefing room and West Wing access to senior administration officials open," said WHCA president and Reuters reporter Jeff Mason in a statement on Sunday. "We object strenuously to any move that would shield the president and his advisers from the scrutiny of an on-site White House press corps."
Mason said he met with Spicer that day and released a statement on their meeting thereafter that said, "I made clear that the WHCA would view it as unacceptable if the incoming administration sought to move White House reporters out of the press work space behind the press briefing room."
And last week, Trump used a press conference to aggressively confront reporters. He shouted down CNN reporter Jim Acosta who had attempted to ask a question.
"You're fake news," Trump said to Acosta, after refusing to allow him a question dealing with CNN's decision to publish some information regarding salacious and unconfirmed allegations.
The combination of events has put reporters on a war footing, and some of their most recent columns have been about exactly how to aggressively battle Trump once he arrives. At the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan, former public editor for the New York Times, said the press should brace itself for "a hellscape of lies and distorted reality" when covering the new administration.
"Trump's reign will probably be awash in investigations and prosecutions of journalists for doing their jobs, stirring up the ugliest of class wars along the way. … To those who say let's wait and see, or maybe it won't be as bad as you think, or stay hopeful, I'm having none of it," she wrote. "Journalists are in for the fight of their lives. And they are going to have to be better than ever before, just to do their jobs. They will need to work together, be prepared for legal persecution, toughen up for punishing attacks and figure out new ways to uncover and present the truth."
After Trump's Wednesday press conference, many journalists complained that Trump hadn't behaved in a manner they anticipated, thwarting what they saw as an opportunity to press the president-elect more thoroughly on policy matters and other.
The next day, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg said "a new strategy is needed to cover" Trump.
"But that was woefully lacking when Mr. Trump shouted down Jim Acosta of CNN, who said Mr. Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, threatened to eject him," he wrote. "The other reporters in the room readily took Mr. Acosta's place, happy to have their own questions answered. But they could be next. They're going to have to decide how much they want to abide by Mr. Trump's decision to selectively quarantine colleagues whose coverage he does not like."
But for some, the media's aggressive new stance isn't all that radical. One right-leaning Twitter feed summed up the new approach from the press as just a return to the kind of reporting that they should have been doing under President Obama.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/media-prepares-for-war-with-trump/article/2612013
Media prepares for war with Trump
By Eddie Scarry
1/17/17 12:01 AM
Members of the press are taking a strident tone against the incoming Trump administration, and are talking increasingly of the need to fight or even go to war against President-elect Trump once he takes office.
"Instead of relying exclusively on the traditional skills of political reporting," wrote Politico's press critic Jack Shafer on Monday, "the carriers of press cards ought to start thinking of covering Trump's Washington like a war zone, where conflict follows conflict, where the fog prevents the collection of reliable information directly from the combatants, where the assignment is a matter of life or death."
Calls for heightened scrutiny of Trump and his team come after days of rising tensions between Trump and the press that's preparing to cover him. Over the weekend, incoming press secretary Sean Spicer indicated that he was considering moving the White House press corps to an off-site location that would accommodate more journalists, at least during the first week of the Trump administration.
But that had many reporters fuming, and saying they were ready to fight against that move.
"The White House Correspondents' Association will fight to keep the briefing room and West Wing access to senior administration officials open," said WHCA president and Reuters reporter Jeff Mason in a statement on Sunday. "We object strenuously to any move that would shield the president and his advisers from the scrutiny of an on-site White House press corps."
Mason said he met with Spicer that day and released a statement on their meeting thereafter that said, "I made clear that the WHCA would view it as unacceptable if the incoming administration sought to move White House reporters out of the press work space behind the press briefing room."
And last week, Trump used a press conference to aggressively confront reporters. He shouted down CNN reporter Jim Acosta who had attempted to ask a question.
"You're fake news," Trump said to Acosta, after refusing to allow him a question dealing with CNN's decision to publish some information regarding salacious and unconfirmed allegations.
The combination of events has put reporters on a war footing, and some of their most recent columns have been about exactly how to aggressively battle Trump once he arrives. At the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan, former public editor for the New York Times, said the press should brace itself for "a hellscape of lies and distorted reality" when covering the new administration.
"Trump's reign will probably be awash in investigations and prosecutions of journalists for doing their jobs, stirring up the ugliest of class wars along the way. … To those who say let's wait and see, or maybe it won't be as bad as you think, or stay hopeful, I'm having none of it," she wrote. "Journalists are in for the fight of their lives. And they are going to have to be better than ever before, just to do their jobs. They will need to work together, be prepared for legal persecution, toughen up for punishing attacks and figure out new ways to uncover and present the truth."
After Trump's Wednesday press conference, many journalists complained that Trump hadn't behaved in a manner they anticipated, thwarting what they saw as an opportunity to press the president-elect more thoroughly on policy matters and other.
The next day, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg said "a new strategy is needed to cover" Trump.
"But that was woefully lacking when Mr. Trump shouted down Jim Acosta of CNN, who said Mr. Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, threatened to eject him," he wrote. "The other reporters in the room readily took Mr. Acosta's place, happy to have their own questions answered. But they could be next. They're going to have to decide how much they want to abide by Mr. Trump's decision to selectively quarantine colleagues whose coverage he does not like."
But for some, the media's aggressive new stance isn't all that radical. One right-leaning Twitter feed summed up the new approach from the press as just a return to the kind of reporting that they should have been doing under President Obama.
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