It’s no secret that Donald Trump and his White House don’t like the media. Trump’s chief brownshirt, Steve Bannon, made that loud and clear when he suggested the media ought to “keep its mouth shut” until it learns why Trump won the election. This is not something you want to hear from any official in a democracy. The question was obvious–was Bannon speaking for himself, or was he delivering an ominous message from Trump?
Well, on Friday morning, we got a loud hint that it’s the latter. For the second time this week, a top-ranking official in the Trump administration told the media that it has no business doing its job. Namely, White House information minister Kellyanne Conway. Watch here.
Kellyanne Conway: Presidents deserve respect from the media https://t.co/VbJnqBA67t
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 27, 2017
While Bannon delivered his lecture to the press via The New York Times, Conway chose a somewhat more receptive venue–“Fox & Friends.” She told the gang on the curvy couch that the presidency and its occupant “really deserves respect and really deserves an open ear” from the press. She believes the press should serve as “co-parents” of this country along with the administration.
When Ainsley Earhardt asked Conway if she agreed with Bannon’s suggestion that the media should shut up because it didn’t understand why Trump won, Conway seemed to agree. She said that Trump understands this country better than people who are supposed to be “educating America about the news, not their opinion.” She then started lecturing the media again, saying that newspaper and television supporters are supposed to just report, not “use a snarky comment here, an eyeroll there, an adjective that is insulting or congenitally negative toward the president.”
Conway said that it was perfectly fine to ask tough questions. But apparently there’s an exception to that rule. Steve Doocy asked Conway what she thought about reporters flatly calling Trump a liar when they never called Obama a liar “in a million years.” Conway claimed that while there were a lot of occasions where the press called out presidents for outright lies, it seems to be doing so “strategically” with Trump. How bad is that?
“I think it’s dangerous to the democracy and for those around the world watching what we do and how this president is covered in his early days, very dangerous to just throw in adjectives like that, either without evidence, but also without context.”
Um, Kellyanne? They’re actually protecting democracy by calling you out. In journalism school at Carolina, I learned that calling a spade a spade is not showing bias. If the media simply glossed over the truth and simply parroted your bosses’ “alternative facts”–as it seems you and Bannon want them to do–they wouldn’t be doing their job.
So you mean to tell me that on-screen graphics like this one from CNN earlier in the week endanger democracy?
Far from it, Kellyanne. They were simply telling it like it is–that we now have an administration that considers lying and dissembling to the American people standard operating procedure. But then again, you and your colleagues wouldn’t know that. After all, you have a chief strategist who worked for one of the largest and worst fake news machines in the nation, and a social media director who was a notorious promoter of this drivel.
It can safely be assumed that while Conway’s lips were moving, the person who was actually speaking was Trump. And if he thinks calling out lies for what they are endangers democracy, then it’s yet more evidence his oath of office means nothing to him.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
