New York Times:
Usually, presidential news conferences are rather dry and boring. If yesterday's news conference with president-elect Trump is any indication, there's a new sheriff in town:
He deemed BuzzFeed News “a failing pile of garbage,” mocked an inquiry about his tax returns — “Gee, I’ve never heard that one before” — and, in an unheard-of moment for a presidential news conference, shouted down questions from a CNN reporter, declaring, with some menace, “Not you.”Inaccurate? Maybe, but the fact CNN chose to report an unverified story at all, even if they said it was unverified, has all the journalistic ethics of reporting, "Trump beats his wife, but we cannot confirm it at this time."
“Your organization is terrible,” said President-elect Donald J. Trump, his voice rising as Jim Acosta of CNN tried to interject. “No, I’m not going to give you a question. I’m not going to give you a question.”
“You,” the president-elect said, as Mr. Acosta and other stunned journalists looked on, “are fake news.”
Any hope that Mr. Trump would temper his attacks on the news media after the campaign seemed to dissipate in the marble atrium of Trump Tower on Wednesday, as the president-elect, holding his first news conference since July, turned a controversy over his ties to Russia into a deft and unrelenting attack on the journalists who reported it.
It was a spectacle that attracted nearly 300 reporters to Midtown Manhattan — the news conference was carried live in Australia, England and Germany — and it came against an extraordinary backdrop: reports that intelligence officials had briefed Mr. Trump on a document alleging collusion between the Russian government and his campaign.
CNN broke the news on Tuesday but declined to publish specific allegations, saying its reporters could not verify them. BuzzFeed News published the unverified claims in full, a move that prompted an ethical debate in journalistic circles — and offered Mr. Trump an opening.
“The fact that BuzzFeed and CNN made the decision to run with this unsubstantiated claim is a sad and pathetic attempt to get clicks,” the incoming White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said, inaccurately lumping the two news organizations together.
When a media organization crosses that line, they are no longer reporting news. They are a rumor mill, much like the National Enquirer. To be honest, Trump was 100% accurate, and justified, in calling CNN "fake news".
The media's response was mixed between attacking BuzzFeed and defending CNN:
Immediately after the news conference, CNN defended its reporting and drew a sharp distinction between its news story and “BuzzFeed’s decision to publish unsubstantiated memos.” On a broadcast, the CNN anchor Jake Tapper said that BuzzFeed’s move “hurts us all.”
“It’s irresponsible to put uncorroborated information on the internet,’’ Mr. Tapper said. “I can understand why President-elect Trump would be upset about that; I would be upset about it. too.’’
Later, Chuck Todd, the NBC News moderator, repeatedly pressed BuzzFeed’s editor in chief, Ben Smith, on why unverified claims did not amount to “fake news.”
Mr. Smith, for his part, said he was “not going to participate in an attempt to divide the media against each other.” (In a memo on Wednesday, BuzzFeed’s chief executive, Jonah H. Peretti, defended the move. “We are going to keep doing what we do best, which is deliver impactful journalism,” he wrote.)
...Yet the conduct of the news media, a familiar foil from Mr. Trump’s campaign days, remained at the center of the day’s story.On a personal note, I would normally agree with Shepard Smith, except the media has gone out of its way to "belittle and delegitimatize" the president-elect since he announced his run for the presidency. Since his election, they have turned up the heat on him significantly. Normally, the media shows the president more respect. Even George W. Bush got more respect, and they were brutal on him. With Trump, the media seems to have tossed out the rule book, and Trump has responded in kind to a news organization which has acted without professional journalistic ethics.
The treatment of Mr. Acosta raised alarms among news media advocates and his fellow journalists, particularly after Mr. Acosta described a threat by Mr. Spicer to eject him from the news conference when he persisted in trying to ask the president-elect a question.
Harsh words between reporters and press secretaries happen. But an anchor for a rival network, Shepard Smith of Fox News, later came to Mr. Acosta’s defense, saying that no “journalists should be subjected to belittling and [delegitimatizing] by the president-elect of the United States.”
I am no fan of Trump, but the media may yet turn me into one. They are acting more like an anti-Trump propaganda group than the "fourth estate". Just because you have a press pass doesn't give you carte blanche on what you can report as long as you disclaimer it properly. If you aren't verifying your stories, you are no longer dealing in news.
Before we leave this story, Trump did get in one great zinger:
When Hallie Jackson, an NBC News correspondent, asked the president-elect if he would finally release his tax returns, to verify his claim that he has no financial dealings in Russia, Mr. Trump scoffed.
“You know, the only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters, O.K.?” the president-elect said. “They’re the only ones who ask.”
“You don’t think the American public is concerned about it?” Ms. Jackson asked.
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump replied, before laying down the political equivalent of a mike-drop: ”I won.”And the media wasn't the only target of Trump's war...
Daily Mail:
President-elect Donald Trump, after growing suspicious that intelligence officials were leaking news about their classified briefings with him, says he conducted a sting operation to try to prove top spies were behind the leaks.
Trump revealed the extraordinary scheme to try to entrap the senior spies in a furious press conference where he suggested the intelligence community had been behind salacious and totally unproven allegations against him.
‘I think it’s pretty sad when intelligence reports get leaked out to the press. First of all, it’s illegal. These are classified and certified meetings and reports,’ Trump said during a press conference at Trump Tower – his first since getting elected.
Then he revealed the details of the stealthy sting he says he conducted on the nation’s senior spooks.
‘I’ll tell you what does happen. I have many meetings with intelligence. And every time I meet, people are reading about it,' Trump complained, possibly referencing reports on his classified briefings, which he has chosen not to receive daily.
'Somebody’s leaking them out,’ Trump said, after inveighing against leaks generally.This could be called paranoid, except for the old question: Is it really paranoia if the world IS actually out to get you?
‘So I said, "Maybe it’s my office. Maybe my office." Because I’ve got a lot of people … Maybe it’s them?’
‘What I did, is I said I won’t tell anyone. I’m going to have a meeting, and I won’t tell anybody about my meeting with intelligence,’ Trump continued.
He even shielded one of his closest aides from word of the meeting.
‘Nobody knew – not even Rhona, my executive assistant for years. She didn’t know – I didn’t tell her. Nobody knew,’ Trump continued – drawing laughter from collected family members and staff.
Having set the trap, Trump says the word leaked anyway.
‘The meeting was held. They left, and immediately the word got out that I had a meeting. So, I don’t want that. It’s very unfair to the country. It’s very unfair to our country what’s happening,’ he said.
For all of Trump's flaws, both the media and the elitists in the government give him all the proof he needs to justify his wacky behavior. If they would just step back and quit giving him the rope with which he can hang them, the world would be able to see him for what he is. Instead, these groups are just making him look good. For educated people, they aren't very smart.
Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept says it best:
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?The damage the media has done to itself is deep. But they can still redeem themselves, if they will just return to the principals of proper journalism. Just report the verified facts, and quit hunting for witches. If there are witches about which we need to worry, they will reveal themselves.
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