Guest Opinion. President Donald Trump took away White House access for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico because they post “fake news.”
From Reuters:
“Trump accused the outlets of “reporting FAKE NEWS” in a social media post, and said they “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States.” Trump added, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
“Representatives of all three outlets could be seen working in the White House on Friday afternoon following Trump’s post. The White House was informing all three they would be banned from the White House grounds as of Saturday, Fox News reported, citing an unnamed senior White House official.
“Trump said there was no specific incident that prompted the ban, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “It’s really just cumulative stories over the past few years.”
“Trump added, “I don’t have to let them into my, into the people’s house.”
“When asked what he meant by others “to follow,” Trump mentioned the New York Times and the Washington Post as what he called “fake news.”
The three new organizations wasted no time in fighting back and are today filed lawsuits against the administration.
“The President banned CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, and the individual reporters covering the news for those media organizations, in disregard of the most basic guarantees of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause,” the lawsuit says. “He did so expressly for the improper purpose of retaliating against Plaintiffs for past news coverage because he deemed it ‘negative’ and chilling future reporting about him and his administration’s policies and actions.”
“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the complaint continues.
This is an old contentious story because all presidents, really leaders in any public office find reasons to disagree with the media (and by extension, dissent itself.) And make no mistake: One target of this action is Trump’s own staff, who often leak inside maneuvering on a regular basis (that won’t stop with MSNOW, CNN and Politico off-site.)
A few Monday thoughts.
First: If the authoritarian playbook is used, the next step will be a move toward a state media, especially when it comes to broadcast. The White House outlets with credentials will be only those that affirm the president’s policies and personality. Think far beyond Fox News. The Trumpian state media outlets includes Breitbart News, Blaze Media, One America News Network, Real America’s Voice, The Gateway Pundit, and The Epoch Times.
The 16-year run of Viktor Orban’s authoritarianism in Hungary funded and supported the state-favored media (which crashed after the regime was deposed by voters.)
“During his 16-year rule Orban targeted journalists and news outlets and tightened control of state media, leading what the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) described as “one of the most sophisticated systems of media capture ever seen in the European Union”.
“But Hungary’s new leader Peter Magyar, who defeated Orban in April elections after campaigning on a return to democratic norms, has vowed to change the system.
“Under Orban, MTVA employed over 2,000 people and received lavish taxpayer funding, with its newsroom unquestioningly echoing the government’s narratives.
“But under Magyar, MTVA’s main channels suspended news broadcasts on July 7, two weeks after parliament passed a media reform bill, apologising in an on-air message for “lying” for years.”
Then all governments lie. As I.F. Stone once said: “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”
There’s always been a lot of toking of that hashish in Washington.
Andrew Jackson didn’t think the press understood his vision for the country, so he founded The Globe newspaper as his administration’s voice. He distanced himself from the Fox News of that era, the United States Telegraph, because it wasn’t pro-Jackson enough.
Jackson’s choice for the Globe’s editor, Francis Blair, met daily with the president to plan the news headlines and stories. (The Blair House, across the street from the White House, is now the official guest residence.)
Three of the missions of the Globe: Promoting the cult of personality around Andrew Jackson (the 19th century version of “my favorite president.”) Second: Attacking the bank of the United States. And, a third, promoting the removal of American Indians from homelands in the South.
In January 1834, for example, Jackson was writing Blair about dismissing dissent from members of Congress and how the press should frame the Treaty of Cusseta with the Creeks (Muscogee Nation). He said his administration would press on with removal because: “The character of our country as well as justice to this weakened & ignorant race, require the regulations adopted to be continued & acted on with rigor, in the mean time doing justice to the fair purchasers.”
In this case the “dissent” came from an Alabama congressman who didn’t think the government was moving fast enough to remove the Muscogee people from some five million acres in the central part of the state. The congressman thought the treaty was “inconsistent with the sovereign right of jurisdiction” of Alabama. The fiction of the treaty was that Muscogee families could “stay or go” if they gave up their citizenship in the tribal nation. (NMAI’s excellent history of Jackson and his removal policies, here.)
Most of the opposition, however, that Jackson and his mouthpiece the Globe attacked came from those newspapers against removal. Then, like now, the politics were intensely personal. Pro-Jackson or anti-Jackson. The political parties then were Jackson’s Democrats and the Whigs.
As historian Fred S. Rolater wrote: “The passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was strongly tied to political party warfare. Democrats were for it; Jackson’s opponents were against it.”
And the newspapers publishing on each side of the debate were a key voice.
(Of course the idea of a “credentialed” press with access to a White House space was not part of the discourse then. One of the early press gathering spots was the Indian Treaty Room for official meetings. And Trump can think Richard Nixon for the modern press room. He removed FDR’s swimming pool and built press room above.)
The 19th century version of “fake news” was a “shameful falsehood.”
And that leads to the shameful truth: The morality of populism was no better in the 19th century than it is now. Hashish.
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