The rivalry between New York newspaper tabloids created a famously competitive and sharp-elbowed media environment — one that benefitted generations of readers. We know because we worked on opposite sides of the celebrated New York Daily News/New York Post feud. However, we also understand that the public sometimes benefits more when we put those rivalries aside. To our former colleagues in the Washington press corps: That time is now. For accountability, journalistic independence and the good of readers, viewers and listeners, journalists must stand united in the face of the Trump administration’s brazen attempt to pit them against one another.
When news broke last week that the Trump administration was booting The New York Times, NPR, NBC and POLITICO out of Pentagon pressroom desks, much was made of the all-too-obvious effort to reward right-leaning outlets Breitbart News, the New York Post, and One America News along with — in a political fig leaf — HuffPost. Whatever the merit of those observations, they tend to walk right into the administration’s divide-and-conquer trap.
At a time when the administration has launched a full-scale assault on the press — through Federal Communications Commission investigations and frivolous lawsuits designed to run up legal fees, it’s important for our former colleagues in the Washington press corps not to take the bait.
Don’t get us wrong: We appreciate the level of difficulty the Trump administration has added for reporters who lost Pentagon berths. We both know from experience how helpful it is to have a secure place to store all the gear journalists have to carry on days you are going to be running up and down the corridors of power. So, perhaps some colleagues can offer some of their space to the pressroom exiles.
Rather than squabbling over who gets prime pressroom real estate right now, it’s more important to send a message that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. All news organizations — both the ones who got booted from their Pentagon posts and the ones who will benefit from the newly vacant seats — need to take a public stand in support of each other and the principles that are under threat right now: The right of the public — through a diverse press corps — to have access to public officials. And the right of those members of the press to speak truth to power without fear of reprisals.
There are models for the kind of solidarity we are urging. In 2009, when then-President Barack Obama’s press office attempted to exclude Fox News from an important interview that was open to other major news outlets, reporters for those outlets protested on behalf of Fox. Almost a decade later, when President Trump, then in his first term, attempted to ban CNN’s Jim Acosta from the White House, Fox returned the favor, supporting CNN’s (ultimately successful) lawsuit to have Acosta’s press pass reinstated.
Because of all the (legitimate and necessary) security involved, it’s easy to forget that the beats reporters cover in D.C. — Congress, the White House and the Pentagon, to name a few — are located in buildings that belong to the public, not to the elected officials and their appointees who occupy them for a few years at a time. The press is the public’s eyes and ears — a kind of security camera for the landlords. The renters shouldn’t be allowed to decide which camera to turn on and which to turn off.
Kathy Kiely, who covered the White House for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 1998, is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. Vincent Morris was a reporter for the New York Post from 1998 to 2004 and now writes a column about media for the Washington City Paper.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here