She has only been the White House press secretary for 83 days, but Kayleigh McEnany’s “carping” is already getting under the skin of media bigs, one of whom Monday described her as a threat to journalistic “credibility.”
According to a former top editor and Columbia Journalism School professor, the combative press secretary “is seeking to undermine the credibility not just of individual journalists or outlets but of journalism itself.”
Cheered by fans for her style and regular challenges to questions from reporters, like one Monday on whether President Trump thinks it was a good thing the North won the Civil War, critics have claimed she is evasive and too quick to note media errors.
In the Columbia Journalism Review, Bill Grueskin rapped McEnany for her tactics.
“When confronted with a tweet or quote that might work to Trump’s disadvantage, she tries to undermine the press rather than to address the substance of the story. That is why she comes armed to briefings with multiple examples of press failure — some valid, some fictitious — and draws White House reporters into a noxious tit for tat,” wrote the professor and former editor at the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
His top complaint seems to be McEnany’s criticism of the media, a tactic he said she uses to pivot from questions she doesn’t like.
“Gamblers would call such an episode ‘the tell.’ McEnany demonstrated that her goal isn’t to respond directly to these questions, or even to engage in a dialogue about journalistic ethics. It is to throw up so much chaff into the media’s radar that even the most basic critique is deprived of meaning,” huffed the professor.
See Grueskin’s column here.
