The White House briefing room is cramped, much smaller than most people imagine. But the bubble in which the White House press corps exists is often even smaller.
Some days, reporters can turn interesting stories into the main story, and on others, they turn the main story into the only story. Sometimes, the cause is simple herd mentality. Sometimes, it’s ideological and class bias.
In the current drama, where the White House press corps cares exclusively about former staff secretary Rob Porter, there are probably two main motivations. One is an irritation at being told contradictory stories, and the other is the media’s insatiable desire to take scalps from a Republican White House.
The story of Porter allegedly abusing his ex-wives is serious. It’s barbarous for a man to hit a woman, and domestic violence is also a grave affront to the sanctity of marriage.
It’s also a national news story because it reveals White House mismanagement, with possible national security implications because Porter did work that required a security clearance.
So, it’s a legitimate story.
But it is nothing like the biggest story of the week, or even of the day, Tuesday, when reporters in the cramped briefing room seemed utterly obsessed by it. The previous day, the White House had released its annual budget and its long-awaited $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. The Porter affair was not bigger than those. Was it bigger than the immigration bill coming to the Senate floor while the briefing was actually in progress? No, of course not. Was it bigger than the Cabinet meeting that day and the nominations to head the IRS and the Office of Government Ethics? Was it bigger than the call President Trump had with Russian President Vladimir Putin the day before? Was it bigger than developments with North Korea during the Olympics, or the Senate hearing with intelligence officials?
Even if a journalist bizarrely answered, “Yes, the seventh day of the Porter story really was bigger than each of those stories,” is it bigger than all of those stories combined?
Tuesday’s briefing included no question on Korea, Russia, or the IRS. There was just one question about the budget, that will add alarmingly to the federal debt, and one on immigration and one on entitlements. Every other reporter who questioned White House press secretary Sarah Sanders asked about Porter, and then asked follow-up questions about Porter.
This media myopia is a dereliction of duty. Inside their bubble, reporters’ only thought seems to be, “Can I get the killer question in?” Outside the bubble, though, the public, whom the news media are supposed to inform, is much less interested.
Google Trends suggests that the public found the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program more interesting than Porter at all times on Tuesday, and for some of the time, they searched that subject at double the rate. Throughout the day, too, anywhere from twice as many people to four times as many people were searching “North Korea” as they were searching “Rob Porter.”
Some reporters would love it if White House chief of staff John Kelly or White House counsel Don McGahn lost their jobs over this. But that’s probably not the main motivation. Most reporters can’t drop the topic probably because they feel that they’re being mistreated as reporters.
“White House reporters,” BuzzFeed wrote, “say that the incident has transformed into the most infuriating and baffling episode in an administration whose communication strategy has often been defined by chaos and warring factions.”
One White House reporter anonymously said, “There’s the extraordinary situation where the White House chief of staff and the White House press secretary are telling completely different stories about what happened.”
This does reflect dysfunction by the White House and could be dishonesty too. But it needs to be remembered that the first two letters of the word “snafu” stand for “situation normal.” And the White House’s issuing muddled and changing stories about a staffer nobody had heard of a week ago is more a media story than a public affairs story. The White House has angered reporters with shifting and contradictory answers, but that’s not a good reason for reporters to cling to it like a dog with the wrong end of the stick, refusing to let go.
Reporters should be in the briefing room not as agents of the press corps, but as agents of the public. The public would rather learn more about immigration and North Korea, and reporters would be doing their duty better if they dug into those issues, instead of grinding an axe.
Just because something is the only story reporters are talking about doesn’t mean it’s the only story.
