Treating the press as the enemy is a mistake for many reasons, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just learned one of them.
South Korean officials, according to Tillerson, concocted a story that made Tillerson look bad, and the world believed it and repeated it for a whole day. This is because there was almost no American press traveling with the secretary of state; just one reporter who was focused on doing a long-form story rather than supplying a constant stream of breaking news.
Here’s what happened.
The standard practice for a high-level official visiting a foreign country on official business is to bring along the American press. The president has traditionally brought White House reporters, the commerce secretary has brought that department’s press corps, and the secretary of state normally brings the State Department press.
Reporters don’t sit in on sensitive diplomatic meetings, but they follow the secretary around, have frequent chances to ask questions of officials, and report all the details.
Tillerson inexplicably discarded this tradition on his first diplomatic trip, to Asia last week. The White House’s original explanation, that Tillerson was taking a small plane for “cost savings,” ignored the fact that the press pays their way on these trips to avoid imposing costs on taxpayers.
Tillerson did bring one reporter, Erin McPike of the Independent Journal Review. McPike mostly eschewed spot reports, instead working on a longer profile of the secretary.
The result was that no American reporters reported on the secretary’s Asian itinerary.
On Friday, a news story in the Korea Herald pushed the notion that Tillerson had given Korea scant attention, focusing instead on Japan. After lengthy meetings with Japanese dignitaries, the Herald reported Tillerson’s meetings with Korea’s prime minister and foreign minister “were each confined to about an hour, without a lunch or dinner gathering. Seoul officials said the US side opted not to have a meal together, citing the secretary’s ‘fatigue.'”
This story, published early Friday morning, was repeated in American press accounts and ran across the Twittersphere all day.
Frank Rich of New York Magazine tweeted, “By suffering ‘fatigue’ in South Korea, the powerless and humiliated Tillerson may have found his exit strategy.” Hillary Clinton snarkily retweeted a comment mocking Tillerson on this score.
There was no factual rebuttal until the next day, when McPike tweeted out her interview with Tillerson. The secretary said the Korean side had made up the “fatigue” story to cover for their faux pas of not inviting him to dinner. This rebuttal, on Saturday morning, came 21 hours after the first damaging story, and after pundits and critics had been feasting on the novice secretary of state.
Had Tillerson brought a standard press contingent with him, Korean officials never could have gotten away with a false story that opened the secretary up to attack and mockery.
There are plenty of other reasons for Tillerson to abide by tradition and err on the side of transparency. Most notably, now that FBI Director James Comey has confirmed an investigation into Russian meddling — the investigation includes questions about Trump campaign coordination with Russians — the administration needs to play it extra clean on foreign relations.
Suspicions about ties between Russia and Trump have arisen variously from mistakes by Trump adherents, such national security adviser Mike Flynn misleading Vice President Mike Pence, and from poor reporting by the political news media. If Trump is ever to emerge from under this Russian “gray cloud,” as Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., put it on Monday, it will be only through transparency.
Finally, Tillerson, the State Department and the entire Trump administration should welcome more press coverage and more transparency because it is proper. The president and his officials aren’t running a business, they’re carrying out the work that the public has directed them to do. To the degree possible, the people should know what their government is doing.
