I keep hammering this point home, but the media seem obdurately unwilling to come to terms with the fact they have little credibility with the American people, and Trump voters especially. This situation is not helped by the fact they keep blowing stories on President Trump badly and they are overwhelmingly reliant on anonymous sources to lob serious, unverifiable accusations at the White House.
With that in mind, this is a real tweet from a major news organization, in all its passive-aggressive glory:
Despite Pres. Trump’s assertion that the press shouldn’t be allowed to use unnamed sources, he has claimed to use the practice himself. pic.twitter.com/jRtnB9eplk
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 24, 2017
Tu quoque much? The argument here is that, well, since Trump makes wild, unsourced accusations, he has no standing to complain about the media not holding themselves to higher standards. Trump is maybe a giant hypocrite for complaining about the media using anonymous sourcing, but that doesn’t mean his point is invalid.
A quick reminder: Despite months of regular reports on the matter, not a single named source is on record accusing any member of the Trump administration doing anything illicit regarding their contacts with Russia. Maybe there’s something to the story, but the way it’s been reported—including airing the Trump dossier that contained outrageous and demonstrably untrue claims—is fomenting distrust.
Until the media recover some credibility and are trusted enough to move the needle of public opinion—and Trump already won the election going after the media—Trump is going to find it personally gratifying and politically useful to keep punching the media in the mouth. If the media sink to his level by punching back with absurd arguments such as this, they shouldn’t expect to win this fight.
