With so many in the media running around with the hair on fire over President Trump’s first week in office it was hard to pick a top Mainstream Media Scream of the week. So we settled on one that represents the media’s view of the administration, from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
It came during Thursday’s Anderson Cooper 360 when he read a quote from top Trump adviser Stephen Bannon out of the New York Times: “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a awhile.”
Amanpour replied: “Steve Bannon is playing the role that he set out for himself. There is obviously some kind of strategy here, although it’s hard for me to comprehend it because, you know, I operate in the truth and the fact-based universe. But he’s playing a strategy which involves creating straw men and women, creating an enemy out of the press, and then, you know, dividing, diverting, obfuscating while other things are going on. That’s the only thing I can imagine. Obviously, there are many other — I want to say — totalitarian regimes in the past which used this same kind of strategy.
“And, I mean, if I was going to be funny, I’d say that he’s angling for an order of merit from Presidents Sisi, Putin, Erdogan, and all the others. That is how they treat their press. That is what they believe the press should be — a pliant, state propaganda unit in the service of the president. It is not the tradition of the American press.”
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: “First, Amanpour is quite the comedian with her insistence she ‘operates in the truth and the fact-based universe.’ Second, journalists can sure dish out criticism, but Amanpour shows they can’t take it. In her case, quite the hysterical overreaction about Bannon and President Trump acting like a ‘totalitarian regime.’ That analogy worked better in the years of the previous presidency when CNN was fully in the tank for the Obama administration.”
Rating:
Four out of five screams.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
