President Trump really has changed everything, including what members of the press consider disrespectful behavior from their colleagues.
Or maybe not.
Recommended Stories
On Monday, as the president joined a group of children at the White House for Easter festivities, CNN’s Jim Acosta hurled questions from a distance. The reporter shouted about the administration’s decision to abandon legislative fixes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which prevents deportation of an estimated 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children.
“What about the DACA kids?” the CNN reporter yelled as the president colored with his young White House guests. “Should they worry about what’s going to happen to them?”
The president responded, “The Democrats have really let them down. They really let them down. It’s a shame. A lot of people have taken advantage of DACA. It’s a shame.”
“Didn’t you kill DACA?” Acosta persisted.
The president didn’t respond.
There’s nothing wrong with what Acosta did. Asking questions is what he’s supposed to do. If anything, there’s a problem with what Acosta said. The questions were sloppy, tilted, and not exactly designed to produce illuminating responses.
The Daily Caller, which loves trolling Acosta more than it loves its cheesecake verticals, did a write-up of the Easter Egg Roll questions with a headline that read, “Acosta Cracks! Yells At Trump While Coloring With Kids At WH Easter Egg Roll.”
This is where the story takes a particularly interesting turn.
It wasn’t too long ago that a former Daily Caller reporter broke protocol by hurling questions at a president who was in the middle of a prepared address, which is to say the journalist was “guilty” of asking question when he wasn’t supposed to. What’s funny here is this: The reporters who are angry this week with the Daily Caller’s write-up of Acosta’s antics don’t seem to recognize they’re highlighting a double standard.
When Neil Munro interrupted former President Barack Obama’s immigration address with immigration-related questions, the press lost its you-know-what. To be clear, there was nothing wrong with what Munro did — maybe there was with the way he said it — but you’d think otherwise from the way newsrooms covered the brief back-and-forth.
CNN published a straight news headline that read, “Obama interrupted: Disrespectful or latest in ‘era of incivility’?”
“Obama Heckled By Daily Caller Reporter During Immigration Speech In Rose Garden,” read a U.S. News & World Report headline. “Obama was heckled by a supposed Daily Caller reporter Friday.” It added, “In what may be a first for the White House Rose Garden, President Obama was heckled by a reporter during his speech on immigration Friday.”
Three years later, after Munro left the Caller, Politico actually published a headline that read, “Neil Munro, reporter who heckled Obama, out at Daily Caller.”
Fast forward to Monday’s Easter Egg Roll and there’s nary a peep out of the political press corps for Acosta’s questions. There are certainly no news stories characterizing the CNN reporter as a “heckler.” But, hell, at least Munro’s questions were appropriate for the occasion!
If you’re surprised by the uneven application of indignation, the lack of 24-hour news coverage, and questions about whether we’re in the golden age of incivility or whatever, you shouldn’t be. The press has a funny habit of selective outrage. Recall that reporters were wholly indifferent in 2012 after the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker acted like a lout during then-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Poland trip.
As Romney was leaving the Tomb of the Unknown in Warsaw, which commemorates the thousands of Poles who have died in defense of their country or fighting abroad alongside allies, Rucker screamed over the solemn occasion: “What about your gaffes?”
Yes, there’s a difference between screaming at a president versus screaming at a presidential candidate, but boorish behavior is boorish behavior, and Rucker’s stunt is worse than anything we’ve seen from Acosta or Munro. Reporters shrugged. Rucker even made a homemade T-shirt bearing his stupid question, which he then had Romney autograph, and reporters still shrugged.
Make no mistake: Trump changed nothing. The people kvetching this week about the Daily Caller write-up haven’t evolved on the issue of when it’s OK or disrespectful to hurl questions at a president. It’s as simple as: It’s OK when x does it, but bad when y does it too.
Of these three examples, Munro is only one who other journalists accuse of being disrespectful and unethical. Surely, it has nothing to do with the fact that he worked at a right-leaning outlet at the time and that he used his position to press a Democratic president on a meaningful issue.
Draw your own conclusions.
