Ex-New York Times editor Jill Abramson was right when she said this week that a certain newsroom has a serious narcissism problem.
She should have taken her criticism a step further, though, because the problem is industry-wide.
A Maryland newspaper suffered a tragedy this week when a deranged gunman stormed its offices, killing four journalists and a sales assistant. The Capital Gazette leadership responded courageously, refusing to allow even this awful event to slow them in their duties. They published a newspaper the very next day, covering a shooting that happened in their own newsroom.
That is noble.
What is not so noble are the self-centered journalists and pundits from elsewhere who piggybacked off this awful event to do what they love doing the best: making the story about themselves. Some seized on the shooting to go after their preferred political targets, while others used it as an opportunity to push back on perfectly legitimate criticisms of the media.
“The President of the United States has demonized the media, promoted and retweeted violent memes against reporters and networks and this week at a rally again called us the enemy of the people,” said BuzzFeed News’ Jason Leopold. “He did this with complete and total disregard for how his actions could play out.”
He added, “Words matter. This climate is not OK. The president’s incendiary rhetoric against the media is abhorrent.”
Putting aside for a moment the fact that he seems to believe that words are violence, it’s worth pausing here to stress that the shooter is not in any way connected to or motivated by President Trump or right-wing politics. In fact, the shooter had a long-running grudge against the Gazette dating back to at least 2012, when he sued it for defamation over its coverage of his alleged cyberstalking.
Nevertheless, many in the press are doing that thing where they concede there’s no connection between a news event and their preferred hobbyhorse, but that one should be drawn anyway.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, for example, winked at her thousands of Twitter followers, saying, “This alleged gunman appears to have had a longstanding grudge against the paper and little else is known so far. But Trump is the only president in memory to call the press ‘the enemy of the people.’”
The Columbia Journalism Review’s Kyle Pope added elsewhere, “Every reporter in every newsroom has to deal with a person like Jerrod Ramos — someone who feels wronged, ignored, angry. I have them now. The danger is that the rhetoric emanating from the president has given these people a new voice and authority, stoking their delusions anew.”
Then there’s CNN’s Jim Acosta, who never misses a chance to play the martyr.
“Mr. President, will you stop calling the press the ‘enemy of the people,'” he shouted Friday after Trump delivered remarks commemorating the victims of the Gazette shooting.
Reuters’ Rob Cox said elsewhere in a since-deleted tweet, “This is what happens when [President Trump] calls journalists the enemy of the people. Blood is on your hands, Mr. President. Save your thoughts and prayers for your empty soul.”
It’s a good thing he addressed Trump as “Mr. President.” Otherwise, that tweet would have been very unprofessional.
Even professional carnival-barkers like Fox News’ Sean Hannity got in on the act when he tied the shooting Thursday to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and her recent call for anti-Trump activists to harass members of the White House.
“While it’s not connected in any way,” he said, “the incendiary rhetoric that we have been hearing and the calls to confront people in restaurants and at gas stations and department stores.”
It’s absurd that this needs to be said, but here goes: This story isn’t about Trump. It isn’t about “fake news.” It isn’t about Will McAvoy or any other self-glorifying icon representing journalists’ unreasonably sympathetic image of themselves and their integrity. Sorry, but the world just doesn’t revolve around reporters and their profession. This story is about individuals, especially the deceased and the survivors who kept on in the face of tragedy.
I understand no one is more impressed with the press than the press. But maybe the national journalists who can’t even keep things together on a day-to-day basis in the Trump era should be trying to imitate the Capital Gazette staff, who despite even suffering a shooting in their newsroom avoided going out of their way to make themselves the story.
As Abramson told the Daily Beast this week, “Distance is part of journalism’s discipline.”
