President Trump belittled journalists, the Washington Post adopted a self-congratulatory slogan, and Reporters Without Borders downgraded the U.S. on the global press freedom index. But if there is a war between the president and the press corps, like we’ve been told, then it’s obviously the journalists who are winning.
This administration is making careers overnight for reporters lucky enough to earn a seat in the White House briefing room. Access plus chatty staffers plus non-stop news cycle equals non-stop coverage.
And there is nothing this White House can do about it, and that’s not for a lack of trying. Everything from a phone ban to outright firings have been tried. Nothing has worked, as evidenced by the meta leaking story that stemmed from leaks about the meeting held to address leaking. Sarah Sanders practically admitted defeat when she predicted on Friday that “this conversation is going to leak, too. And that’s just disgusting.” It was the front page of Axios on Saturday.
This has prompted a schizophrenic response from the president who at once says there is no leaking problem and that the leakers responsible for said non-problem are traitorous cowards.
The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018
None of this is unusual, as David Graham documents over at the Atlantic. Every president in the last quarter century has been frustrated by a leaky White House. Some like former President Barrack Obama moved aggressively to cut the flood down to a trickle.
Trump has set some bad precedents to be sure but lack of transparency isn’t one of them. Journalists have poked and prodded this administration to keep readers across the globe more informed about the White House than ever before. Heaven help the press secretary who tries to stop the free flow of information.
Heaven help also the reporters who will inevitably go soft on the next president. Truth is exactly as important under Trump as it was under Obama and it will be under the next guy. The free press is more muscular than ever. It seems the only way that changes, the only way it weakens, is if it atrophies. Then democracy will truly die in biased, apathy-induced darkness.
