The malpractice of the media is making it easy for President-elect Trump to pursue a divide-and-conquer strategy against it. On Sunday, Trump tweeted, “Thank you to Bob Woodward who said, ‘That is a garbage document…it never should have been presented…Trump’s right to be upset (angry).'” Woodward was referring to the alleged dossier of Russian intel on Trump that BuzzFeed released last Tuesday.
Thank you to Bob Woodward who said, “That is a garbage document…it never should have been presented…Trump’s right to be upset (angry)…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017
Woodward’s comment can be read as an implicit rebuke to his old partner, Carl Bernstein, who contributed to CNN’s report on the briefing that set in motion the media fiasco over it. While CNN did not release the details of the dossier, its excited and “exclusive” coverage gave the dossier and briefing about it a seriousness they didn’t deserve. CNN’s report wasn’t fake news, but it was misleading and over-hyped news.
As Ben Mathis-Lilley put it, “CNN’s headline — ‘Intel Chiefs Presented Trump With Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him’ — and its assertion that ‘officials’ believe the dossier ‘augment[s]’ the ‘evidence’ that Russia intended to boost Trump’s campaign is on shaky ground. At this point, it seems like ‘Intel Chiefs Carried Memo About Uncorroborated Blackmail Rumors into Meeting With Trump, but Didn’t Mention It to Him’ might have been a more accurate headline.”
Far from hurting Trump, BuzzFeed’s decision to release the dossier cleared him of any suspicion left by CNN’s indirect references to it. Had the dossier not been released, CNN’s story, with all of its dark implications, might still be under discussion. Now the whole story looks silly and Trump looks like the victim of a preposterous plot to smear him.
Journalists continue to point fingers at each other, with CNN calling BuzzFeed “irresponsible” and BuzzFeed in effect calling CNN a hypocritical gatekeeper. Its editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, said, “If you are going to report on a document with your audience, let them know what you know.”
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Smith defended his decision, saying it pulled back the curtain on “this saga that dozens of journalists, intelligence officials, elected leaders knew of a British — of a former British spy creating this document, handing it over to the FBI, John McCain handing it to the FBI of briefings which Jake Tapper and your team got an amazing scoop on of the CIA briefing the president and the vice president-elect.”
He is right, but not in a way his left-wing audience would appreciate: A story that was supposed to indict Trump instead exposed a media and intelligence community buzzing over a discredited document. As the media reel from this inglorious episode, Trump sees an opportunity to weaken the media’s self-appointed gatekeepers even more. Over the weekend his aides floated a proposal to broaden press conferences beyond the usual credentialed White House reporters.
“There’s been so much interest in covering a President Donald Trump,” incoming press secretary Sean Spicer said. “A question is: Is a room that has forty-nine seats adequate? When we had that press conference the other day, we had thousands of requests, and we capped it at four hundred. Is there an opportunity to potentially allow more members of the media to be part of this? That’s something we’re discussing.”
For the Jim Acostas, who act like they have a sacred right to be called upon at press conferences, such a proposal comes as a bitter pill. But it’s a pill Trump can force the media to swallow, so long as they are squandering the trust of the American people.
George Neumayr (@george_neumayr) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a contributing editor to The American Spectator and the co-author of “No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.” Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
