When the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association is concerned that one of its members is acting like an “opinion journalist,” it is probably time for that journalist to dial it back a notch.
ABC News’s Jonathan Karl sounds slightly annoyed by Jim Acosta’s constant theatrics, writing in his new book Front Row at the Trump Show that the CNN White House correspondent’s “soapbox” approach to journalism only adds credibility to President Trump’s anti-media criticisms.
Acosta frequently behaves like an “opinion journalist,” Karl writes, adding that this plays “right into the explicit Trump strategy of portraying the press as the opposition party.”
The ABC reporter added in separate remarks to the Washington Free Beacon that a number of reporters have responded to the challenges of covering the Trump administration by editorializing rather than focusing on the difficult and mostly unglamorous work of reporting stories.
“A sub-sub theme [of the book] is those of us reporters make a mistake if they appear to be too much like an opposition to the president or the resistance,” Karl, the current president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, told the Washington Free Beacon. “That’s not our job. We’re not the opposition party. We’re supposed to report and report aggressively on the president, but not to go over the top.”
A good example of this sort of over-the-top behavior, Karl writes in his book, is when Acosta insisted on having former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders answer whether members of the press are indeed the “enemy of the people.” Acosta suggested later on CNN that fellow journalists should gather outside the White House and chant, “We are not the enemy of the people.”
Karl calls it a “soapbox” moment.
“The surest way to undermine the credibility of the White House press corps is to behave like the political opposition,” the ABC reporter writes. “Don’t give speeches from the White House briefing room. … Don’t talk about holding protests against the president in Lafayette Square.”
Another incident Karl highlights is when Trump, in 2017, called Acosta “fake news” and moved on to another question. The CNN reporter responded by repeatedly interrupting National Public Radio’s Mara Liasson in order to respond to the president’s insult.
“Acosta was portraying himself as some kind of righteous advocate for the press,” Karl writes, but the CNN reporter mostly came across as “just rudely interrupting a colleague.”
Don’t expect Karl’s mild criticism to cool Acosta’s passion for making himself the story.
The CNN correspondent will likely go on doing what he does best: antagonizing various members of the Trump administration with performative acts of “resistance” poorly disguised as questions that actually serve the public interest. Acosta will go on doing things such as reciting poetry at White House press briefings, moments that seem noble and brave, but serve only one person: Jim Acosta.
Oh, and don’t forget the commentary. Acosta will likely go on offering his reliably dimwitted brand of news commentary and analysis, including his uncritical recitation of Beijing propaganda because it is a dangerous time to tell the truth in America or something.
