Snowflakery knows no political bent, and hostility towards the free press is a grievance centuries older than the First Amendment. The twin tales of Playboy’s Brian Karem and Breitbart’s Joel Pollak exemplifies the oft ignored fact that people in power of all political stripes simply despise answering to the Fourth Estate.
Karem’s currently fighting the Trump administration in the courtroom to reclaim his hard pass, which the White House suspended following the journalist’s verbal sparring match with an equally belligerent Sebastian Gorka during the president’s social media summit in the Rose Garden.
Beto O’Rourke staffers booted Pollak from a campaign event, with the 2020 longshot’s spokeswoman lambasting as “hateful” and bordering on “perpetrat[ing] hate speech.”
Both fights are absurd, and not because of the journalists prolonging them.
Neither Karem nor Pollak have hidden their ideological or partisan affinities. The Playboy White House correspondent openly excoriates the president on Twitter, while Pollak’s persona and outlet are openly conservative. But both do actual journalism, and petty politicians have no right to sit in judgment. As long as they’re going to claim they support a free press, the Trumps and Betos of the world must tolerate the scrutiny, tough questions, and even intentional rhetorical provocations that come as a natural responsibility of power.
Lost in the war between Trump and cable news anchors are the duties of actual journalists. Conservatives can rightly gripe at political operatives masquerading as reporters whining about Trump from their air conditioned studio sets, and liberals can rightly balk at conservatives normalizing and excusing behavior from Trump that would drive them into an apoplectic rage. Yet all the rage towards “fake news” ignores and discounts the importance of conservative outlets covering Democratic events and politicians, and vice versa.
There may be hope after all, even if it’s not coming from the top bosses at news outlets. After Pollack was ousted from the Beto event, multiple New York Times reporters came to his defense.
This is WRONG and hypocritical for any candidate, or come
to think of it, any American https://t.co/leXWobEiZe— Elizabeth Williamson (@NYTLiz) August 28, 2019
No matter what you think of Breitbart, this is wrong. No campaign should be deciding who gets to cover its events. An event is either open to the press, or it is not. Freedom of the press is not a conditional right — it applies to every American regardless of their views. https://t.co/BHFxslRxjL
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) August 28, 2019
Just look at the comment section of either of those tweets to understand how vital it is that members of press across all political stripes stand up for each other. The more lefty anchors slam Fox News and any dissenting voice, the more the media allows politicians and the powerful to sideline and shut down journalism. When Times reporters do the right thing and stand up for fellow reporters, the public can’t help but balk at them defying the expectation set by prime-time pundits.
Whether Karem has a legal right to his hard pass is still uncertain. Nor should there be a law demanding that open campaign events accommodate every legitimate journalist wishing to cover them. But as a matter of principle, a free society should expect that our elected elite answer to the press, and when they refuse to, we must demand it.
