Making reality the fantasies of every feminist blogger, The Hollywood Reporter brought together Lena Dunham and Samantha Bee for an interview ahead of Bee’s White House Correspondents Dinner television special.
When Dunham asked the TBS host what she sees as her “biggest goal” for the program, Bee responded, “Really the night is intended to be a celebration of the free press, because obviously it’s tremendously under attack.”
Obviously?
To say that the free press is “tremendously under attack” is reckless fear-mongering that was slightly more understandable before President Trump took office, but no longer bears any accuracy.
Even Glenn Thursh of the “failing” New York Times, a reporter who’s clashed publicly with the president, gave Trump credit for his treatment of the press in a radio interview this week.
“I do want to give Trump credit on things … I think one of the things that I think he’s doing better than Barack Obama are these press conferences and his outreach to individual reporters, even for organizations, like my own, that he criticizes,” Thrush said.
The reporter commended Trump’s “free-ranging press conferences,” which he believes to be “a lot more democratic than the way that Obama conducted them.”
Truthfully, the press is thriving under Trump. If it’s “tremendously under attack” now, surely Bee would have to apply that classification to the Obama administration as well.
As Mediaite notes:
[The White Correspondents’ Association] sent a letter of protest to the Obama administration in November 2013 over their ‘blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government’… The New York Times and The Washington Post also took the Obama administration to task in May 2013 for “threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news” due to its treatment of Fox News correspondent James Rosen. And New York Times reporter James Risen said in December that the Obama White House was “the most anti-press administration” since Nixon.”
Breahtless panic over Trump’s treatment of the press often ignores the precedent set by his predecessor. Bee’s hyperbole is irresponsible and does not serve the public she seeks to keep well-informed.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
