There’s a lot of breathless pearl-clutching about the “death of democracy” on social media right now. Lots of comparisons between Trump and Kim Jong Un, lots of “this is how democracy dies,” “dictators silence the press,” and so on.
Let’s just take a breath. Everything’s going to be fine.
Yes, the White House blocked most of the mainstream press from a “gaggle,” an informal gathering with the press secretary or other administration spokespeople. I would imagine they’ll pull the same stunt later in a more formal setting.
Yes, the president said in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he was going to “do something” about the media, and that they “shouldn’t be allowed” to use anonymous sources.
And yes, perhaps most troublingly, the president has said a few times now that the mainstream media is “the enemy of the American people.”
None of that amounts to “silencing” the press. In fact, he can’t. As much as he’d like to, he can’t silence the free press. Not yet, anyway.
So Breitbart will become the American version of Pravda, the state-run propaganda outlet of Russia. So The Washington Times and Fox News will become mouthpieces of the administration.
Er, regime. As long as he’s trying to play dictator, let’s call it the Trump Regime, shall we?
Even if the president doesn’t come to his senses and let the mainstream press back into the briefing room, the worst case is that the Trump Regime will have its own little propaganda outlets, and the rest of the free press — the professional journalists, the investigators, the reporters, the Fourth Estate — will be mad as hell.
And the staff inside the Regime and the Regime’s bureaucracy will be as leaky as ever.
The free press doesn’t need access to the presidential press secretary to report on the president. The press doesn’t need to hear Sean Spicer lie to them. They don’t need Trump insulting them. They can do a perfectly good job of uncovering the corruption, holding the Regime accountable and even reporting on the Regime’s rare successes without access to the president or his little press-room puppets.
Just look at all the reporting that’s come out over the past month. For example, we now know that the president knew former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to the Vice President for weeks, and only asked for his resignation only after it was reported in the press. The press did not get that information from Sean Spicer.
And let’s not let this distract us.
After all, the White House press corps is a relatively small slice of the media. Trump is an oversized figure, to be sure, and the presidency is vastly consequential, but the Trump Regime deciding to freeze out certain outlets has no impact at all on any other critical areas of coverage. The press can and must continue to hold the corporate class accountable. The press can and must continue to shine a light on Congress (did you notice that the Obamacare repeal plan leaked today?), on the Senate, on the state legislatures, on governors, mayors, city councils.
Just as government exists and matters at many levels, so does the press; your mayor has as much effect on your daily life as the president does, and whether your local reporters hold your mayor accountable might be more important than whether or not CNN is allowed to get the talking points directly from the presidential spokesman.
The White House Correspondents Association has reacted to the briefing room ban with a protest; the Associate Press and Time Magazine both boycotted the gaggle. Good for them. It’s easy for me to say from here, but if I were one of the banned outlets, I wouldn’t go back. I’d reallocate my resources to developing sources outside the briefing room. Get the inside information from the people who know it, and whose job doesn’t involve spinning it. Work the records. Use the Freedom of Information Act. Lean on Congress. Sue for information if you have to.
And then when you get the story, be sure to add “White House officials did not respond to a request for comment” at the end.
This is the importance of a well-trained, professional press. It’s harder to do reporting this way, to be sure. It’s easy to jot down what the PR guy says. It’s hard to develop sources. It’s hard to investigate. It takes time. It takes passion. It takes an educated, experiences press corps.
That’s one of the reasons I’m so proud of Madison365, if I might turn this little diatribe inward for a moment. One of our central missions is to train the next generation of young people of color to do these very things. Through the Madison365 Academy, we are providing training and experience well beyond what they get in their classrooms. If you’ve read Madison365 very much at all, you’ve probably read something by one of our student reporters. Their work is insightful, thoughtful, thorough, and undertaken in the Madison365 state of mind — that is, they undertake their work with the singular goal to create understanding.
And I hope, after they get through our program, they’ll know there’s a lot more to being a reporter than covering the president, and a lot more to it than writing down what spokespeople say.
Perhaps more importantly, we want to show them, and our readers, and our colleagues in the mainstream press that young reporters of color can do the work — the accountability, the research, the investigations, the deep dives and the uplifting stories– just as well as they can cover basketball, entertainment or “lifestyle.” They belong on the city desk, in the capitol press room, embedded with the troops as much as anyone else.
The Trump Regime can try to control us. They can choose who gets to write down their talking points. They can pretend they’re able to tell us what we can and can’t write, who we can and can’t use as sources. They can even declare us the enemy.
They can’t, however, silence us.
We in the press will be ok. We have the platform to defend ourselves, and we have the means to tell the stories that need to be told. We have created a voice for ourselves. And we are committed to allowing those less able to defend themselves — the immigrants, the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the helpers — the voice they need.
And we’re going to do that, whether Trump lets us in the room or not.
