In response to President Trump excluding CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House for writing what Trump called “purposefully negative stories” about his administration, the press corps is hyperventilating and pleading First Amendment violations, including a huffy (and hypocritical) editorial in Tuesday’s New York Times, “Trump Is Attacking Press Freedom and Disregarding the Law. Again.”
Certain liberal networks, which conservatives have long lodged well-earned bias complaints about regarding political bias, nonetheless seem to have a divine right to a seat in the White House briefing room. (A lawsuit has been filed by those media organizations against Trump and other players.)
The new ban is alarming for two reasons: It continues both Mr. Trump’s attempt to prevent the free flow of information in American society and his utter disregard of the law.
After raising the alarm, the Times patted itself on the back.
The latest move also extends Mr. Trump’s threats to a free press. We acknowledge our self-interest in this issue, but a free press is indeed vital to a self-governing people. It enables citizens to assess reality in their own democracy. It allows a flowering of different media voices. It holds powerful people to account.
None of which the Times apparently truly believes, as shown below.
There was more huffing on Saturday’s front page in “Trump Declares White House Ban Of News Outlets” by media reporters Michael Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin.
Mr. Trump’s announcement was met with instant condemnation from many First Amendment groups, which called it unconstitutional. CNN and Politico both suggested they could mount challenges in court.
The story concluded smugly:
Tim Richardson, the journalism and disinformation director at PEN America, put it bluntly: “Someone needs to explain to President Trump how the First Amendment works.”
Yet as we've noted before, the Times hasn’t always been a 100% supporter of its fellow media outlets. It has eagerly highlighted moves to squash outlets run by right-leaning media mogul Rupert Murdoch as posing a danger to global society, or at least to the electoral prospects of left-wing parties, by supposedly spreading extremist views. Censorship fever (on the part of a media outlet) ran high in late 2020 and 2021.
-- In October 2020, Times reporter Isabella Kwai seemed to approve of an online petition in Australia targeting Murdoch, a petition posted by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, asking “the government to establish a Royal Commission, the country’s highest form of inquiry, into the dominance of Australian media by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp.” Rudd called “Murdoch “an arrogant cancer on our democracy.” An impartial voice for sure!
-- In January 2021, columnist Nicholas Kristof launched a jihad against Fox News, demanding its removal from basic cable packages (for a start) in order to “stop supporting networks that spread lies and hatred, and cable companies should drop channels that persist in doing so…."
-- In February 2021, London bureau chief Mark Landler’s obsessive hostility toward Murdoch’s media empire was on display in his coverage of two then-fledgling right-of-center news outlets, in “Murdoch to Challenge U.K.’s Fairness Statute With Fox News Playbook.” He began with a tiresome attack against the “poisonous political culture” of Fox News, then suggested Murdoch could be banned in Britain, “where television news is regulated to avoid political bias.”
So much for the paper's pompous pronouncement that a free press “allows a flowering of different media voices."
