Overnight, Trump-appointed judge Timothy Kelly unsurprisingly overruled the president's attempt to ban three left-wing media outlets from the White House premises. A ban was doomed from the start.
So what did it accomplish? It demonstrated once again that the press will mount their high horse of arrogance that they are the most "essential mechanism of democracy," the sainted informers of the citizenry who hold the government accountable. They insist the Republicans are an existential threat to democracy and never hold Democrats accountable for anything. Their boasting is a bad joke.
NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck and contributor Steve Malzberg assessed the arrogant outbursts caused by Trump's ban attempt. It caused them to break out this Civics 101 version of the media, where the press heroically educates the voters so they can be fully informed when they express their views at the ballot box. But what we have is definitely not a Civics 101 media. They are too interested in directing our democracy in a liberal direction to act as some passive transmitter of nonpartisan news judgment.
Curtis plucked out the ten silliest quotes from the legal brief filed against the White House by CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. Among them are the idea that they never offer "fake news," only news the president doesn't like. Then came the Civics 101 plea: “[w]ithout an unfettered press, citizens would be far less able to make informed political, social, and economic choices."
NPR White House reporter Tamara Keith claimed on CNN she's not reporting for herself. "I'm doing it on behalf of the American people. I'm not doing it for me. Um, and by kicking people out, he's kicking the American people out of the room. He's kicking the American people out of the people's house." But NPR and PBS and MS NOW are all allergic to presenting the views of the 77 million Americans who voted for Trump in the last election. No one cast a vote to be represented by NPR. They are unelected, but think they should run our democracy.
CNN host Kasie Hunt had to hammer on this point: "Independent, objective news organizations are there to get answers for the people who are reading and watching and seeing, because it’s the American people who deserve independent eyes and ears, eyes and ears that are not government-controlled eyes and ears.” But they were willing to swoon over Obama and sound government-controlled, and ran in a pack to deny Biden was mentally failing.
Enjoy the podcast below. The audio is here.
