Press Pass
For all the years I worked at a newspaper, I had a press pass. It was a laminated card with my picture on it. The picture was a mug shot and the issuing authority was the county sheriff. I remember the sheriff handing it to me in a nice little flip-open nylon pouch to hang around my neck and saying, “Okay, Lois Lane, this gives you permission to go anywhere that nobody else wants to go. You can even run into buildings that everybody else is running out of. Use it to do good stuff.”
Do good stuff. I tried.
So did Dana Milbank. After 21 years, Milbank’s White House press pass was denied. He suspects it’s because he’s a Trump critic.
I’m not looking for pity. Trump’s elimination of briefings and other changes have devalued White House coverage anyway. But there’s something wrong with a president having the power to decide which journalists can cover him.
I don’t pity Dana because he’s a big boy with lots of power and he can fight back. I am, however, outraged. The Trump White House has taken to the mattresses.
One other story. My last boss was a bodacious loudmouthed owner of a weekly newspaper that was the official newspaper of the county. I wrote both news and editorial columns. When someone asked her, “what exactly does Susan do at your newspaper?” Bev replied, “She finds out what people are doing and makes them stop it.”
That, right there, was the best description of an editorial writer I had ever seen.
And that’s what Dana Milbank did.
I was an avid reader of your work in those days. I miss it.
1I’m actually glad.
The press usually wakes up a bit when one of their own is attacked.
Too much of the mainstream press has spent too much time pretending that Trump is something other than a crude fascist. Perhaps the scales will fall from a few eyes.
Prediction: not from Dean Baquet’s.
2Sulzberger apparently pays him to be blinkered.
I frequent a podcast (The Professional Left) where one of the hosts rails against news media one-sidedness all the time. I finally wrote in to say, look America’s TV and other news media are no longer owned by public-spirited former journalists who relish their role as the impartial informers of a civil democracy. They were bought out by Wall Street financiers, who don’t care what plays on the news at night, as long as it stands zero chance of hitting them in the wallet.
So no lefties. Ever. No mention of socialism except with a sneer. No criticism of capitalism. Sure you can cover Bernie, as a kook, a quirky professor, a non-Democrat pulling the wool over voters eyes. And that Overton Window? We’ll be tugging on that sucker when you’re not looking.
So don’t expect fairness from them ever again. Better to unplug. Dude down t’ th’ Dairy Queen has our backs better than Disney, Sony and GE.
3Still missing Bev! Both of you made Fort Bend County better.
4I do hope the White House Press Corps adopts an “All for one and one for all!” attitude, and stops covering the White House, if they’re going to refuse some of its members. As much as Trump abuses the media, he lives and breathes media coverage. Not getting it from the “respectable” press will drive him nuts.
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