Chupamedias in the "Media"
TUCSON — With his signature grace, Donald Trump deigned to reign over the upcoming White House Correspondents Association dinner for the first time since Barack Obama and stand-up comedian hosts roasted him like a plucked turkey.
"...Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me, FAKE NEWS ALL, right from the beginning of my First Term, I boycotted the event, and never went as Honoree," he wrote in March on his personal truth-free, anti-social feed.
And the first part of his long post reflected a monarch so thin-skinned that he yells "Off with their heads!" at court jesters, like that mad queen down Alice's rabbit hole:
"The fact that these "Correspondents" now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T, according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER OF ANY KIND, EVER!"
G.O.A.T, as you likely know, means Greatest of All Time. Hardly, considering Lincoln and Washington, or Franklin Roosevelt and other oath-keeping presidents at the annual event since 1926. But what a bullshit pulpit for a self-enamored fool who loves to gloat.
For Trump, it will be sweet revenge. In 2011, he sat stone-faced as Obama and a young Seth Meyers lobbed stinging one-liners at him to howls of laughter. That appears to be when he decided to toss a red cap into the ring.
On a big screen, Obama showed a mockup of what a Trump-themed White House would look like, uncannily evocative of what is planned today.
Rather than a traditional comedian to exchange jibes with a sitting president, the dinner's host is a mentalist, Oz Pearlman. Logical, Jimmy Kimmel quipped. Trump is a mental case.
The three-day extravaganza begins Friday with lavish sideshow events, the black-tie gala evening and afterparties, some hosted by faux-journalists, lobbyists, big business and foreign governments.
During Ronald Reagan's time, Mark Hertsgaard's classic book, "On Bended Knee," details how so many major news organizations were "subservient to state authority."
These days, the best reporters are better than ever, with new tools and technology. But the worst of them descend lower than their knees. The old Spanish term, chupamedias, describes them. Literally, sock-suckers.
The New York Times stopped attending the dinners after 2014, saying they show reporters as being too cozy with politicians they cover. Others have argued the working press ought to remain in the background. This year, there was a nationwide uproar.
A groundswell of serious journalists urged a boycott or a cancellation. Trump is no normal president, one petition argued, listing frivolous lawsuits, arrests of journalists, access bans, defunding public media, physical assaults, verbal attacks and more.
Extra security is planned in case of protesters. About 250 professional journalists signed a petition asking those who attend to make it plain to the president that a free press must be free and cannot be bullied.
But Weijia Jiang, a senior CBS correspondent and WHCA president, said in a statement, "We're happy the president has accepted our invitation and look forward to hosting him."
The event, she said, celebrates the First Amendment, awards outstanding reportage during the previous year and grants scholarships to help the next generation "who someday will be the ones asking the questions at the White House."
Her warm welcome raised eyebrows. Jiang's family emigrated from China when she was two. An eighth-grade teacher fired up an interest in journalism. In 2018, she began covering the White House for the respected Murrow-Cronkite network.
Today, top people have left CBS in disgust. David and Larry Ellison's Paramount Skydance took over the network and named Bari Weiss, a right-leaning opinionator, to muzzle watchdogs that bark at Trump's inner circle.
Jiang stayed. I don't know her and can only guess at why a gifted, gutsy reporter now gives Trump a golden opportunity to further debase a "fake news" press that reports truth rather than his personal flackery.
At a press briefing in May 2020 as Covid-19 swept across America, her questions revealed Trump's scapegoating of China. His clumsy deal-based diplomacy has since grown into hostility, distrust and an arms race with a nuclear-armed rival superpower.
When the virus surfaced in Wuhan, Xi Jinping tried to hide it from the world. But early in January, he shared its gene sequencing, and the World Health Organization rallied global action. But Trump denied it, fearing a pandemic would threaten his reelection.
Jiang asked Trump, "Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives?" He replied: "They're losing their lives everywhere in the world. And maybe that's a question you should ask China. Don't ask me, ask China that question, OK?"
He called on another reporter, who paused to let Jiang continue. “Sir," she asked, "why are you saying that to me, specifically?” He answered, “I am not saying it specifically to anybody. I am saying it to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that.”
When she replied, “That is not a nasty question,” he stalked out of the room.
Reaction resounded across America. Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, echoed other Asian Americans who branded Trump an inveterate racist.
There was irony in the awards for reporting excellence. Winners exposed Trump's depredations, which many apologists at White House briefings fail to pursue. Some lob puffballs so Karoline Leavitt, the Goldilocks Goebbels press secretary, can twist truth.
The Wall Street Journal revealed Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book, which suggested sexual proclivities that Trump himself revealed in the Access Hollywood tapes. Reports that he once slugged a minor who bit his penis cannot be dismissed when so many Epstein files remain secret.
Others dug into the increasing dark role of Stephen Miller, blatant corruption, environmental damage and much more.
No more time remains to delve into why "news" reporting has gone so calamitously wrong in America, let alone to try fixing it. We are all bombarded with more conflicting words and images than we could sift through if each day was a month long.
As the Iran war plays out, guesswork now is pointless. Trump has already lost by not winning. Iran cannot last long without some settlement, but its leaders know Trump needs some face-saving "victory" to proclaim before November midterm elections.
Iran wants a treaty, not a ceasefire, with control of the Hormuz strait, and it has the leverage. In parts of Arizona, gas has already reached $6.00 a gallon. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN fuel prices may not come down until next year.
Perhaps longer. American aircraft have already bombed 80 Middle Eastern crude oil producing centers and the world's largest liquified natural gas facility in Qatar.
The main point: Trump scrapped the effective 2015 Iran deal and a chance to negotiate after his 12-day air assault last June. He defined his indifference to humanity with a war crime: threatening to annihilate an ancient society of 92 million people.
Then there is Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, contempt for NATO, slashing health care and help for poor families to fund an outsized war machine and all the rest. Even former faithful sidekicks like Marjorie Taylor Greene declare he is clearly insane.
Viktor Orbán's unexpected rout in Hungary shows how an educated people ready to stand up for democracy can topple a demagogue. We'll soon find out whether Americans can do the same.
Voters need to filter out noise to focus on digging down to ground truth. The old way was hardly perfect, but more editors rode herd on their reporters in what is often scorned as the "legacy" media. Now getting the story straight is hard work.
Doctors swear a Hippocratic oath. Lawyers pass bar exams. "Journalists" are not a thing. Most authoritarian states require official press cards. The U.S. Constitution allows anyone with fingers or a voice to be a journalist. That is a blessing and a curse.
With more choices than anyone can absorb, along with increasing paywalls and propaganda, Americans need to be experts in experts. All reporters know a lot about some things and little, if anything, about others.
One for-instance makes clear what has changed over recent decades.
Jonathan Lemire was an excellent Associated Press correspondent at the outset. He speaks well, with the sort of normal-guy face TV bookers love. After moving from gig to gig, he is now a staff writer for The Atlantic, a must-read monthly with daily posts.
He recently began a piece on Iran and the wider world like this: "It sure feels like 1979 again." Lemire was born in 1979. Whatever his secondhand sources might say, today is light years different from then in almost every way.
Even bedrock news organizations often ignore the firsthand lived experience that is vital to understanding the human context and history that underlie today's big stories.
In AP's earlier days, its seasoned reporters stayed with it. Walter Mears, for example, stayed with the agency from 1956 until he retired in 2001, after running the Washington bureau, then moving to New York as AP's top editor.
It was a nonprofit cooperative owned by U.S. newspapers and broadcasters. which covered its expenses. AP shunned advertising, grants or deals with other news purveyors of differing standards.
As the main source of news for America and the world beyond, it had the catbird front row seat at all White House briefings.
One morning I sat in as editors in Washington spent an hour preparing the first question for a press conference. It always got an answer. If the president waffled, Helen Thomas of United Press International and others held his feet to the fire.
Trump banned AP from briefings after it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico — a name that dates back centuries — the Gulf of America. Despite winning a court case, AP still faces some discrimination at the White House.
When a president headed to his helicopter, off on an important trip, ABC's Sam Donaldson stopped him cold with a booming voice that rose above the whirling blades.
Ted Turner launched CNN in 1980. He hired AP stars with road-worn faces, paying no attention to hair and makeup. Unless sanity prevails, the Ellisons will own what is left of CNN along with CBS. A Pete Hegseth remark suggests what to expect: "I can't wait."
In America, so many people get their news in echo chambers, via social media or by word of mouth, that the biggest stories loom large then vanish. The internet is not a source but simply a means of transmission.
The trick is to hold everything in suspended belief, then look for solid reporting to confirm a story, amplify it — or laugh it off. Cutbacks and resignations have scrambled the old order, but newspapers are still the main source for cable TV news coverage.
The New York Times is essential, but it takes a day to read it all. Its editorial page was once the most valuable real estate in America. Often, it still is. Paul Krugman is off on Substack, but Nicholas Kristof and Lydia Polgreen are back, both among the very best.
Frank Bruni, a literary master who spent years abroad, now does that silly back-and-forth conversation with Bret Stephens, whose columns are possibly the greatest waste of space in the history of American journalism.
Tom Friedman and I disagree on solid geometry. I don't believe the world is flat. He can be annoying when he writes things like, "if I were God...oh wait, I am." But he knows the way from Beirut to Jerusalem and to parts beyond. Often, he is brilliant.
Jeff Bezos crippled The Washington Post, but some good reporters are still there. Carol Leonnig moved to MS Now, and Catherine Rampell is at Bulwark.
The Guardian, free if you wish, and Le Monde in English cover global news with no American slant. But when even the redoubtable BBC demands a subscription, paywalls are costly to climb.
This is not that long-threatened Mort Report guide to "the media." Too much is now urgently at stake. No one needs to read another word about Trump, J.D. Vance and their billionaire plutocrat manipulators.
The only thing that can save America, in my view, is for sentient citizens to do what Peter Magyar's supporters did in Hungary: patiently persuade apathetic and ill-informed citizens that every ballot is vital to overcome an entrenched autocracy.
Big money, bluster and dirty tricks count for a lot when a party in power thumbs the scales. But final election results too overwhelming to contest are what matter most.
Forget Washington punditry, poseur "journalists," and countless contradictory polls. Any eligible voter who wants his or her country back had better step up now. Soon, it may well be too late.
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