First They Came for Gawker

Back over the summer the online news site Gawker got shut down.  It was sued by Hulk Hogan for showing an authorized video of him having sex.  The video had been stolen and handed over the Gawker.  Gawker then got sued and lost big and went bankrupt.  Gawker was pretty reprehensible in it's behavior and very indefensible.  So no one defended then and few people mourned them.  What it did was to prove out the process for driving a media company out of business.  Sue then into submission and eventually they'll fold.

This week Buzzfeed posted an unverified document that has been circulating in Washington DC for a few months.  I read a lot of news and I've heard whispers of this on various sites since October.  The Buzzfeed article simply posts that which has hinted at for a while.  The document claims that the Russian Government has compromising information on Trump.  In particular sexual perversions that involve Russian prostitutes.  I haven't bothered reading the article.  I don't need to since I have many other reasons to actively dislike Donald Trump.  But given that this information is something that has been hinted at in Washington, has been passed around by insiders and from what I'm lead to understand has been handled by politicians it's perfectly acceptable for Buzzfeed to post this material even if it's not verified.  Insiders are talking about it, so why shouldn't the general public get to see it?  So I'm fine with Buzzfeed's decision.  It's in the public interest.

CNN also ran a story about an unverified report that the Russian's have a file of compromising information on Trump.  They didn't post their document.  They just ran a story that it existed.

So what does this have to do with Gawker?  Well as I said Gawker proved out the process for destroying an offending media company.  Donald Trump yesterday commented that there would be consequences for Buzzfeed.  The lawyer who went after Gawker is associated with Trump.  So my expectation is that Trump and his enforcers are going to use the Gawker model to go after Buzzfeed.

And then what does CNN have to do with this?  Well, because they ran a story that spoke of the document Trump went after them too.  Referred to CNN as fake news.  At the press conference at Trump Tower on Wednesday a CNN reporter tried to get a question in and Trump refused and then Trump got down right annoyed at repeated requests.  Trump's press secretary then told the reporter if he did that again he would be ejected from a press conference.

When a politician goes after a news outlet it's a chilling event.  This is the United States.  We have a First Amendment citing freedom of speech which was designed to allow the press and the people to raise questions against their government.  When the government tries to shut them up it's a violation of not only the Constitution, but also the democratic tradition.  I've written before that I consider Trump a fascist and so isn't his administration.  This is all part and parcel to fascism.  This only gets worse from here.

First they came for Gawker and no one spoke out because Gawker was reprehensible.  Then they came for Buzzfeed and no one spoke out because they were unverified.  Then they came for CNN and the press was completed cowed to the government.  

Is the Media Waking to Authoritarianism?

During the campaign Donald Trump often attacked and ridiculed the media.  He would hold rallies and have the media sectioned into pens.  He would hurl insults at them and invite his followers to do so.  The media for some reason decided that this was acceptable and it appears felt that once the election was over that things would change. This week Trump summoned them to meetings.

According to the New York Post the television media were summoned to Trump Tower in New York.
Per an unnamed source who attended the meeting:

“The meeting took place in a big boardroom and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,” the other source said. 

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful, dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room, calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said. 

“Trump didn’t say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate — which was Martha Raddatz, who was also in the room.” 

The stunned reporters tried to get a word in edgewise to discuss access to a Trump administration.

The New York Post reports "NBC’s Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd; ABC’s James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz; CBS’ Norah O’Donnell, John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and King; Fox News’ Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace and Suzanne Scott; MSNBC’s Phil Griffin, and CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett."  So that's the list of people who received special attention from Trump.  Anyone reading the article can easily see it for what it is, an attempt to intimidate the media and put them into their place.  The media are self appointed elite and Trumpism has steadily attacked elites, so to expect the media to be treated as something special was a stretch.

Given how they were treated on the campaign trail it isn't surprising to me that Trump would seek to bully them post-election. I'm only partly surprised that the media didn't see this coming because the media has a sense of entitlement calling itself the "Fourth Estate."  That they would be taken in by an authoritarian clown and abused is pretty easy to see.  Anyone should have been able to see it coming.  The media didn't because they are too full of themselves and their own self importance.

Margaret Sullivan writing in The Washington Post comments,

Brandon Friedman, a Virginia-based public relations executive, offered his theory on Twitter: “They walked into an ambush, agreed not to talk about it, then Trump went straight to the Post with his version.” 

Then it was just a hop, skip and jump to a big headline on the Drudge Report, with its huge worldwide traffic: “Trump Slams Media Elite, Face to Face.” As Business Insider politics editor Oliver Darcy aptly put it, that is “how a lot of America will see this.” 

The result for the president-elect: He once again was able to use the media as his favorite foil. Having a whipping boy is more important than ever now that the election is over and there is no Democratic opponent to malign at every turn.

Sort of sums it up there.

Christiane Amanpour of CNN wrote a commentary entitled "Journalism faces an 'existential crisis' in Trump era."  Amanpour writes, "I actually hoped that once President-elect, all that that would change, and I still do. But I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about 'professional protesters incited by the media.'"  She continues, "As all the international journalists we honor in this room tonight and every year know only too well: First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating -- until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison -- and then who knows?" Amanpour gets it.  She really does.  The question is do her bosses at CNN get it?  I doubt it.  CNN was turned over to false equivalence panel shows a long time ago.  They chase ratings.  Same is true of CBS, ABC and NBC.  They are all in business to gain ratings which translate into ad dollars which means profits.  They area all profit centers for their parent corporations.  At the end of the day will any of them listen to Amanpour and pursue truth to power or will they all fall into false equivalene, normalization and access.

I have no faith in the broadcast media.  Access and ratings are all they care about.

But then Trump had a meeting scheduled with The New York Times.

The New York Times meeting went down entirely different.  The Times refused to make the meeting off the record.  They also asked questions and got answers.  They weren't there to have their egos stroked and they weren't there to supplicate before the altar of Trump.  They were there as reporters.  The New York Times Editorial Board wrote a op-ed and they state that his answers were flexible, but lacking any in depth thought which to me would seem to indicate a total lack of conviction.

The New York Times Editorial Board ends with, "Ronald Reagan used to say that in dealing with the Soviet Union, the right approach was to "trust, but verify." For now, that's the right approach to take with Mr. Trump. Except, regrettably, for the trust part."