UPDATED: Fearless Journalism, Or Presidential Appeasement?

Happy New Year, everyone.

And now, a return to regular programming.

As 2017 dawns and the Trump presidency draws near, I have been wondering if the MSM will show any real backbone and fulfill the role traditionally ascribed to them as bulwarks of democracy. Or will they simply continue to be the abject failures that journalist and social prophet Chris Hedges calls them, sell-outs as part of the liberal class he takes to task in his book Death of the Liberal Class?

One of the prizes that journalists, on behalf of their corporate employers, hold most sacred is access. Given the unbridled contempt Trump has shown toward criticism, will there now be an effort at appeasement of the temperamental one? Indeed, Will both external and internal factors influence the media's approach to political coverage?

Early signs offer cause for concern. Take, for example, this report from The Guardian:

A journalist was temporarily banned from Facebook after a post in which he called Trump supporters “a nasty fascistic lot”, in the latest example of the social media platform’s censorship of journalists.

The social media giant later reversed its decision and apologized, but the trouble began when writer Kevin Sessums shared a post by

ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd that read: “In the last few hours I have been called by lovely ‘christian’ Trump fans: a jew, faggot, retard. To set record straight: divorced Catholic.”

Sessums added his own commentary, writing:

But as those who do hold Trump to the standards of any other person have found out on Twitter and other social media outlets these Trump followers are a nasty fascistic lot. Dowd is lucky he didn’t get death threats like Kurt Eichenwald. Or maybe he did and refuses to acknowledge them. If you voted for Trump and continue to support him and you think you are better than these bigoted virulent trolls, you’re not. Your silence enables them just as it did in the racist campaign that Trump and Bannon ran. In fact, hiding behind a civilized veneer in your support of fascism I consider more dangerous. We’re past describing you as collaborators at this point. That lets you off the hook. You’re Russo-American oligarchical theocratic fascists.

Seesums was initially informed that his post violated FB's community standards, a curious justification given much of what it deems to be consistent with those standards.

The writer's reaction was swift and excoriating:

It’s chilling. It’s arbitrary censorship ... Do I have to be careful about what I say about Trump now?

That does become the central question, doesn't it? And that leads to this concern: will mainstream journalists now practice a kind of prophylactic self-censorship? They might be wise to heed the advice of Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who said on Saturday that

journalists needed to “grow a backbone” to deal with President-elect Donald Trump.

With a Republican-controlled House and Senate, expect the usual checks and balances of the American political system to completely fail. Let us all hope that mainstream journalism doesn't have to be consigned to the same category as well.

UPDATE: This Washington Post piece, replete with links, gets to the journalistic heart of the matter.

The Shape Of Things To Come?

The other day, I wrote a post about how NBC Nightly News was attacked by Donald Trump via his weapon of choice, Twitter, a perhaps apt mechanism given the president-elect's incapacity for sustained thought or discourse.

But NBC is hardly the only media outlet in his sights. His latest is an attack on Vanity Fair in retaliation for a scathing review of a restaurant in the lobby of Trump Tower called Trump Grill. This excerpt probably set the Orange One off:

“The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich,” Tina Nguyen wrote, saying the restaurant “reveals everything you need to know about our next president.”

That seems to have led to this retaliatory tantrum:

"Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine," Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

"Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!"

At one time, being personally and/or professionally attacked by an incoming president would have been a shocking notion to all but the most rabid among us. Now, I fear, it will simply become a common and expected feature of a Trump presidency, one that may have long term consequences.

At a time when mainstream media are losing their cachet and readership, will they have the determination and integrity to continue being the guardians of democracy, or will they mutate, as some already have, into a kind of Praetorian Guard for this strange new emperor of the American Empire? The signs are not entirely promising.

Sarah Kendzior offers some unsettling thoughts on the question:

According to reporter Daniel Dale, Mr. Trump told at least 560 lies during the course of his campaign. Some lies are audacious in that they are easily disproven – for example, when Mr. Trump claimed he did not tell U.S. citizens to “check out a sex tape” after tweeting to them to do so. Flagrant lying is a hallmark of despotism. It sends the message that one should not bother speaking truth to power when power is the only truth. It implies that the teller of the lie defines reality, no matter what evidence there is to the contrary, including the liar’s own words.

It is that later sentence that gives one pause, since the MSM are becoming part of the problem:

... as inauguration looms, Mr. Trump’s team may not have to work too hard to keep the U.S. press in line. U.S. journalists, always his greatest ally due to corporate collaboration and fear of retaliation, [emphasis mine] are already mainstreaming the Trump administration’s most inflammatory ideas. To read the U.S. media today is to see a CNN debate on whether Jews are people, the Associated Press falsely tweet that the KKK has disavowed white supremacy, and countless mainstream media puff pieces on neo-Nazis that focus more on their fashion sense than their fascist beliefs.

Will mainstream media thus become normalizers and apologists for the incoming demagogue? If the following is any indicator, there is much to be concerned about:

Donald Trump's campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan.

Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks.

The price of this access, it appears, was steep:

In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary.

And what about those outlets that insisted upon calling their own shots?

Kushner ... told the business executives that the campaign was upset with CNN because they considered its on-air panels stacked against Trump. He added that he personally talked with Jeff Zucker about changing the composition of the panels but Zucker refused. He repeatedly said in the panel that CNN wasn't "moving the needle" and wasn't important as it once was, according to three of the people present.

The campaign then decided not to work as closely with CNN, and Trump ramped up his bashing of the cable network.

So will this be the shape of things to come? Will the unofficial fiat be, "Play ball with the Trump administration or be denied access?"

I think I know the answer to the above. What I don't know is how many media outlets will opt to save, not sell, their souls.