QOTD -- White House Correspondents Association Fiasco

 

"... Just imagine if the reporters gathered in that room had gotten out of their seats and walked out on that maddening address to the nation. Millions of Americans would have been cheering in their living rooms. Instead the wide shots and cutaways of the crowd on hand told a far more depressing story, revealing not just the stunned and tortured looks of some of the finest journalists in the world, who missed a golden opportunity to stand up for what is arguably our most precious right guaranteed under the Constitution. People sat in their seats, defeated and depressed. It was agonizing to watch from home. But it was also clarifying. The event itself was an indictment of our news media. Our system of delivering information to the American people is badly broken.  [snip]

"The correct response, and I’m sorry to report that some of my friends in the press will never get this, was to take a stand - something, yes, most journalists are trained to avoid at all costs. That training, unfortunately, has led many of us, as a profession, down the wrong path. We are not supposed to take sides in a story, reporters say. We are here to report the news, they insist. My reply to that is, and always will be: there are not two sides to a story when it’s a matter of right versus wrong. And to put it mildly, a different kind of president calls for a different kind of playbook. Do we continue to just report on the destruction of our profession? Our democracy? Or could we try a new approach? A kind of journalism that understands the assignment - in an age of rising autocracy. Without journalism, there is no democracy. And without democracy, well… you see where I’m going here.

"Our democracy is only as strong as those willing to defend it. That includes the press. When courage could have been summoned at the White House correspondents dinner, a dangerous complicity took its place. Yes, democracy dies in darkness, but also in cowardice."  --  former CNN anchor Jim Acosta in his Substack piece "Democracy Dies In Cowardice Too," on the recent White House Correspondents Association dinner featuring the unhinged Malignant Fascist in full-blown anti-First Amendment rage.  Over 500 journalists had appealed to the WHCA to confront MF at the dinner, an appeal that was brushed off by outgoing WHCA president Weijia Jiang of CBS "News" (apparently angling to stay in Bari "Bad News" Weiss' good graces).  Instead, they platformed the biggest threat to press freedom in our history, and sat there stupefied and defeated.