Access journalism and the Trump Era
Imagine, if you will, that instead of publishing their findings in the pages of The Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had instead sat on their most explosive findings for future publication in a book. Of course, you can't really imagine it, because in that media environment it would have never occurred.
But yesterday, we were greeted with news that Maggie Haberman of The New York Times did just that. In her coming book she relates a story that when plumbers were brought in to unclog Donald Trump's White House toilet, they found wadded up documents in the pipes, put there, obviously, by the orange menace. And yet this bit of information is only seeing light now.
Considering the story over the past few days being about Trump having taken fifteen boxes full of documents—some classified—with him as he hightailed it to Florida, this may have been something which the public needed to know sooner.
But, there are no Woodwards and Bernsteins any longer. Woodward isn't Woodward, as he sat on explosive comments around Covid for publication of his Trump book.
As I've said, most political journalists, most DC journalists are pettifogging careerists. Journalism isn't just a job; it should be a calling. A journalist's role in a democracy is to hold the powerful accountable. It's not to sit on stories of wrongdoing for a future book. It's not to allow guests on talkshows spread lies and disinformation without any rejoinder in the interest of access. It's not to give the people what the want, but what they need to make informed decisions as citizens in a democracy.
Journalists pretentiously call themselves "the fourth estate", according to themselves the status of a leg of a democratic republic, keeping the edifice standing. But that's not what we have now. On the right, we have the likes of Fox News and Newsmax pushing out and out propaganda. And in the "mainstream", we have journal parroting false equivalencies, treating the increasingly fascistic Republican Party as if it were just a normal political organization; in fact, the GOP, if Trump's faction had its way, would completely upend and destroy our democracy. But, to maintain that precious access, our political journalists pull their punches repeatedly, and treat the GOP with a deference they don't accord Democrats.
As the withdrawal from Afghanistan took shape, another Times denizen, Maureen Dowd, quipped that now the press would no longer be seen as heroic to liberals. The thing is: we never thought they were heroic. Even during the Trump regime, they pussyfooted around, not putting out the danger which that man was to the Republic. This isn't to say that the press did no good work during the Trump years; but that self-censorship was still there, and it had no interest in taking sides, maintaining so-called "objectivity". This is the same DC press which will shrivel if someone like former President Barack Obama said anything off-color about the propagandists at Fox News. The fact that they accord Fox propaganda as worthy journalism tells you all you need to know.
I, of course, won't reward Haberman and the rest of the access journalists by buying their books. At some point, journalists have to realize that there's no neutrality in the battle for the nation's soul. I have my doubts, though, that they will.
Epilogue
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you become aware that someone may have committed a federal felony, it’s important to call the FBI and not save it for your next book
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 10, 2022