The Press Is Not the Root Of Trump’s Problems

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty

Donald Trump has apparently discovered the source of all his troubles.

It isn’t inflation. It isn’t foreign policy. It isn’t the courts. It isn’t his administration’s decisions.

Nope.

It’s CNN. MS NOW. Politico. And apparently anyone else holding a microphone who doesn’t give the White House the warm, fuzzy coverage it would prefer.

Last week, Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, accusing them of producing “fake news.” Reporters from the three organizations were subsequently turned away and had their press credentials deactivated. Because nothing says “I’ve got nothing to worry about” quite like banning reporters.

The White House says access to the building is a privilege, not a right, and argues that presidents have always restricted or managed press access. There is a legitimate distinction here: the First Amendment protects the press’s right to publish, but it does not mean every reporter is automatically entitled to a seat in the briefing room or a spot on Air Force One.

But that’s not really the larger issue.

The larger issue is what happens when a president starts treating unfavorable coverage as the problem rather than asking whether the underlying events being reported might be the problem.

The messenger is not the message

The press can get things wrong. Reporters make mistakes. Editors make bad calls. News organizations have biases, corporate interests and occasionally an impressive ability to turn a molehill into Mount Everest.

That’s journalism.

It doesn’t mean the answer is to make the press disappear whenever the coverage becomes uncomfortable.

Trump’s latest bans follow his administration’s earlier fight with the Associated Press, which began after AP declined to adopt the administration’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico. The White House subsequently restricted AP access to certain presidential events.

And now three more outlets have been shown the door.

The White House argues that this is simply about controlling access and combating inaccurate reporting. Critics argue that excluding news organizations because of their coverage threatens the independence of the press. The Associated Press, White House Correspondents’ Association and other journalism organizations have challenged the administration’s approach.

Those are competing claims worth examining. But there is one thing that doesn’t require a press badge to understand:

Banning the reporter doesn’t change the story.

If the economy is struggling, throwing CNN out doesn’t fix the economy.

If a foreign-policy decision is producing bad consequences, banning Politico doesn’t reverse them.

If a White House policy is unpopular, confiscating someone’s press credential doesn’t make it popular.

And if a story is demonstrably false, the administration has something considerably more useful than a locked gate: facts.

Show the receipts. Release the documents. Correct the record. Answer the questions. That’s how you beat a bad story.

The press can be wrong. So can presidents.

There is an important distinction between criticizing journalism and controlling access because you dislike the journalism.

Presidents have every right to criticize reporters. They can call stories inaccurate. They can issue corrections. They can hold press conferences and challenge reporters’ assertions.

But the public has a stake in what happens next.

The White House isn’t a private country club. The president is conducting the public’s business, and journalists are one of the mechanisms through which citizens find out what their government is doing.

FactCheck.org recently examined the Trump administration’s comparisons between its press restrictions and actions by the Obama and Biden administrations. It concluded that Trump’s current bans go beyond the examples cited by the White House.

That’s an important distinction—not because one administration gets a free pass, but because “they did it too” isn’t much of a defense.

If something is wrong, pointing to someone else’s version of wrong doesn’t make it right. Maybe the problem isn’t the people holding the microphones. There is an understandable temptation for politicians to blame the messenger.

It’s convenient.

The reporter becomes the enemy. The headline becomes the problem. The network becomes the problem. The poll becomes the problem.

And suddenly nobody has to talk about the underlying issue. But reporters don’t create inflation by writing about it.

They don’t create wars by covering them. They don’t create unpopular policies by asking questions about them. And they certainly don’t create reality.

They report on it.

Trump may dislike the coverage. He may believe some of it is unfair. He may believe some reporters are biased against him. He is entitled to say so. But the press isn’t responsible for everything a president doesn’t like seeing in the mirror.

Sometimes the problem isn’t the person asking the question. Sometimes it’s the answer.