The MRC's Rich Noyes on Friday appeared on Fox News to discuss reports that the White House is blocking some media outlets from an off-camera press gaggles. The research director suggested an alternative path for reporters, saying Donald Trump should continue to “criticize them.” He added, “If you have a problem, point them out. Showcase it. Make sure everybody understands why that was sloppy journalism and let the chips fall where they may after you air the dirty laundry.”
However, Noyes cautioned, “But once you start cutting people out of access, that is a weapon that has been used by the Obama administration on conservative outlets, non-liberal outlets. There is going to be a president after this one and a president after that one.”
A transcript of the segment is below:
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Your World With Neil Cavuto
2/24/17
4:04NEIL CAVUTO: To the Media Research Center’s Rich Noyes on this. What do you think of what happened here today?
RICH NOYES: Well, I think it depends on your definition. If this was a gaggle, cutting out some of the reporters who would properly to be there, it seems to be going a bridge too far. If it's a pool where you are supposed to just have a representative group who then spreads the news and then add a few more, well, no one’s being left out and you’re just enhancing the pool.
CAVUTO: I’m told it was a gaggle. So, it was the prior. Not the latter.
NOYES: Right. So the terms kind of matter. This is sort of a technical thing. I think in general, there's no problems criticizing the press, particularly when they do bad stories. CNN just did a distorted report the other night about the FBI and Reince Priebus talking to each other. It sounds like the White House has a reason to be mad at CNN. This was all about a New York Times story that was distorted that they were talking about, which they have a reason to be mad about.
But once you start cutting people out of access, you know, that is a weapon that has been used by the Obama administration on conservative outlets, non-liberal outlets. You know, there is going to be a president after this one and a president after that one. And if they start picking and choosing the reporters who cover them, you end up with a real problem. I think the liberal media fraternity would probably work out better in the long run than people trying to be disrupters in the profession.
CAVUTO: Yeah. I kind of agree with you. There's a long history of presidents from both parties that don't like the way they were covered, even those who have historically been covered pretty well. John Kennedy was famous for picking apart stories in publications whose coverage he didn't like, even though he was, as I said, pretty favorably presented to the American people. Abraham Lincoln famously went after newspapers and ostracized some of them in his own coverage. So I understand that. But do you draw more attention to it, making it more public? And is the better part of valor to quietly, in this case, diss or ignore them?
You know what I mean with President Obama to your earlier point, he would single out Fox or whatever. It wouldn't often times be so blatant that you’d feed the reaction you got, but it was well-known without it being shouted. What do you think?
NOYES: Right. I think President Trump has a philosophy. You saw it in the campaign, where he thinks access to him, access to his people is the fuel that helps the media make money. You know, he didn't want to go to the debate to become somebody that could have advertising sold and the media make money off of his performance where he wasn't being paid, the charities wouldn't get paid. So he was trying to bargain that and barter that. I think this is an extension of that where “if they're not going to be fair, if they're not honest, we don't need to give them access.” That's the wrong approach when you're in a public institution like the White House. But criticize them. If you have a problem, point them out, showcase it. Make sure everybody understands why that was sloppy journalism and let the chips fall where they may after you air the dirty laundry.
CAVUTO: Bingo. This looks childish to me. Thanks, Rich Noyes, thank you very, very much.
