WashPost Reviles Steve Bannon's 'Extreme Sentiment' Identifying the Press As the 'Opposition Party'

May 22nd, 2017 6:54 AM

Sunday's Washington Post Magazine carried a cover story by Steven Levingston wrote about presidents mastering the "new media" of their time, or how Trump's mastery of Twitter compares to John F. Kennedy's mastery of television. But Levingston can't help but succumb to the liberal temptation to compare Kennedy's chumminess with a [shhh, liberal] press to Trump's "war with journalists," as if Trump could charm his way to better coverage.

As president, Trump has become accountable to the nation and is subjected to the watchdog of the press. Yet he has held few news conferences, and when he has spoken publicly — other than on Twitter — he has generally appeared before more sympathetic reporters on Fox News. His war with journalists has escalated as he has repeatedly labeled legitimate newspapers and broadcasters as propagators of fake news, and tweeted, in the spirit of Nixon, the “FAKE NEWS media ... is the enemy of the American people.”

Donald Trump's given more press conferences in 2017 than Hillary Clinton gave in most of 2016. He just had one days ago with the president of Colombia. Trump recently gave contentious interviews to Time magazine and NBC's Lester Holt. Obama generally wouldn't give Fox News an interview unless it was Super Bowl Sunday.

Then Levingston truly lost his bearings, claiming it's "extreme" and incorrect to say the press is a nest of Democrats. (So let's see the Post provide a list of who everyone in the news room voted for in November! We can guess from reading the paper...)

During the campaign and into the White House, Trump has belittled, badgered and evaded reporters, calling them “scum,” “the lowest form of life” and “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.” His chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, voiced a particularly extreme sentiment when he declared that the media “is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country.” His remarks, which Trump endorsed, go beyond the hyperbole of labeling the press as enemies and suggest a failure to appreciate the fundamental American principle that presidential power is subjected to checks and balances, in particular, by a free press not beholden to politics or parties.

What on Earth is "extreme" about calling the media out as liberal? And to say they're somehow "not beholden to politics or parties"? Stop, stop, we're laughing too hard! But the comedy routine wasn't over:

Indeed, other top candidates seeking the most powerful political position in the world face rigorous scrutiny: Hillary Clinton was not immune to aggressive reporting on her handling of sensitive emails while secretary of state and other aspects of her career.

[Frank] Sesno, now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, believes Bannon’s charge is misguided. “He’s wrong about the media being the opposition party, because an opposition party seeks to defeat the party in power in order to be in power,” Sesno says. “I know of no reporter who as part of his job is campaigning for office.”

Anyone watching Sesno's old network CNN knows they spent the last week churning the waters for Trump's impeachment, which can be clearly defined as seeking one party's defeat/humiliation. Anyone claiming that the Hillary Clinton scandals drew "rigorous scrutiny" -- especially on TV -- wasn't watching TV.

Levingston's earlier focus on JFK also had comical elements. The public adored Kennedy's press conferences, we're told, and the public had great faith in his "sincerity." It's "sincere" to expect the press to cover up your personal and political misbehavior?

Although Kennedy concealed some aspects of his life — among them, his womanizing and the extent of his poor health — he retains high popularity today in part because he was perceived as communicating honestly with the media and the American people. Historian Robert Dallek attributes his enduring appeal to “the public’s faith in Kennedy’s sincerity.”

Levingston suggested it was a golden era when JFK found fast friends among journalists, and somehow it never occurs to him that this all underlines Steve Bannon's point that the press are a barrel full of liberal Democrats. At least Levingston recalled one of JFK's greatest, most partisan reporter friends in Ben Bradlee, who rained fire on Republicans as executive editor of the Post:

He enjoyed the company of journalists, whom he found well-­informed, even intellectual, and who kept him up-to-date on important issues.

“Kennedy himself genuinely liked reporters,” Bradlee recalled. “Some of his best friends ... were in fact reporters.” The camaraderie between journalists and the president meant that reporters tended to cut Kennedy some slack, even protecting him by holding back potentially damaging rumors about his sexual escapades, illnesses and drug use. Bradlee himself faced criticism as a journalist for his close relationship with the president. But he insisted in his memoir, A Good Life, that he and the president respected “the complicated perimeters of our friendship and the conflict between friendship and journalism.”

As early as 1956, Kennedy had developed remarkable rapport with newsmen — and they were almost all men. During that year’s Democratic National Convention, as reported by Richard Reeves in his book President Kennedy: Profile of Power, Sen. Kennedy casually began to walk in his underwear from his bedroom into the sitting room of his hotel suite, where reporters and photographers were gathered. An associate called out in alarm: “You can’t go out there in your shorts.” To which Kennedy replied, “I know these fellows. They’re not going to take advantage of me.” And, as Reeves concludes: “They rarely did.”

Levingston could have been more complete about the extent of Bradlee's hanging out with JFK. Here's a fuller take of the passage he cites in Bradlee's memoir:

Our friendship was brief, varying from conversations to drinks to meals in the White House, and weekends together in Hyannis Port, Palm Beach, Newport, and Camp David. In a matter of days, I had felt comfortable with Kennedy, sure that he instinctively understood the complicated perimeters of our friendship and the conflict between friendship and journalism. But in all the time I was close to them, I felt Jackie never quite forgave me for trying to be a journalist and a friend at the same time...

Kennedy and I agreed that he could keep anything he wanted to off the record -- until at least five years after he left the White House. He was much more apt to tell me what to put in my notes than what to keep out. Jackie was never comfortable with our deal.