The cast of Friday’s PBS News Hour was not interested in subtlety, nuance, or level-headedness as they discussed recent media news. Host Amna Nawaz wondered if “we’re in much more sinister territory now” due to the changes surrounding the White House press pool. Both Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart and New York Times columnist David Brooks agreed, as he went so far as to say Capehart’s employer was now part of the problem given Jeff Bezos’s changes to the editorial page.
Nawaz began, “His continued attacks on the press, blocking the AP's access from some White House coverage as well. You saw him take control of the White House, take control of the press pool that covers the president full time, makes sure everyone else knows what's happening with the president.”
Citing Brooks’s colleague, Nawaz continued, “Peter Baker, of course, longtime Russia correspondent, said it reminded him of the Kremlin press pool takeover. And I just want to get your takes on where that sort of attack on the press stands and whether we're in much more sinister territory now.”
“Of course,” Vladimir Putin might poison or defenestrate you if you ask him a tough question. Meanwhile, even CNN reporters admit the pool changes haven’t done away with tough questions.
As it was, Capehart agreed, “I do think we are in more sinister territory because you have got to look at what's happening with AP, in light of his lawsuits against CBS, against ABC, threats, threatening the licenses of other broadcast entities.”
Capehart added:
This is all part of a pattern of roughing up anyone he views as not either insufficiently loyal or people who have wronged him. And he looks at the press as an entity that has wronged him. But what I would say is, you know, it's sort of inside baseball that, you know, AP is not allowed in the pool, which means it can't get into all these places. To me, it just says that the White House press corps, which already does hard work, they're just going to have to work a little bit harder reporting on an administration that already leaks like a sieve.
Brooks not only echoed Nawaz and Capehart’s sentiment; he went further, “Yes, I mean, Donald Trump does everything he can to destroy things that would restrain his power. And so that's the attorney generals he fires. That's the inspector generals. That's the JAG officers. That's the leadership of the military who doesn't like. And the press is a potential restraint on his power. And so he is trying to dismantle the idea of the press.”
Before anyone could say, “That’s a tad hyperbolic,” Brooks rolled on, “And if I could bash the press a little, or at least the owner of Jonathan's newspaper, we're helping. Jeff Bezos, when he says, not going to — we're going to have an opinion section in the Washington Post that does not brook dissent, that's just not journalism.”
He added, “And I have seen this again from entrepreneurs who say, why would you publish something you disagree with? They just don't get it, some people. That's what we do. That's what democracy is. Your loyalty to democracy is higher than your loyalty to one ideology or another. And so the idea that we're not — we have a major newspaper that doesn't publish dissent, that can't be.”
Bezos’s exact words were, in part, “personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
“Other topics” is a broad category. In fact, at the time of the publishing of this article, the Washington Post opinion page is still full of articles that are critical of Donald Trump, his administration, and conservatives generally. Meanwhile, how many dissenting viewpoints does the New York Times offer?
