New York Times Michael Grynbaum’s latest paranoid attack on President Trump’s harsh criticism of the media appeared in Tuesday’s paper, “In Age of Trump, Political Reporters Are Under Attack, and in Demand”:
Since Mr. Trump took office a year ago, the political press has endured a sustained assault from a chief executive who has called journalists “the enemy of the American people.” Yet the news media has also driven decisions inside the West Wing to a degree perhaps unmatched since the scandal-ridden days of Richard Nixon. And White House aides and reporters alike say that political reality is being refracted by the media in an unprecedented way.
Some reporters, in unguarded moments, say that they fear for journalists’ safety. Margaret Talev, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, was moved to tears in an interview as she recounted the death threats that now routinely land in her colleagues’ emails.
Once again, Grynbaum found a threat in the term “fake news,” which originated as a mainstream media attack on false pro-Trump Facebook posts, but has since been appropriated by Trump, to the media’s chagrin:
Trust in the press has eroded thanks, in part, to Mr. Trump and his allies, the ubiquitous phrase “fake news” osmosing its way into the American psyche. Yet newspaper subscriptions and television news ratings, once in free fall, have perked back up.
Oh sure. Media criticism is responsible for the threatening atmosphere:
Mr. Bannon played a not-minor role in creating the current media atmosphere: At Breitbart News, where he was executive chairman until his abrupt exit this month, he whipped up anger against CNN and other major news organizations; upon entering the White House, he instructed the news media to “keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”
Grynbaum kept forwarding reporter paranoia a la CNN with its banana peel ad:
Ms. Talev said that her father escaped Communist Bulgaria in the 1960s, where dissent was squashed and criticizing government officials was forbidden. Her work, she said, feels personal these days. Under her watch, the Correspondents’ Association has created a new committee on reporters’ security, to assist members who receive threats, an increasingly common occurrence.
April D. Ryan, the White House reporter for American Urban Radio Networks and one of the few black correspondents in the briefing room, has described receiving menacing and racist messages; she was subsequently derided as “Miss Piggy” by a high-ranking official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Last week, a man in Michigan was arrested on suspicion of threatening CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, the kind of real-world effect that reporters here worry may be the inevitable result of a president who once called the press “a great danger to our country.”
Grynbaum, writing with John Koblin, whined last December about disgraced NBC's Today co-host Matt Lauer's allegedly unfair interview with Hillary Clinton during the election race: “After a live forum of the presidential candidates in September hosted by Mr. Lauer, he received poor reviews for his handling of Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump, with critics arguing that he questioned Mrs. Clinton aggressively and interrupted her repeatedly while giving Mr. Trump friendlier treatment.”
