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Making Acosta a Federal Case
Question: What does CNN’s Jim Acosta crave more than anything? If you said “attention,” go to the head of the class. It’s a mystery why the White House has given Acosta way more than that. By yanking his “hard pass,” after last week’s press conference (don’t ask who was obnoxious, they ALL were), Acosta has literally become a federal case. CNN filed suit claiming that their reporter’s First and Fifth amendment rights were violated. More than a dozen news organizations, including Fox, have filed amicus briefs supporting CNN, and even the Trump-friendly FoxNews judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano has opined that Acosta has a strong case. Mr. Showboat is just where he wants to be – the center of attention – but thanks to President Trump’s gratuitous swipe, he is also a free press martyr.
Acosta’s technique has been honed for many months – asking questions not to receive answers but to shame. At the November 7 press conference, Acosta rose to “challenge” the president on what he had said about the caravan during the closing days of the campaign. “As you know Mr. President, the caravan was not an invasion. It’s a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the border with the U.S.”
It’s not Acosta’s job to joust with the president over interpretations of words. Leave that to commentators or politicians. He could have asked the president where he got his information about Middle Eastern terrorists infiltrating into the caravan, or what his evidence was that there were many criminals in its ranks. He might have asked what purpose U.S. troops would serve at the border in light of the Posse Comitatus Act. He could have asked whether the president thought any of the migrants might have colorable asylum claims. Instead, he demanded “Do you think you demonized immigrants?”
Frankly, if Acosta thinks the president demonized immigrants, let him write an op-ed. A press conference is supposed to be about eliciting information. Acosta doesn’t practice journalism so much as performance art.
The White House handled this mosquito in about the worst possible way. The president could have declined to call on him. Having called on him and been offended by his tone, the president could have refused to take the bait, saying “You might want to run for office yourself. In the meantime, I’ll call on someone who wants to ask a question, not stage a debate.”
Instead, in a fit of petulance, the White House revoked Acosta’s press pass. This is Trump not understanding the import of the office he holds. When Trump the businessman took swipes at press coverage he disliked, it was pique. When the president of the United States does it, it smacks of authoritarianism. Admittedly, the press corps are a high-strung bunch, but this White House flirts with intimidation, calling down contempt for them at rallies, deriding them as the “enemy of the people,” (which is an echo of Stalin, whether Trump recognizes it or not), threatening to sic the FTC on the owner of the Washington Post, and elevating the likes of Gateway Pundit.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who cannot be much more honest than her boss and hope to keep her job, issued a tweet explaining that Acosta was exiled because he had accosted the intern who attempted to remove the mic from his hands. “President Trump believes in a free press and expects and welcomes tough questions of him and his Administration. We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern…”
Anyone who watched the exchange – or looked it up on YouTube — knew that this was risible. Yet Sanders said it anyway and even released a video that had been slightly doctored (by speeding it up) to make it seem that Acosta had been physically swatting at the intern.
Within a few days, Sanders changed her tune, claiming instead that the White House cannot run a smooth press conference if reporters hog the mic. But let’s pause to consider where this White House has settled. Covering up for an intemperate retaliation against a journalist, the spokesman for the president of the United States attempted to rewrite the history that we had all seen with our own eyes just days before.
Ms. Sanders would be a great fit in the Ministry of Truth.
Published in General
I heartily agree with everything you said, Ms. Charen!
Pretty much everyone I know thinks Acosta had it coming. His name’s fitting, isn’t it?
I basically agree with the theme here, but once again the author’s need for cheap shots when it comes to the Administration is on display. This time the victim is Ms. Sanders, who undoubtedly has one of the most difficult jobs in the country–more difficult even than pontificating from the cover of a word processor. Press Secretaries are rarely, if ever, fonts of candor, spin being part of the job description. However, rarely, if ever, has a Press Secretary had to deal with a press corps as rabid as exists at present. The fact is that today’s major media, with its omnipresence, is far more analogous to the Ministry of Truth than a single woman behind a single lectern.
I’m not sure Mona has ever been “credentialed.” For the last 30 years every venue, every event that I’ve covered has required one. Every one has been both implicit and explicit: Break the rules of expected behavior and your privilege to cover the event is revocable. And they don’t care who your employer is. (And in my world, unlike CNN, my employer pays a lot of money just to be there.)
Nonsense. In most workplaces an employee being subjected to unwanted physical contact by a co-worker or business related visitor is taken very seriously by HR. You. can. lose. your. job. seriously.
For sure when the touch is sexual in nature, but battery would probably also apply. In many companies this is made clear by annually required training.
Where there is a status or power discrepancy between toucher and touchee (as in “White House reporter for purportedly major news organization” and “intern”) the lower status touchee must be protected by a higher ranking person in the organization s/he works for. As in: “protect your subordinates or you. can. lose. that. promotion. or. even. your. job.”
I don’t understand how this is a Federal issue. Even if CNN thinks they have the right to be there, Acosta doesn’t have a right to be there.
The only people that care are CNN and other tabloid media. Acosta is out and they will find another combative ego maniac to replace him.
What Trump should do is sprinkle the media with Hannity interns and only call on them. HaHa. Trolled again.
Moderator Note:
Personal attack.Given [redacted] I don’t think you are in a position to be casting these stones.
But you do you.
How many of those venues were the White House?
Does this mean Ricochet members are free to ignore the editors when told to shut up?
Since the editors work for the folks who own the platform, they can surgically deplatform you.
And since Trump works for the folks who own the White House platform, he can surgically deplatform Acosta.
Mona,
You start rationally by accepting the inept absurdity of Acosta and his lack of professional ethics or competence. Then when he finally pushes his childish act too far and fully hijacks a press briefing, you manage to blame Trump for the result. I am really sick and tired of this endless back seat driving garbage. Endlessly demanding some sort of Gd like response from Trump (as if Obama didn’t make regular grotesque gaffs) and when you don’t get it we hear about how he could have handled it better until the end of time. Acosta was destructively invading a Presidential press briefing both by harassing Sarah Huckabee Sanders and by actually insulting the President directly. The horrible punishment is that he lost his press credentials for a short “cooling off” period. He nor CNN has nothing like a right to a seat at a White House press conference and you know it.
I’m sure when your children were small, say 5 or 6, you reached the end of your rope sometimes and sent them to their room for a “cooling off” period. I doubt you would appreciate someone second-guessing you and trying to make you feel guilty for exercising the most modest discipline. Acosta and CNN are completely full of crap on this. Don’t encourage them. They need to apologize as soon as possible. If not they can stay in their room for as long as it takes.
Oh wait, I’m not playing along. I’ll try harder. Trump is a great big bully that is just soooo scary.
Please, please, please, give us a break.
Regards,
Jim
Just one. A 1984 campaign event.
And quite frankly, it’s not relevant. The point stands. Your behavior dictates the ability to exercise your rights. It has always been so.
There’s a different dimension to it when it involves public officials. So it is most certainly relevant.
Works for me.
No it doesn’t. There’s nothing “special” about being a journalist, no matter what you cover. It doesn’t give you the right to be obnoxious, to be rude or to make a general ass of oneself.
If Acosta was firm but polite there’s no bitch. I’ve seen Dan Rather mix it up with Nixon and Sam Donaldson be tenacious with Reagan. You cross the line, you’re gone.
Acosta is an idiot, and being a self-absorbed and entitled idiot, combined with bad manners, as well as putting his hands on a White House intern, no matter how benign that touching may be is more than enough to take away his permanent pass. He is still allowed to apply for a daily pass.
Yeah, Jim, Trump-abuse is for experts only.
Like…an op-ed/columnist-type! C’mon, show us how it’s done!
And it’s dog-whistle quality accusations all the way down until,
Sent to a gulag? Forced to wander outside the borders of the US, never to return? Or do you mean he had to fill out new paperwork to get into the redacting White House like little people.
If there’s one thing Charen hates, it’s ‘gratuitous swipes’.
No. But it does mean than when the President and you limit press access to a journalist because he makes you cry, that a federal case should be made out of it.
This isn’t about enforcing proper behavior, this is about a patter of limiting access by the skeptical press.
I’d actually like to see the White House give the credentials back, and then at the next presidential news conference have Trump call on no one but Jim Acosta. As much of a preening windbag that he is, my guess is it would take Acosta at least 20-30 minutes to figure out what was going on and to cede his time to other reporters in the White House press room, as (shared politics aside) they got angrier and angrier about his showboating.
Actually, Trump has been unusually accessible to the press compared to any recent president; he’s even given multiple interviews to the NY Times which I think qualifies as the skeptical press. I even read an article a few months ago by (maybe in the Times) complaining that he was too accessible which was diminishing the important role his press secretary played in interpreting presidential policy!
If you watched what happened with Acosta it was not because he was skeptical; Trump gets skeptical questions all the time; it was that Acosta decided he was going to turn the press conference into a lecture featuring Acosta.
This is sensical if and only if Acosta is the only member of the skeptical press.
Jim Acosta has turned WH press events into the Jim Acosta Show starring Jim Acosta with special commentary by Jim Acosta, and revoking Acosta’s press pass should not preclude CNN from having another budding CNN Lefty star substitute to provide political opposition commentary …. (sort of a Joey Bishop subbing while Johnny is on vacation). The fact is Jim Acosta acted like a complete ahrse and revoking his press pass was warranted.
However, I believe by revoking Acosta’s press pass the WH has given CNN(MSM/Left) the political opportunity to hype this action(they own the ink and all that) and use the Acosta press pass revocation as a political cudgel with which to effectively whack Trump over the noggin.
Whereas if Trump were to have let the pompous jack wagon Acosta remain to continue to do his Jim Acosta Show it would serve to continually remind the public that CNN/(MSM) are in effect dues paying members of the (D) Party and therefore not revoking the Acosta press pass would be have been a far wiser political chess move.
You could not tell that from the number of solo press conferences he’s had.
He’s just the mostly highly visible one. He’s the nail that’s sticking up and gets hammered down. Which is a transparent attempt to intimidate the others.
Absolutely! Acosta is not a reporter, he is a lecturer. We learn nothing from his “questions” except what he thinks, not what the Administration thinks or is doing
Have you actually watched what’s gone on the last two years? Do you really believe the press is feeling intimidated? What they really enjoy is claiming they are being oppressed because it fits into their narrative from Day 1 that Trump is Hitler. They love this.
Please look at every press action, including interviews.
And read this piece from Politico which includes this:
Being accessible to the press is part of Trump’s strategy. He believes the more access he gives the media, the worse they will look. So far, he’s been proven correct.