Here's what the White House press corps should do now
Plenty of rumors out there that Donald Trump will expand his distance from live, transparent news coverage by kicking the media he disrespects out of their White House office - - and thus its access to the Presidency - - that's been there since 1901:
He'd have gone to the White House Press Room, done his work, and then sat down.
Because he never let public officials push him around.
Because, as the son of immigrants in a competitive business, he'd fought for every media job and assignment and promotion he ever had.
Because he had a standard line whenever he wouldn't comply with some authority figure who was stepping on his rights, and I heard it many times, and is it ever relevant today, as it always began, "Well unless we're now living in the Soviet Union..."
And he'd sit down in that press room and stay for the duration, until Trump backed down after deciding not to endure any more live coverage by recognizable media figures worldwide broadcasting and reporting about this open attack on the Constitution.
Because the White House is the people's house, in a democracy sustained by an unfettered media.
Dad has been gone for a while, but media today need to grow the spine and take-no-sh*t attitude he brought to the newsrooms he worked in for almost 60 years.
According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.I'll tell you what my late dad Hobart Rowen - - career reporter, Newsweek columnist, Washington Post assistant managing editor/finance section editor, and frequent guest on Meet the Press - - would have done on behalf of the First Amendment, a free press and readers who need media to disclose what all the administrations he covered from FDR to Bill Clinton would have preferred remain buried:
He'd have gone to the White House Press Room, done his work, and then sat down.
Because he never let public officials push him around.
Because, as the son of immigrants in a competitive business, he'd fought for every media job and assignment and promotion he ever had.
Because he had a standard line whenever he wouldn't comply with some authority figure who was stepping on his rights, and I heard it many times, and is it ever relevant today, as it always began, "Well unless we're now living in the Soviet Union..."
And he'd sit down in that press room and stay for the duration, until Trump backed down after deciding not to endure any more live coverage by recognizable media figures worldwide broadcasting and reporting about this open attack on the Constitution.
Because the White House is the people's house, in a democracy sustained by an unfettered media.
Dad has been gone for a while, but media today need to grow the spine and take-no-sh*t attitude he brought to the newsrooms he worked in for almost 60 years.
2 comments:
Trump will never stop the press from covering him. He's too egotistical. I wish the press would just stop reporting on his ludicrous Tweets and everything else he does.
No....the press must keep reporting on every "tweet" and every idiotic statement and action that this egotistical bully makes so that those who voted for him own his presidency and all that is does to make " America ungreat!"
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