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Why The D.C. Press Must Take Collective Action To Protest Trump

Why The D.C. Press Must Take Collective Action To Protest Trump

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters for America.

With an allegation of Russian-style censorship hanging in the air in 2013, dozens of news organizations loudly protested to the Obama White House that journalists were being denied proper access for news gathering. Taking collective action, the news outlets, including ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, requested “an immediate meeting” with White House officials “to resolve this very serious situation.”

Specifically, the allegation was that the Obama White House was “routinely” excluding news photographers from presidential events that were recorded exclusively by a White House staff photographer. The administration claimed the events were “private.” News organizations countered that the White House’s subsequent release of its own, in-house photos of those events on social media meant the events hadn’t actually been “private.”

The conflict became intense. “A mini-revolt by news organisations against White House press restrictions gathered momentum Monday as USA Today joined other media shops to have declared a boycott on officially issued photographs,” The Guardianreported.

In their letter to the White House, co-signed by 38 organizations including various news outlets, the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the White House News Photographers Association, the groups wrote, “As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the executive branch of government.”

One National Journalheadline at the time announced, “Obama’s Image Machine: Monopolistic Propaganda Funded by You.” And a New York Times photographer protested to the White House that its restrictions were “just like Tass,” the Soviet state news agency.

Why is this collective outcry from 2013 relevant again now? And why is it worth noting the strategy news organization adopted to protest allegations of White House restrictions? Because today, those same news organizations face an incoming Trump administration that seems sure to institute new media restrictions that are far more stringent than the Obama White House’s rules for photographers. Yet we don’t we hear much in terms of an organized protest.

Back in 2013, dozens of individual news outlets joined press organizations to take strong action in documenting their grievances with the Obama White House over the photo restrictions, demanding that meetings be held and the problem solved. So why have they been so quiet and timid in terms of airing their objections with Trump?

And no, 2013 wasn’t the only time news outlets banded together under Obama and took collective action to protest White House press limitations.

In 2009, as a feud between Fox News and the Obama administration over Fox’s coverage boiled over – the White House labeled the conservative channel “not a news network” – the administration excluded Fox News from interviewing “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg, who was handling distribution of TARP funds during the financial crisis. The other television news networks showed solidarity by staging a “revolt” and boycotting their scheduled interviews.

“All the networks said, that’s it, you’ve crossed the line,” CBS News’ Chip Reid reported at the time.

And don’t forget that during the recent presidential campaign, about 17 journalists representing a multitude of news organizations joined forces and met for hours in Washington, D.C., because they were so angry with how Hillary Clinton’s campaign was supposedly limiting access for journalists and they wanted to strategize about the best way to confront the campaign.

In those three instances, when Washington journalists felt they had been slighted by Democrats, they took collective action. There were no signs of timidity. So what explains the media’s current passivity toward Trump while he seems poised to take a far worse stance toward the press?

It’s true that the media’s 2013 protest came while Obama was in office, and that Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet. But it’s already common knowledge within the press corps that dramatic changes regarding White House access may be looming — changes that make the complained-about restrictions on White House photographers under Obama look tame. In fact, expected Trump changes, the Timesreported last month, could mean “a loss of transparency that would hinder the press’s role as a conduit for information to the people.”

Why haven’t dozens of news organizations fired off a letter to Trump’s transition team, sternly demanding that he not abolish or diminish the presence of White House reporters? Why haven’t they demanded “an immediate meeting” with Trump officials “to resolve this very serious situation”?

Recall that during the campaign, the petulant Trump often banned specific news organizations from his events. I don’t remember news outlets taking collective action against Trump in the spirit of all-for-one defiance. I don’t remember them boycotting scheduled interviews with Trump in solidarity with the news outlet that he had banned. Do you?

In late 2015, several news organizations did discuss their concerns about access with the Trump campaign, according to The Huffington Post, but seemingly nothing came of it. In fact, “facing the risk of losing their credentialed access to Trump’s events, the networks capitulated,” BuzzFeed reported.

Last November, after Trump ditched the press in New York City in order to go eat dinner, the White House Correspondents’ Association publicly urged him to travel with a press pool, and his transition team promised it would “operate a traditional pool.” Two months later, the WHCA is still trying to get Trump to establish a formal press pool that mirrors that of previous presidents. (FYI, Trump ditched the press again last month to go play golf.)

Yet despite the stonewalling from Trump’s team, it was reported last week that the WHCA will host a reception for Trump’s communication aides in coming weeks.

So instead of getting an angry letter denouncing press restrictions the way Obama officials did, Trump’s team is receiving social invitations.

IMAGE: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks at the USA Thank You Tour event at the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center in West Allis, Wisconsin, U.S., December 13, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Foley’s Mother Felt Like ‘Annoyance’ To U.S. Government

Foley’s Mother Felt Like ‘Annoyance’ To U.S. Government

Washington (AFP) — The mother of executed U.S. reporter James Foley said she felt her son’s case was an “annoyance” to the U.S. government.

In an interview aired Thursday with CNN, Diane Foley said her family was warned it could be charged if it tried to raise ransom money to free their son.

The family was also told no prisoners would be exchanged for Foley, nor would the government take military action, the mother said. The family was told not to go to the media and “trust that it would be taken care of.”

“As an American I was embarrassed and appalled,” Foley said.

“I think our efforts to get Jim freed were an annoyance” to the U.S. government, she added. “It didn’t seem to be in our strategic interest, if you will.”

The 40-year-old freelance reporter’s death was revealed August 19 in a video released by Islamic State militants, in which he is seen being beheaded.

IS said his killing was in response to U.S. air strikes against it. A week later it released another video showing the beheading of another American journalist, Steven Sotloff.

Foley had covered wars in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria and contributed to GlobalPost, Agence France-Presse, and other outlets. He was seized by armed men in northern Syria in 2012.

“Jim would have been saddened. Jim believed to the end that his country would come to their aid,” Foley said.

“We were just told to trust that he would be freed somehow, miraculously,” Foley’s mother said. “And he wasn’t, was he?”

AFP Photo/Dominick Reuter

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Kerry: U.S. Troops Might Deploy To Iraq If There Are ‘Very Dramatic Changes’

Kerry: U.S. Troops Might Deploy To Iraq If There Are ‘Very Dramatic Changes’

By Roy Gutman, McClatchy Foreign Staff

BAGHDAD — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry raised the possibility Wednesday that U.S. troops might be committed to ground operations in Iraq in extreme circumstances, the first hedging by an administration official on President Barack Obama’s pledge that there will be no U.S. boots on the ground to battle the Islamic State.

Kerry made the comment during a news conference after a day of meeting with Iraqi officials, who he said hadn’t requested or shown any desire to have U.S. troops or forces from any nation in Iraq to confront the Islamic State, the extremist organization that’s now in control of more than a third of the country’s territory.

Kerry reiterated that Obama has said no U.S. combat troops would be deployed to fight the Islamic State in Iraq, before adding, “Unless, obviously, something very, very dramatic changes.”

That formulation hasn’t been used previously by administration officials in discussing the growing U.S. confrontation with the Islamic State, and it’s sure to feed concerns that the United States may be making a greater commitment to a new conflict in the Middle East than it first intended.

In announcing the authorization for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq in August, Obama said they’d be limited to preventing Islamic State attacks on the Yazidi religious minority and to stopping any Islamic State advance on the Kurdish capital of Irbil. Since then, the United States has provided close air support for Kurdish troops fighting to recapture the Mosul Dam, Iranian-trained Shiite Muslim militias breaking the Islamic State siege of Amerli, and Sunni Muslim tribesmen battling to push Islamic State forces from towns near Haditha.

Kerry didn’t elaborate on what dramatic change might prompt the United States to commit ground forces, and it wasn’t clear whether his statement reflected administration policy. There was no immediate reaction from the White House.

Kerry said Iraqi leaders had promised him that they’d move swiftly to resolve the grievances of the Sunni and Kurdish communities, both of which are unhappy with the way the new Iraqi government was assembled.

Kerry praised the newly elected government, headed by veteran Shiite politician Haider al-Abadi, and said he’d received assurances that addressing the grievances of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and Kurds was a top priority of the government.

He said Obama had sent him on the unannounced visit “to underscore to the people of Iraq that we will stand by them in this effort … and overcome the threat they face today.”

AFP Photo/Lucas Jackson

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Hundreds Gather For Memorial Service For Beheaded Journalist Steven Sotloff

Hundreds Gather For Memorial Service For Beheaded Journalist Steven Sotloff

By Glenn Garvin, The Miami Herald

MIAMI — Hundreds of mourners began arriving Friday for a memorial service for Steven Sotloff, journalist whose murder was revealed earlier this week by Muslim militants in Syria.

About 800 were in the Temple Beth Am synagogue as the service, open to the pubic, began at 1 p.m.

Crowds began arriving two hours earlier, and their numbers — combined with a huge number of journalists — slowed traffic near the synagogue to less than 10 mph.

Many of the mourners were clad head-to-toe in black, despite the oppressive heat, and few of them wanted to talk to journalists. Those who did expressed an ineffable sadness.

“I just hope he didn’t die in vain,” said one, Rona Kritzer of Miami, whose children went to pre-school with Sotloff.

Sotloff, 31, of Pinecrest, Florida, was a freelance journalist covering the Middle East when he was kidnapped just inside Syria in August 2013. Except for a single phone call to his parents in December, he was never heard from again. On Tuesday, the fundamentalist Muslim militia Islamic State posted a video on the Internet showing his decapitation.

He had attended Temple Beth Am’s religious day school as a child before going to boarding school in New Hampshire and later, for three years, the University of Central Florida, where he pursued a journalism degree for three years.

But after a trip to Israel, Sotloff dropped out of UCF and moved to Tel Aviv, where he enrolled at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a private college. He graduated in 2008 and started covering the Middle East’s hot spots.

Miami Herald staff writers Kathryn Varn and Carol Rosenberg contributed to this report.

AFP Photo/Etienne de Malglaive

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