The Australian MSM coverage of Watersportsgate yesterday threw into stark relief the way that certain MSM outlets take events and spin them to suit a narrative, which usually involves taking one small moment in the events of the day, divorcing it from the background and context by either misrepresentation or deliberate omission of material facts, and then presenting to the audience an overlaid narrative that drives them to a preferred conclusion. The current narrative is that President-elect Trump is compromised by the Russians, dangerous and unpredictable, and cannot be trusted to occupy the Oval Office, which is a consistent line at Fairfax.
High drama was on offer yesterday, as the President-elect held a press conference, at which he responded to the BuzzFeed and CNN coverage of the scurrilous allegations of lurid conduct in an unverified document authored by a former British intelligence officer now named as Christopher Steele. Steele is currently in hiding in Britain, apparently concerned that Russians are unhappy with him for making them the centrepiece in the document that the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has stated ‘is not a US Intelligence Community product’ and described as ‘false and fictitious’. Steele started the private research company Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd after he left the paid service of the British Government. The circumstances in which Steele authored the document published by BuzzFeed and promoted by CNN are still unclear, however the New York Times has reported that Steele wrote the document ‘under contract to a Washington firm paid to dig into harmful matters’ from President-elect Trump’s past. That seems credible, as Senator John McCain has admitted that he passed the document to the FBI.
Trump’s response to the allegations was predictably and rightly forceful, labelling the claims as ‘fake news’ and ‘phony stuff’, and attacking BuzzFeed for the publishing the document and CNN for promoting the story. During the press conference the CNN representative, one Jim Acosta, repeatedly and loudly interjected by yelling over both the President-elect and other journalists who had been invited to ask a question, calling to be given a question ‘since you are attacking us [CNN]’. Trump repeatedly admonished Acosta for his rude and aggressive behaviour before finally ending the interchange by saying that he would not grant a question to CNN because they were ‘fake news’, and there are audible and loud cheers from others present in response.
So what are the important points and stories to emerge from these tumultuous events? Well, over at Fairfax, it is the fact that Trump stomped on CNN’s Acosta, a high order headline proclaiming that ‘Trump’s media conference degenerates into name calling’. Not that the lurid allegations about the President-elect, less than a week before the inauguration, had been comprehensively outed as little more than fiction created in the paid service of interests seeking to embarrass to destroy the President-elect. Not at all; it is Trump’s ‘unseemly behaviour’ and the perceived need for him to adopt a ‘more presidential persona’. The Fairfax prescription: the other media should have ‘shut off their recorders and refused to ask questions’ because Fairfax reasons, ‘if CNN is being frozen out this week, it might be any or all of the rest of them next week’, and all CNN had done was to publish a ‘genuine scoop’.
Trump’s responses and criticisms are, on any view, well founded, and the appellation of ‘fake news’ seems particularly appropriate; for what else can the document and the false allegations rationally be called? BuzzFeed and CNN published material and a story that were sensibly rejected by prudent news organizations, including the proudly anti-Trump New York Times, because the source of the document and the veracity of the lurid allegations could not be verified in any way; and the fact that the press conference was only happening in response to BuzzFeed and CNN’s stories concerning the false and lurid allegations seemed not to occur to Acosta, or to Fairfax. In the world according to Fairfax, the President-elect is not entitled to be angry about the false and lurid slurs, or to deal harshly but appropriately with the purveyors of the falsehoods.
The possibility seems lost on Fairfax that the other media present did not act in solidarity with CNN and Acosta because they disagreed with the conduct of BuzzFeed and CNN in publishing the story and with Acosta’s rude and latently hypocritical behaviour during the press conference. After all, most other news organizations rightly rejected the story; apparently, holding tight to the idea that publishing astonishingly damaging and lurid allegations about the President-elect without one scintilla of verification or corroboration might not be conduct that satisfies the ethical obligations of journalists (insert appropriate guffaws) or is in the broader interests of the MSM that routinely accuses emergent competitors of purveying fake news. The audible cheers following Trump’s final shutdown of Acosta certainly so suggest.
Above all, and the most glaring fault in the Fairfax temper-tantrum, is that as the President-elect Trump is not obliged to take questions from any journalist; it is one of the privileges of being the next President of the United States. At every press conference with past presidents, there were many journalists who wanted to ask questions and who didn’t get that opportunity; and one of the repeated criticisms of President Obama is that he routinely takes questions only from selected journalists, and has often been seen at the rostrum with a list of the journalists from whom he would accept a question. At its core, Trump did no more and no less than that which President Obama has repeatedly done: take questions from the journalists of his choosing.
It is an irrelevant fact that the question Acosta and CNN thought was their right actually went to Breitbart. The idea that CNN and Acosta were entitled to a question because Trump had attacked them is nothing short of ludicrous. Even allowing for fluid conceptions of what constitutes an ‘attack’, the conduct of CNN and BuzzFeed certainly qualifies; they took their irresponsible shot at the President-elect and spectacularly planted it into their own foot. Quite why Acosta and CNN deserve any respect or an opportunity to question the President-elect after his criticisms of them over the false and malicious allegations that they raised, is a question hardly worth asking.
As to the claim that CNN should be supported in these circumstances because Trump may freeze out other media in the future, that argument is wholly misconceived. The plain and simple fact is that President-elect Trump is the wronged party in this sorry saga, and BuzzFeed and CNN are the wrongdoers. Media who treat the President-elect fairly and responsibly have nothing to fear. As CNN and BuzzFeed are now discovering, acting irresponsibly brings its own rewards, although you wouldn’t know any of this if you take your news from Fairfax.
Fake News indeed! It is your XYZ.
Photo by jason ilagan 