On Thursday, The Washington Post editorializes that Donald Trump has been campaigning on “bogus” issues and that he should “cease and desist.” An article in the news pages the same day reports that the great orange charlatan’s “simply wild speculation” has “almost no basis in fact.”
Then, on Saturday night, Post reporters and editors, in black-tie finest, go to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner to host their invited guests, including .”‰.”‰. Donald Trump.
Awkward though the Trump invitation is, it is just one of the many problems with the annual dinner and its satellite events….
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has written his second column blasting the DC media in as many months (see Milbank slams fawning, stenographic media in Issa scandal: “Rotten to the press corps”).
The piece begins with an explicit criticism of his own paper, though as with the last piece, the editors softened the headline from the print edition’s “Journalists gone wild,” to “How the journalist prom got out of control.” Still the metaphor of DC journalists as irresponsible adolescents remains.
Here’s more of the piece exposing the journalist-celebrity-politician industrial complex:
The fun begins, appropriately enough, at the offices of the American Gas Association, where White House reporters are feted by the lobbyists of the Quinn Gillespie firm. More lobbyist-sponsored entertainment comes from the Motion Picture Association. Along the way, journalists wind up serving as pimps: We recruit Hollywood stars to entertain the politicians, and we recruit powerful political figures to entertain the stars. Corporate bosses bring in advertisers to gawk at the display, and journalists lucky enough to score invitations fancy themselves celebrities.
Cee Lo Green sings for us. Seth Meyers tells us jokes. Lindsay Lohan’s ex, Samantha Ronson, is our DJ. All the cool kids “” Sean Penn, Kate Hudson, Steven Tyler, Paula Abdul, Courteney Cox, David Byrne and Bristol Palin “” want to party with us. A Johnnie Walker “cigar tent” furnishes us with scotch and hand-rolled stogies. We are handed Fiji water, or Grey Goose vodka, to slake our thirst and Shea Terra Organics Vanilla Body Butters to soothe our pores.
The correspondents’ association dinner was a minor annoyance for years, when it was a “nerd prom” for journalists and a few minor celebrities. But, as with so much else in this town, the event has spun out of control. Now, awash in lobbyist and corporate money, it is another display of Washington’s excesses.
There are now no fewer than 20 parties, plus a similar number of receptions, at the Washington Hilton before the dinner….
But the cumulative effect is icky. With the proliferation of A-list parties and the infusion of corporate and lobbyist cash, Washington journalists give Americans the impression we have shed our professional detachment and are aspiring to be like the celebrities and power players we cover.
My late colleague David Broder once recalled how, when he began newspapering in mid-century, journalists embraced the credo that “the only way a reporter should ever look at a politician is down.” He said they “prided themselves on their independence, their skepticism, and they relished their role in exposing the follies and the larceny of public officials.”
Is it any wonder that reporters have increasingly become stenographers for those they cover (see Must-read (again) study: How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics “” “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress”)?
At least one good thing came from the journo prom:
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Joe, there is a block of several paragraphs that is repeated. Needs a bit of an edit.
Excellent, some in the media are beginning to see through the freak show that is meant to entertain the public and keep it distracted while the human enterprise disintegrates. It is Nero and Rome all over again, but this time it’s a bit more serious: all Life is at stake…
That’s what “the media and other elite referees of public debate” are up to, eh?
But at least reporters aren’t not limited to 9 at a time and they’re not appointed for life. And that’s where I think the CAP can make a difference, by getting really, really, really serious about supporting investigative journalism and journalists.
– frank
(Ugh. I meant “are not limited”, of course…)
Remember a few years ago when 60 Minutes started to run celebrity puff pieces all the time? That’s when this terrible crap started.
President Obama gave a tribute to the courage of journalists. Second that.
Each year the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize “honours a person, organization or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, and especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger.”
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/freedom-of-expression/press-freedom/unesco-world-press-freedom-prize/
Rapid climate change is yet another danger to face, so here’s to you, Joe, and to CAP.
Trump got absolutely clobbered at the dinner last night and wasn’t laughing. Seth and the President just demolished him. It will be interesting to see what Trump does next.
This post inspired me to return to Colbert’s performance where he derided the press for following Bush into Iraq, and was surprised to discover that back in 2006 he also raised the topic of climate change being neglected more than once.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879#
Being startled by the Rightwing MSM propaganda system operating as usual seems, in my opinion, to be incredibly naive. The ‘journalists’ considered fit for employment by the likes of Murdoch and the other capitalist plutocrats, are, these days, ideological clones of their owners. They are richly rewarded, in a societies where inequality, immiseration and impoverishment are rapidly rising, and to risk that relative material comfort by committing ‘thought crime’ is unconscionable. These junkets, described above, are just the cream on the cake. The ideological uniformity and increasing zealotry of journalists in the exclusively Rightwing, capitalist MSM, is one of the prime causes of public indifference, ignorance and idiocy in all matters, from global geopolitics to the ecological catastrophe. Open any mainstream propaganda organ, and the range of acceptable opinion is minute, from Right, posing as ‘Centre-Right’, to the lunatic extremes once beyond parody, now given all the ‘oxygen of publicity’ that they could ever wish for. The current terminal decline of the MSM into a moronic bedlam of denialism, disinformation, trivialisation and incessant hatemongering against ‘enemies’ of the ruling elites, is simply what one expects from really existing market capitalism as it undergoes its death-throes, victim of innumerable fatal diseases, but above all, of its own innate corruption and spiritual and moral poisonousness.
#9 – I’m with you all the way Mulga. When I got to the words “our professional detachment” I laughed out loud.
panem et circenses
oddly enough i doubt the next Horace will have much trouble elbowing in at the cursus honorum… not too much of an empire to inherit
“and its that time again to take revenge on all the debutantes
and their friends
the bitter Charlemagnes so self absorbed
the slink of impotence that money can afford…”
http://anonnews.org/?a=item&i=787&p=press
The President did a great job – I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.
Mark #12, what do you desire as a national leader? A stand-up comic, or a principled, fearless and determined fighter for the good? If the former, then conscript Jerry Seinfeld or one of his peers.
Mulga #13: Your comment in response to Mark at #12 is a bit overblown.
Speaking of MSM. Just happened to be listening to CNN the other day and the head meteorologist Chad Myers was asked for the reason all those people had been killed and all the destruction took place because of the tornadoes. I was all ears. His answer: Just more people and buildings around now. Of course that is a factor (even given better warning systems) but absolutely no mention of the volatility because of an additional 4% moisture hanging around in the atmosphere from global warming that just might have something to do with it.
JK #14, If you think so, I apologise, but I must say that I can’t agree. I just think that Obama does too much of this PR, ‘Hail fellow, well met’ sort of stuff, too much lofty, but empty rhetoric and to much ‘jelly-back’ acquiescence to the Republican ultras. That’s my defense. I simply don’t find his behaviour ‘funny’ in the least. In the interest of human survival I’d like to see a US President who stood for what I see as not only morally correct, but also existentially imperative, and I don’t think Obama will ever be that man.
Mulga,
I think it was an excellent speech and a smart way to disarm opponents with humour.
What other way is there to address the ever more ludicrous claims of the right? You can not take them seriously and therefore you *should* not take them seriously. A serious response gives these accusations the credence that they do not deserve.
Mulga, we had such a moral paragon of a president, and a lot of Americans thought he was a weak sister. Remember Jimmy Carter?
A big chunk of our electorate votes for the guy who isn’t a stuffed shirt — hence the success of George W. Bush (god help us). If you can’t pretend to be of mediocre intelligence, you’d better at least show a sense of humor. That was one reason we loved JFK.
Seth #18, I reckon JFK was popular because he was handsome and peerlessly self-confident. That adds up to ‘charisma’, that precious essence. Also he lived in an age where public figure’s private lives were left alone by the MSM. And still powerful forces found him radically unacceptable as President.