WhatFinger


Um, if they're newsworthy, yes it is bro

VIDEO: CNN anchor says not their job to 'do your PR' and report Trump accomplishments



This was such as astonishing admission, I don't think Kellyanne Conway grasped what had just happened. It comes toward the end of this back-and-forth between her and CNN's Brian Stelter - a conversation mainly focused on Conway's insistence that CNN portrays the happenings at the White House in a negative light without really knowing or understanding what's going on there. But when Conway mentions that Trump's actual achievements don't get covered, Stelter's response - while coming across initially as standard MSM boilerplate - is actually a real eye-opener. Watch this minute-and-a-half clip from the exchange:

CNN doesn't see its job as objectively reporting newsworthy facts

By protesting that it's "not our job to do your PR," Stelter puts forth what is actually a very radical new doctrine about how the press is supposed to work in covering the government. Conway didn't ask CNN to run press releases verbatim or air White House-produced videos without comment. She simply took CNN to task for not covering Trump's accomplishments. Stelter's response was not to dispute that there have been any, nor to claim that CNN has covered them. He said it is not CNN's job to cover the president's accomplishments, even going so far as to insist it's the White House's own job to tout its accomplishments lest the media "do your PR" and give said accomplishments any attention whatsoever. Consider what Stelter is really saying here, particularly in the context of every traditional notion of the media's role in informing the public. If your job is to cover the news objectively without fear or favor, then you report things that are newsworthy regardless of who looks good or bad as a result. If job growth is up, you cover it, not because it's good or bad for this or that politician but simply because it's news. If the U.S. position in global energy markets is vastly improving, and this has wide-reaching implications for the entire U.S. economy (all of which is true by the way), then you cover it. If illegal border crossings are down dramatically, you cover it. No one says you have to present it as "a win for the president" or anything like that. You simply report the facts. What Stelter admits in his rejoinder to Conway is that CNN doesn't see its job as objectively reporting newsworthy facts. To him, if Trump accomplishes something positive, it's the White House's job to let the public know about it through, I guess, whatever means of direct communication it has at its disposal. The media has no responsibility whatsoever to report this information because that would be doing Trump's PR.

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Stelter Doctrine: Objective facts that might reflect favorably on the president are not the job of the media to cover

So now it's been established, via the Stelter Doctrine, that objective facts that might reflect favorably on the president are not the job of the media to cover, regardless of how newsworthy, or of interest to the public, they might be. In reality, any of us paying attention have recognized for some time that this is how the media functions in practice. They're more than happy to "do your PR" if you're a Democrat president. But put a Republican in the White House and they become strictly adversarial, even to the point of ignoring information the public should know if it would cast the president in a positive light. Those of you who value the role of journalism in maintaining a healthy democracy should be concerned about this, even if you're a liberal. You can complain all you want about Fox News and its conservative tilt, but what Brian Stelter is saying here is that CNN and other mainstream outlets are content to give Fox News and the conservative new media an exclusive on any objective facts that reflect a Trump achievement. And if they cannot and will not report on anything Trump accomplishes, because that would be to "do your PR" as Stelter insists to Conway, then what are they left to do? Exactly what Trump and the White House staff are always saying they do: Attack the White House and cast it in a negative light, exclusively, because nothing else is their job. Sometimes you admit things when you're exasperated. Maybe it's the first time you're really admitting it to yourself. Conway should have recognized the significance of what Stelter said and really called him out for it. Maybe in the cold light of day she will. I wonder if Stelter realizes what he admitted, and how much it reveals about just what the media have become.

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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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