In the past, White House press secretaries tended to prioritize the reporters sitting in the first two rows.
They would give the first question to The Associated Press (after decades of starting with Helen Thomas, long known as the dean of the White House press corps). Then it was on to the major networks, newspapers and other wire services.
Mr. Spicer has bypassed this convention.
As he goes around the room, Mr. Spicer typically calls on media organizations outside of the mainstream before getting to more traditional news outlets.
.. The first briefing question of Mr. Spicer’s tenure went to a New York Post reporter who wrote a book that was critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton. LifeZette, a website founded by the radio host Laura Ingraham, was first in the second briefing.
Reporters from conservative outlets like Breitbart, One America News Network and Newsmax are regularly tapped for questions.
..Raghubir Goyal, who says he is affiliated with a news organization called India Globe and whose tendency to veer off topic has been used by previous secretaries to defuse tense moments, has been called on twice.
Jonah Goldberg: Hypocrisy Über Alles
So, I get why so many of my friends on the right are freaking out about the double standard being applied to Trump. It is an entirely legitimate complaint. But it is also incredibly insufficient and, at times, dangerous. Every day I see conservatives on Twitter and TV denouncing, say, the New York Times for calling Trump a liar because the Times didn’t say the same thing about Clinton or Obama. Fine! Great point. It’s a double standard. Who among us can contain our shock that the MSM is tougher on Republicans?
But it doesn’t mean it’s not true about Trump! The media’s double standard doesn’t absolve Trump of lying, does it? O.J. Simpson literally got away with murder. Is it unfair to other murderers if we don’t let them get away with it, too? Actually, I’m sure it would feel unfair to other murderers, but that’s not an argument for repealing laws against murder.
.. And that brings me to the danger here. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our president has a persecution complex. He thinks any inconvenient but truthful coverage of him is an unfair criticism and any unfair criticism is a lie. What makes this complicated is that sometimes Trump is right. Some of the coverage has been ridiculous and desperate nonsense, as Mollie Hemingway ably chronicles. And some of the coverage has been merely accurate-but-hypocritical.
Howard Kurtz ran through a list last night on Special Report. When Bill Clinton lied, it was called “misleading” or “less than candid” but when Trump lies, it’s a “LIE!” in the headline. (One can make the argument — as I have — that many of Trump’s lies are less offensive because he just glandularly blurts them out, while Bill Clinton lied like an artisan whittling a ballerina out of a block of wood, with loving, expert attention to every detail.)
.. Steve Bannon wants to demonize and delegitimize the mainstream media. Given his record at Breitbart, that’s some odd casting for Champion of Journalistic Integrity, but whatever. That’s his fight, and shame on the mainstream media for making his job so easy.
.. And, based on what has transpired so far, neither can big swaths of the entertainment wing of the right-wing media. They will, Pravda-like, announce that each new Trumpian wheat harvest has exceeded all expectations, for quite a while it seems.
.. What I would hate to see, however, is conservatives getting seduced into arguing that the standards we championed under Democratic presidents weren’t really our standards after all. That’s my problem with the right-wing obsession with MSM hypocrisy. By itself, it’s correct but inadequate
Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’
Mr. Bannon is one of the strongest forces in an administration with competing power centers. A savvy manipulator of the press, and a proud provocateur, he was among the few advisers in Mr. Trump’s circle who were said to have urged on Mr. Spicer’s confrontational, emotional statement to a shocked West Wing briefing room on Saturday, when the White House disputed news reports about the size of the inauguration crowd. He shares Mr. Trump’s view that the news media misunderstood the movement that the president rode into office.
.. “The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”
Trump Administration’s Strained Relationship With Media Continues
President Donald Trump and members of his new administration including press secretary Sean Spicer tangled with the news media in the first days following the inauguration, which may foreshadow an extension of a combative relationship. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday reports. Photo: Associated Press