29 April 2022

What a Bunch of Self-Entitled Pricks

OK, that may not be completely accurate, a prick has a head, and this may not be an accurate description of the White House Press Corps(e):

White House reporters are bored, Politico reports.

According to Politico’s own White House reporter Max Tani, they’re unhappy because they’re not getting the attention – or reaping the career rewards – that came with covering the madness of the Trump White House.

Biden “has been a journalistic sedative” compared to “the most theatrical, attention-seeking, Beltway-panic-inducing president in living memory,” Tani writes.

“Gone are the Tweets that sent newsrooms scrambling,” he notes, wistfully.

The constant lies, the wild incompetence, and the staging of an attempted coup all made for great material. Now, White House reporters say, “the storylines, while important, and substantive, can lack flair or be hard to get viewer attention.”

………

Trump turned the White House into a thrilling reality TV show and covering him was easy. All that mattered was Trump. He’d say something nuts, White House reporters would write it down, adding a caveat somewhere that “critics disagree.” They’d get rewarded by trending on Twitter, leading the front page, and getting invited onto TV.

Now it’s more complicated.

They think it’s boring, but that’s because they’re not doing what the public needs them to do. They’re not there to get cheap thrills and better jobs, they are there to tell the nation and the world what the White House is doing, why, and whether it’s helping or hurting.

I'm not sure what they teach in Journalism School, but it does seem that it does not make better reporters.

In the old days you worked your way up from paperboy to copyboy to cub reporter, to reporter without a day in college.

You did not get this sort of solipsistic crap from them.

1 comments :

The Red Alias said...

Finished Journslism school in 2010.

Back then, they still had this inane mindset that you had to give equal weight to both sides, EVEN IF ONE SIDE WAS DRUNK, WEARING WAR PAINT, AND HAD JUST CRAPPED IN THE MINORITY SPEAKER'S OFFICE.

This pretense of objectivity got the press corpse where it is today. Remember when the NYTimes agonized over whether to call Trump's blatant falsehoods "lies", clutching their pearls and gasping for the smelling salts?

This is the predictable result. False equivalency, masked as objectivity. Unless these twits get a clue, and a point of view, they will soon be calmly reporting on the latest health advice from war paint clown, I mean Jacob Chansley, our new Surgeon General.

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