Lawsuits aside, there may be a better way for the press corps to reassert its First Amendment right to cover this White House: They could simply stop covering its press briefings
altogether.
Hear me out.
The goal of all administrations is to control the narrative in order to gain public trust and political equity to advance policy and support its
legislative agenda. But when the narrative becomes unabashed gaslighting, it may be time to rethink the role the media play in disseminating it.
So it’s ironic that when a
high-profile member of the White House press corps -- CNN correspondent Jim Acosta -- stood his ground in order to get an answer, it turned into an altercation, a spin job, and ultimately, the
revocation of his White House press credentials.
CNN has since sued
the White House on First Amendment grounds, which it should, if for no better reason than to reinforce its Constitutional imperative.
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But a more effective response would be for
the White House press to start boycotting the briefings altogether. Or even better, send their interns to cover it and let their correspondents cover the White House in more productive ways —
working their sources to get the kind of information the White House would not officially provide.
A boycott or a downgrading of the importance of the White House press briefings
would serve several purposes:
It would send a signal to the White House about who actually controls the narrative.
It
would allow news organizations to redeploy their resources to advance genuine news.
It would reinforce their First Amendment freedom: to NOT cover a fake
source of information that labels them as “fake” news.
Think about it. Even if it’s just a one-time moratorium, a boycott of a White House press
briefing would be a powerful statement about who controls the news.