RUTHFULLY YOURS

The mainstream media have been hysterical this week in their response to Donald Trump’s revocation of the Washington Post’s campaign press credentials in response to coverage and headlines so unfair that the paper went back and changed them.  Yet those same media outlets remained silent in 2008 when the Obama presidential campaign booted 3 major newspapers that had been writing unfavorably about the campaign off its press plane. Joe Concha of Mediaite remembers what happened 8 years ago, and contrasts the media response in the two instances:

The year was 2008. The candidate had a big lead in the polls going into election day. And in a preview of how petulant he would be act as Commander-in-Chief as it pertains to his treatment of the press, Barack Obama decided he didn’t like what three newspapers were writing about him, so he kicked its reporters off his campaign plane.

As Concha points out, the Obama campaign claimed that there sinply wasn;t enough space, instead of being honest, as Trump has been, about the unfavorable coverage being the rootof the matter. Somehow, on the Obama plane there was room for Glamour, Ebony, and Jet, but no room for the Dallas Morning News, New York Post or Washington Times.

The contrast in the treatment of Trump and Obama is stunning:

Chris Cillizza in 2016 on candidate Trump’s decision with the Post: “Barring reporters from public events because you disagree with what they write is a dangerous precedent.”

Chris Cillizza in 2008 regarding the same situation with candidate Obama: (Crickets)

Slate in 2016 on Trump’s decision: Trump’s Washington Post revocation “marks an unprecedented escalation in his war” against media.

Slate in 2008 regarding the same situation with candidate Obama: (Crickets)

Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron on candidate Trump’s decision with the Post: Trump’s decision is “nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.”

Baron in 2008 regarding the same situation with candidate Obama: (Crickets)

The plain act is that the mainstream media are hopelessly partisan, and what separates Trump for the run-of-the-mill GOP establishment, is that he openly acknowledges this and acts on it. That is so threatening that the f-word gets thrown back at him:

CNN Contributor Bakari Sellers this week: Trump taking away Washington Post‘s press credentials “is fascism at its worst.”

And here I thought death camps were fascism at its worst. But that apparently is better than Trump treating hostile media the same way Obama did in Bakari Sellers’s moral universe.