New York Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg used the D-word in his latest excoriation of the new president in “The Costs of Trump’s Brand of Reality.” “Disinformation was once for dictatorships, not the U.S.”...was how Rutenberg's story was plugged on the front of Monday’s paper, for his “Mediator” column on the front of Business Day.
When Donald J. Trump swore the presidential oath on Friday, he assumed responsibility not only for the levers of government but also for one of the United States’ most valuable assets, battered though it may be: its credibility.
The country’s sentimental reverence for truth and its jealously guarded press freedoms, while never perfect, have been as important to its global standing as the strength of its military and the reliability of its currency. It’s the bedrock of that “American exceptionalism” we’ve heard so much about for so long.
Disinformation was for dictatorships, banana republics and failed states.
Yet there it was on Saturday, emanating from the lectern of the White House briefing room -- the official microphone of the United States -- as Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, used his first appearance there to put forth easily debunked statistics¹ that questioned the news media’s reporting on the size of the president’s inaugural audience (of all things).
Observe that footnotes are apparently necessary to document the unprecedented mendacity of the Trump administration. This after eight years of the Obama administration telling whoppers about Benghazi, the Iran Deal, and “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
Mr. Spicer was picking up on the message from his boss, who made false claims² about news coverage earlier that day as he declared a “running war” with the news media during a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency, whose most solemn duty is to feed vital and true information to presidents as they run actual wars.
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Rutenberg must be awfully cold these days:
It was chilling when Mr. Trump’s assertion that reporters were “among the most dishonest people on earth” became an applause line for the crowd gathered to hear him speak in front of the memorial to fallen agents at C.I.A. headquarters.
Still more chilling was when the White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Meet the Press” on Sunday to assert that Mr. Spicer’s falsehoods were simply “alternative facts.”
....
And really, there it was: an apparent animating principle of Mr. Trump’s news media strategy since he first began campaigning. That strategy has consistently presumed that low public opinion of mainstream journalism (which Mr. Trump has been only too happy to help stoke) creates an opening to sell the Trump version of reality, no matter its adherence to the facts.
Here's Rutenberg concerned about Trump’s agenda.
And if they do work, what are the long-term costs to government credibility from tactical “wins” that are achieved through the aggressive use of falsehoods? Whatever they are, Mr. Trump should realize that it could hurt his agenda more than anything else.
To his credit, Rutenberg found a slightly more sympathetic view to round-out his hostile column.
The Trump team’s emotions were raw over the weekend [Bush White House press secretary Ari] Fleischer noted, after a mistaken pool report was sent to the rest of the White House press corps, claiming that Mr. Trump had removed a bust of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. Zeke Miller, the Time magazine journalist who had written the report, quickly corrected it and apologized when the White House alerted him to the error.
“It rightly leaves the people inside feeling that ‘reporters were opposed to us all along for being racist and the first thing they did was imply we were,’” Mr. Fleischer said.
But then he committed some bias by omission by leaving out the full story of the “birther” movement against Barack Obama, which did in fact originate in April 2008 among supporters of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary that pit her against Obama:
Still, the weekend’s events did not arrive in a vacuum. There was the report last week in The Washington Post that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, known for high standards of accuracy, was selling a commemorative book about Mr. Trump riddled with questionable notions, such as that Hillary Clinton deserved more blame than Mr. Trump did for the so-called birther campaign questioning Mr. Obama’s citizenship. (After that report, the museum said it was removing the book pending an investigation into whether it met standards for accuracy.)
Rutenberg also didn’t approve of mere bloggers muscling in on the liberal media’s space.
On Thursday, Jim Hoft, the founder of The Gateway Pundit, said the White House was giving his site an official press credential. The Gateway Pundit promoted hoaxes such as one alleging that protesters in Austin, Tex., were bused in by the liberal donor George Soros. (The originator of that story told The New York Times that his assertions were not supported by fact.)
The White House has not confirmed that it will credential Gateway Pundit, but Mr. Hoft’s announcement stoked anxiety among traditional reporters that the new administration will pack the pressroom with sympathetic organizations willing to promote falsehoods -- or, perhaps, “alternative facts.”
