What is your opinion of the new press rules?
I know all that. I have no idea why you think anyone is blaming the media for how Trump acts in this thread. I am saying Acosta is playing into Trump’s narrative by getting into grandstanding arguments at press conferences.
Blaming Acosta for Trump’s actions is all you’ve been doing here. This thread is about what Trump is doing to undermine the press corps, and you keep doing the “Look-Over there. Acosta!!” dance.
Lol. You are beyond hope. Good day, sir.
Byeee.
More from the article about the importance of followup questions:
As it now stands, Trump or his press secretary can lie openly in response to a question, then ban someone who tries to question them on it.
Aye; where are the rules concerning the President’s conduct during the press briefing? If the press has rules and a role to play, how is the same not true for the POTUS?
If I were part of the WHPCA I’d demand reciprocative rules for the POTUS before I’d pay any attention to this fiat bullshit.
The rules were created to address the lack of due process in ejecting Acosta. Once rules are formalized, it’s much easier to sustain an ejection. Seems pretty straightforward really.
And sure journalists don’t have to pay attention to them - then they will be ejected. The idea of imposing rules for dealing with the press upon the President is silly and has no basis in reality.
Duh.
I’m saying the “rules” are illegitimate, in part because they demand actions of only one of the two parties involved in the press briefing. For instance, I noticed that nowhere in the rules is there a guarantee that a question will be answered. Were I a member of the WHPCA, I’d need that assurance before I’d even consider the rest of the rules.
That’s not what illegitimate means. Did you expect there to be a guarantee that a question would be answered? That was never and will never come to pass under any president. Ever.
I took your question, ‘how is the same not true for the POTUS’ seriously. I can’t tell if you actually believe that to be real possibility or not. To be clear - it’s not.
The rules were made without any input from the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) or the White House Press Corps Association.
You must be under some impression that being anti-Trump requires one to be unflinching and unquestioning in support of Acosta.
Moved on from that-do try to keep up.
What is this, your Trump impersonation?
“Moving on! Next question! You’re fake news! Take the mic from Ravenman! Suspend his hard pass to the Straight Dope!”
I haven’t seen this much deflection since Darth Vader wielded his lightsaber in the face of the onslaught of blasters from Rebel troops.
I don’t know how you can expect much to begin with when the press corps environment is not tightly structured, verging on an unruly zoo to begin with. Trump cranks the volume of dysfunction up several notches anytime he’s amid hints of dysfunction. It’s very different when he’s being interviewed one on one by a non-sycophantic, focused journalist like Lesley Stahl or Chris Wallace; they do sometimes ask followup questions and don’t drag it out to the point of creating drama that would overshadow the interview. This, in spite of the cameras being on.
They look good, not what I would do but nothing terrible. So long as the rules are applied equally to all, I see no problem.
Journalists editorializing instead of asking questions is an issue. Evading answering difficult questions is as old a questions. Trump’s style makes journalists angry. He loves it and they play into his hand so well it’s embarasing.
Yeah, I’m still scratching my head over this. In what universe does the press get to dictate to the President what rules he will follow in press conferences? He doesn’t even have to hold the damn things. If Jim Acosta, or whoever, does not think that Trump is answering questions properly, then do not attend.
This post makes me question if you know what the role of the press is in a free society.
Well, the problem was that the rules weren’t laid out. There’s no doubt the Whitehouse was always in charge. I’m curious what exactly Czarcasm thinks this changes. Were all reporters always automatically granted follow up questions before this? ISTM this merely encodes the informal already existing practice.
I guess the scary part is that they did indeed encode this so as to get around legal hurdles to revoke passes, which other administrations didn’t feel the need to do.
Decorum and following the instructions of the person in charge of any function was always understood as one of the rules of a function. If you are at a County Commission meeting and the chairperson says, “Thank you, that’s enough. We are moving on to the next speaker” and you did what Acosta did, you may very well have been asked to leave at minimum, or escorted out in handcuffs if you persisted. You cannot argue in that situation that your First Amendment rights were violated.
It is one of those things where you do not need posted rules, but someone comes along and forces you to post them. It is sort of like “No Smoking” signs in hospital patient rooms. It is 2018 and everyone knows you cannot smoke there. But if you took the signs down, I’ll bet that there is that one guy who would light up and then complain that there was not a sign posted.