When I asked President Carter to respond to the critics who were saying he was “failing as President,” when I asked President Reagan how he could defend the “hypocrisy” of selling arms to Iran at the same time as asking our allies to respect an arms embargo on that county, when I asked President Clinton if it was true when a woman publicly raised the charge of “rape,” each of them responded with an answer, not with an attack on me. OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty ImagesĬompared to what I see today, my time covering Presidents and their press secretaries was a cakewalk. Both sides recognized the responsibilities of each other’s jobs, and we got along.Ī journalist holds a placard reading "free media" during a demonstration for the World Press Freedom Day on the Istiklal avenue, in Istanbul, on May 3, 2017.Īccording to the P24 press freedom website on April 4, 2017, there are 141 journalists behind bars in Turkey, most of whom were detained as part of the state of emergency imposed after the failed coup. Trump’s press secretaries have done regularly, and they didn’t call you names to your face. It told him I was a bit upset – that was good red wine and I had wanted to drink it!īack then, press secretaries tried to put the best face on it when things went badly for their boss. Powell said some days later he lived in dread that I might go public with a complaint of anti-press mistreatment.
#Trump press conference jim acosta full#
Once, returning from a Carter trip to Japan, Press Secretary Jody Powell threw a full glass of red wine at me. But it was never personal on either side. I occasionally heard from the White House staff (never the President) that my reporting was unfair, that some of my questions were too sharp and, in the press briefings, along with the UPI’s redoubtable Helen Thomas, would get into fierce arguments with the press secretary. They realized Harry Truman got it right when he said, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.” They bridled privately and occasionally publicly (President Kennedy once canceled the Republican-leaning New York Herald Tribune’s White House subscriptions, and President Johnson hit back at the press reporting on the Vietnam War) but they understood that no one had dragged them kicking and screaming to their illustrious and important post. Most states are failing student journalists like me The piece was censored by the school's principal. Madhira worked as the editor-in-chief of the school's newspaper and wrote an opinion piece about how the Texas school handled National School Walkout. Prosper High School student Neha Madhira at home where she does her homework, in Prosper, Tex., on June 28, 2018. I spent 52 years as a reporter in Washington, 16 of them as the White House Correspondent for ABC News, covering Presidents Carter and Reagan and President Clinton’s second term. And that is why the First Amendment to our Constitution specifically forbids government from interfering with the work of the press.
#Trump press conference jim acosta free#
History shows that tyrants and would-be tyrants always attempt to destroy a free press. Trump’s wholesale attack on the mainstream press is wrong, and it is dangerous. The effect is to undermine the credibility of the media, leaving him free to pursue policies that harm us at home and abroad.
Whether now he truly believes that the mainstream press, as he says, reports “fake” news and is the “enemy of the American people,” or that such language is simply part of a tactic meant to stoke the anger of his “base” while escaping an objective accounting of his actions doesn’t matter. For most of his adult life, President Trump courted the press, lived for its attention, even for a time pretended he was someone else when calling reporters to sing Trump’s praises.
0 kommentar(er)
