Media Defense

If you don't want to see it in print, don't say it in public. -- Pug Mahoney

   Donald Trump gets angry over perceived slights by the news media. But it's journalism's job to report what public officials say and do, and to put that report in context.
  Like it or not, nearly everything a president says and does is grist for the news media mill. It's newsworthy if only because he (and eventually she) is president of the United States.
   Moreover, it's journalism's duty to put a president's remarks in context, and to explain why and how certain remarks are not true.
   And if the president doesn't like it -- and the current one clearly doesn't -- the response is, as we say in New Jersey, tough tacos.
   The more this president complains that he is offended, especially when his complaints are publicly posted on his personal internet account, the more the news media will report his complaints.
   So he can't complain about negative reports when journalists merely repeat what the president himself says and writes publicly.