Media Message

That's a stupid question. -- Donald Trump to a reporter

For a journalist, there are no stupid questions. There are only stupid answers. -- Pug Mahoney

   CNN has won its challenge to the president's ouster of its senior White House reporter, on the grounds that canceling his press pass was arbitrary and capricious, in effect done only because the president didn't like the questions.
   Granted, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta can be aggressive and persistent in confronting the president, but the president does not get to choose who is assigned to cover which story and which news beat. That's up to the editors.
   Nor does the president get to decide how a particular question is phrased, much less that they be submitted in advance.
   The practice of lawyers providing written questions during an investigation, as is the case with the probe of possible Russian interference in an American election, is a separate issue. That's what lawyers do. Journalists are not bound by the same rules.
   It comes down to this: The more the president tries to control the news media, the more resistant they become and resentful of his abusive rantings.
   Not that the resentment shows, but it's there nonetheless. And the more he attacks as "fake news" any report that displeases him, the sharper the pencils become as reporters research and expose the misinformation, misleading claims, half truths and outright lies perpetrated by this president and his minions.
   One of the more egregious claims he has put forth recently was the disavowal of his own intelligence agency's report on the murder of a prominent journalist.
   The CIA said the Saudi Arabia crown prince not only knew about the killing but specifically authorized it beforehand.
   But the president said, "Well, maybe he did and maybe he didn't."
   Either way, he noted, the government's alliance with Saudi Arabia as well as American business contracts to supply weapons to the Mideast nation was more important than the loss of a single life.
   Especially if that single life was that of a journalist, said resident cynic Pug Mahoney.
   So the president's message to the news media is this: My way or the highway. Do things the way I want or I won't defend your human rights or your constitutional right of free speech and freedom of the press.
   Message for the president: You do not -- repeat not -- have the authority to dictate who covers which news stories and how they do it, and neither do you have the right to specify that a business deal is more important than a human life.
  Clarification: You have the right to say that, but when you do, you're wrong.
   Update: As for telling the president he's wrong, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, in an unprecedented move, weighed in to remind the president that America has an independent judiciary, and there is no such person as an "Obama judge," nor a Trump judge, a Bush judge or a Clinton judge.
   The president had publicly criticized a federal judge who ruled against the administration's policy on people seeking asylum. This was one of many attacks from the president against judges who ruled against him.