News Gathering Boils, Not Simmers

Michael Hedges November 19, 2018 - Follow on Twitter

The news conference, as reportorial tool, has certainly evolved. Power and celebrity have an undiminished capacity for attracting public interest; hence, they are interesting. Their relative importance is in the eye of the beholder.

Everybody, it seems, holds news conferences. What began a century ago as an efficient way to make an announcement and, perhaps, clarify a point for a group of inquiring reporters is now, almost always, carefully rehearsed. As a famous Swiss banker, who never held a news conference, once said: “I pay people to do that.”

Business leaders, generally, have improved their news conference skills, CFOs not so much. Media experts are hired to insure no mistakes are made, lest the share price falls on a an ill-advised word. While the business press has long given titans of industry the desirable image, that is changing in the digital age. Ex-WPP chief executive Martin Sorrell remains popular among business and financial reporters for being quotable. Those with lessor skill are advised to avoid that scene.

Movie stars, sports stars and other celebrities now have the same media advisors. Some pay attention, some forget. It’s painful to watch race car drivers, whose main job is driving fast and turning left, subjected to questions exceeding the time of day minutes after the race is won. On the other hand, tennis great Roger Federer can appear completely composed in front of the cameras and observers quickly forget he lost the match.

But news conferences are now expected. They fulfil definite needs. Reporters need copy. Subjects need attention. Readers, listeners and viewers need their interests satisfied.

Like the tympani crescendo between the third and fourth movements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the relationship between those who toil to bring truth to power and those who prefer “alternative facts” to criticism found new tension in recent days. At a formal news conference featuring US president Donald Trump news network CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta aggressively pursued a question. The response, which appeared staged, banged the drum most popular to president Trump’s ardent supporters. “You are fake news.”

The episode (November 7) was, at the very least, attention getting. Question asked, deflected, asked again, deflected once more. White House intern arrives to retrieve the microphone, reporter demurs, intern persists, reporter cedes. Principal subject rails.

Afterward the White House press office lifted Mr. Acosta’s credentials, effectively banning him from the premises, citing evidence of aggressive behavior in the form of a “deep fake” video of the episode produced for far-right website Infowars. It did not match the C-SPAN video, unsurprisingly, nor observations on site. CNN, owned by WarnerMedia, filed suit in Federal district court, supported by just about every US news organization, asking for the credentials return.

This past Friday (November 16) the judge hearing the lawsuit ordered the White House press office to temporarily return the press credentials without ruling on the merits. He suggested CNN would likely prevail. Further arguments and a definitive ruling will come in the next few weeks.

Legal precedent is on their side. More than forty years ago (1966) Robert Sherrill, writer for news magazine The Nation, had his press credentials lifted. He was exonerated more than ten years later by an Appeals Court ruling that his First (free speech) and Fifth (due process) Amendment rights had been violated. He was, notably, on the infamous Richard Nixon enemies list.

Meanwhile the White House press office indicated new rules of behavior for reporters will be drawn up. “There must be decorum at the White House,” said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Depending on what is delivered the behavioral guidelines could satisfy due process concerns, press freedom not so much.

Contentiousness at news conferences rose with the divergence, real or perceived, between observed reality and public statements. US television network ABC chief White House correspondent Sam Donaldson routinely piqued the powerful, including several US presidents beginning with Ronald Reagan to whom he was known to shout questions. He retired from ABC in 2013.

“I was aggressive in posing questions and pursuing answers,” wrote Sam Donaldson in a court declaration supporting Jim Acosta and CNN, quoted by Variety (November 13), “because the job of obtaining factual information from and about the public servants I covered is a job (if I did it well) that contributed to holding the government accountable to the citizens of this country. President Harry Truman summed up the necessary interplay between a president and the press corps when he advised government officials at every level: ‘If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.’”

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