The media has gone crazy. They’re absolutely beside themselves about the fact that they’re going to be kicked out of the press room and now they’re absolutely being taunted by Trump saying he doesn’t need them. NBC, CBS, ABC, Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, used to be in the front row. Not anymore.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Talking about the media, the media has gone crazy. They’re absolutely beside themselves about the fact that they’re going to be kicked out of the press room and now they’re being taunted. Is there any question? They’re absolutely being taunted by Trump and he’s saying, look, I don’t need you guys. You used to be, NBC, CBS, ABC, Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, you used to be in the front row. Not anymore, baby. Not anymore. Now we’re going to have social media people, maybe, in charge. And what I love is, I love what his press, I love what Karoline Leavitt’s doing. She’s been in with Trump for a long time and she’s messing with them. She said, don’t believe you have some right to sit here. You don’t.
Farron Cousins: Right. And I don’t like them at all, definitely don’t like Trump, and I don’t like the people they will pack the press room with. But I do agree with most parts of this. I do agree that these people do not have a right to be there. Not anymore. There are no more Helen Thomas’s in this press room.
Mike Papantonio: Oh God. How do you ever replace her? We’ll never have another Helen Thomas.
Farron Cousins: Right. A genuine journalist.
Mike Papantonio: No ideology. She was amazing. She would ask questions according to what was actually happening. She didn’t have some cat up on the 50th floor saying, Helen, today, here’s what you’re talking points are. CBS, NBC, ABC, all of them have that 50th floor. What’s our talking point corporate America? What do you want us to talk about? We’ll talk about it. Helen Thomas, hell no. She said, I won’t do it.
Farron Cousins: Right. And today’s press corps, if they’re friendly towards the administration, they’re going to ask questions like, why are you so great at everything? And then the ones that are adversarial, why are you so bad at everything? It is this partisan, we’re not trying to get facts, we’re trying to get quick sound bites that’ll go viral on Twitter. That’s what they’re after these days. And maybe the podcasters and the bloggers and the YouTubers, maybe they won’t be any better. But if you bring those people in and you set that precedent to where these are now part of our real press pool, you get a press corps that starts to look more like real media now because it’s not just cable and newspapers.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t even remember what real media looks like. I swear I’m not making that up. I do not remember what real media looks like. They’ve forgotten, one of the basic ideas in media is ideology is crippling. Ideology, if you rely on ideology, it is disabling, it is crippling to you as a journalist. And somewhere along the line, they packed these front three rows in this press corps to where ideology is all it is. There’s no middle of the road. No middle of the road.
Farron Cousins: I would love to see, and again, I know the Trump administration’s not going to do this, but perhaps in the future, let’s get a David Sirota in the front row. Let’s get Ken Klippenstein. Let’s get Jordan Chariton. Let’s take almost anybody from The Intercept, and put ’em in the front row.
Mike Papantonio: Right. There’s some wonderful journalists out there and even Klippenstein. Klippenstein is no ideologue. Klippenstein’s got, it’s two sides to his sword, and if you’re on the other side of it, he’s going to use it.
Farron Cousins: He is.
Mike Papantonio: But these numb nuts, they’re not even journalists anymore. You don’t think that Rachel Maddow, for example, MSNBC, I know this happens because I used to be 2, 3 times a week with Ed Schultz where that little Ken Griffin used to send memos around to all the producers saying, this is what we’re going to be talking about. So all she’s doing is taking marching orders from 50th floor. And so what’s happened here is it’s not just MSNBC and CNN doing that. These used to be legitimate news services, CBS, ABC, until Disney bought ’em. It used to be legitimate. And now, so what’s happened is they’re barricading themselves to real analysis and it’s killing them. And the truth is, we got a lot of problems the FCC’s going to be looking at. It’s not just this problem. It’s going to be problems with foreign outlets. People don’t even realize, Politico, lefties go to Politico every day. They don’t even realize it’s owned out of the country. It’s a German conglomerate. And by the way, the guy that owns them is a dirt bag. If you go back and look at his history about his involvement in journalism, you will be amazed. But Politico is something we don’t think of that. RT’s doing business. You know I used to have a show on RT called America’s Lawyer. They’re doing business here. Fortune Magazine is owned by Al Jazeera. You’re going to be seeing the FCC take some big steps, I think, with this administration. And I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to see maybe these folks are going to get more support from Trump, out of the country kind of journalists, than you’re going to see in-country journalism.
Farron Cousins: Well, Al Jazeera, by the way, they’ve actually, they do a great job with journalism still. They were one of the groups, they’ve done a couple, like you’ve been in a couple documentaries from Al Jazeera talking about the cases you’ve done. They’ve been very good on corporate abuses, I will say, to Al Jazeera’s credit, they’ve been phenomenal with it in a way that American media outlets wouldn’t even dare to cover these corporate issues and that is the problem with this. And look, I’m not saying I want to see like the Hawk Tuah Girl show up in the press corps. We don’t need that. We need real.
Mike Papantonio: Is she still around?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. She’s got some issues with her little Bitcoin thing she just launched.
Mike Papantonio: How does that happen?
Farron Cousins: Idiocracy.
Mike Papantonio: How does this girl, how does an idiot, a certifiable idiot become front page news? Why? Because you got journalists like this that we’re talking about.
Farron Cousins: They tracked her down and interviewed her.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: I mean, they did this. They put these people.
Mike Papantonio: They invented her.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They invented her. But the point is, journalism, I swear to God, it is dead in the United States and NBC and CBS, ABC, Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, it is chickens come home to roost here. So I don’t know that we’re going to get exactly what we’re talking about. In a perfect world, we would have Klippenstein quality of journalists there.
Farron Cousins: But we have to, if we can set the precedent that those are the kinds of people we’re going to bring in, maybe in the future we can get there. But yeah, you got to take that step and you got to tell these corporate media people, you guys are so awful. You’re not even doing news. And of course, to be clear, Trump doesn’t want them to do news. Trump wants people that will flatter him all day every day.
Mike Papantonio: It’s not like he wants them to report.
Farron Cousins: But again, if you kick the door open, even for the wrong reason, it can end up doing the right thing.
Mike Papantonio: Well, we know this, his history tells us, he is ready, willing, and able to punish people. You remember, he kicked Acosta.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: He kicked Acosta out of the newsroom because he got in a fight with Acosta and Acosta was gone. And he threatened to do it to four more journalists. So, these people that aren’t taking this seriously, they better pay attention to it because it’s going to happen.
