AMID the trading of accusations following the Nov. 7 suspension of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass to the White House, the question whether the press corps should retaliate by boycotting U.S. President Trump was not even raised. It’s a no-brainer: they have no choice but to cover the President even if Trump has been:
• Calling media “the enemy of the people” for publishing “fake news.”
• Shaming journalists covering him by publicly branding them “purveyors of falsehood” and their media organizations as “failing” or “fake news.”
• Eroding public trust in the press and exposing news practitioners to serious risk to their physical safety.
Trump calls “fake news” any published material that does not favor him. In contrast, he praises to high heavens news reports and commentaries in publications and news sites that support him and see nothing wrong about his governance. Worse, Trump insults and attacks in their face the very people who diligently report his message to the nation.
Tough questions
CNN’s Acosta has projected the image of the persistent reporter who asks tough questions and does not let up. In the press-con last Wednesday (U.S. time), Trump apparently was picking up the fight. Knowing Acosta’s bent and style, Trump still called him, setting off the reporter’s hard questions and the presidential insults.
The media-government tension in the White House was never as taut as it has been under the Trump presidency.
Not in local scene
But even regarding his verbal clash with Acosta, one could only imagine a similar clash happening in Malacañang or Cebu City Hall. Here’s why chances are dim:
• Even with “abrasive and coarse” leaders like President Duterte and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, the press still has to produce the likes of a Jim Acosta. Rappler reporter Pia Ranada, who has been similarly banned from Malacañang, and President Duterte had been “sweet” to each other; they couldn’t have traded barbs in public.
• Reporters, including those in Malacañang, have generally been docile and well-mannered, afraid to lose the goodwill of their news source. That may explain why reporting from sensitive government offices has been mostly tame and timid.
Civility rules
Generally, civility rules in local press-cons. It has not yet come to a point, as it did in the White House this week, where the news source publicly called a reporter a “rude, terrible person” whose employer should be “ashamed” for hiring him.
Neither Tomas Osmeña nor Duterte could be imagined to do a Trump at a local press-con. In the late ‘90s, Tomas banned SunStar reporters from his briefings. In 2016 he barred CDN’s Jose Santino Bunachita. Earlier, in May 2013, Osmena sent out, escorted by an armed guard, a SunStar photographer.
But a verbal skirmish similar to Trump-Acostas’s has not happened and is not likely to happen here. At least, not the way Trump did it. At least, as Gen. Debold Sinas puts it, as of now.
Press secretary used ‘altered video’ to justify reporter’s sanction
It was bad enough that the White House appeared to have banned CNN correspondent Jim Acosta because of his persistent and hard questioning at President Trump’s press-con.
Worse, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted a video of Acosta keeping his grip on a microphone as an intern tried to take it from him. Sanders used the tampered video to justify the White House revocation of Acosta’s media access.
It turned out the video had altered speeds to make the reporter seem more aggressive and the intern “more demure.” The video might have come from the far-right website Infowars.