The reelection of Donald Trump has created overwhelming angst among the press. With Trump, they have been like the opposite of the Humpty Dumpty rhyme. The media are all the king's horses and all the king's men -- and they couldn't tear Humpty Dumpty apart. All their screeching about his menace only makes him successful.
Longtime CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl engaged in conversation at the 92nd Street Y in New York City with columnist Peggy Noonan, and they both agreed the legacy media are "fraying" -- for 20 years, Noonan insisted.
"I'm extremely worried about the press," Stahl said, as she dragged out her usual story about Trump and press criticism. "I once asked Donald Trump, why do you keep pounding on the press? This was right after he won, in 2016 ... It's kinda boring, you say the same thing over and over, and you won! It's time to drop it!"
This is a bizarre demand, since no one in the press announced, "Well, Trump won, so it's kind of boring to keep criticizing him, saying the same thing over and over."
Stahl said she asked why he would do it, and Trump replied: "I do it, and I repeat it, because the more I do that, the less people are going to believe you when you say negative things about me ... And it's happened!" The media's public trust ratings are the worst they've ever been in the television era.
This alleged Trump comment did not air on CBS, although Stahl drags out the anecdote like it's nefarious. It's the exact opposite of the Stahl shtick -- if I attack Trump, and I repeat it, it means the more I do it, the less people are going to believe Trump when he attacks the press. But he's won that battle.
"I despair, seriously. I worry greatly," Stahl said. "We're at a point where if the President of the United States is going to say, 'Legacy media is dead' ... It is, kind of, sort of hobbling right now. And I don't know how it recovers. I'm very dark about it."
Noonan made the mistake of associating an unpopular press with the end of freedom of the press, which is not the same thing. The First Amendment doesn't automatically grant sainthood to the press. You're allowed to think the press has performed terribly without ending the First Amendment. That's freedom of speech.
Noonan didn't push back on Stahl. She could ask if CBS and "60 Minutes" ever did anything wrong that undermined trust in the media. Dan Rather offered the nation phony documents about George W. Bush on "60 Minutes II."
Lesley Stahl is infamous among Republicans for lecturing Trump in 2020 that you could not report on the Hunter Biden laptop because it could not be verified. CBS reporter Catherine Herridge verified the laptop in 2022, and she's no longer at CBS.
While Stahl was very rough with Trump, Scott Pelley's interviews with President Biden sounded promotional. In October of 2023, Pelley sympathetically asked, "Mr. President, given these two wars and the dysfunction in Congress, are you sure that you want to run again?" (Imagine all the Biden babble that was edited out.)
In October, CBS "Face the Nation" viewers saw a typical word-salad answer from Kamala Harris, but on the "60 Minutes" primetime special a day later, CBS edited in a much shorter and more coherent sound bite.
When reporters start whining about their unpopularity, questioners should press them to explore what they may have done to deserve unpopularity. Conversations like these leave the impression that these egotistical journalists are incapable of introspection.
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