Expert Offers Advice On How Media Should Respond To Trump's Latest Attack
By Pat Loeb
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump fired another volley in his war against journalists, yesterday, labeling the news media "crooked," "disgusting" and "corrupt."
Responding presents a challenge.
Newspapers and networks did the only thing they could to respond to Mr. Trump-- simply report, without comment, what he said. Any attempt at a defense could have been seen as violating one of mainstream media's most precious franchises: neutrality.
It's just one of the things that has stumped reporters covering the campaign. When Trump began excluding reporters from events in June, Penn professor, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, said there was little their colleagues could do in response. But, she noted, even those admitted were hamstrung.
"I find the fact that reporters are being penned into areas distant from the candidate and kept away from those in the audience problematic," said Jamieson, who is also director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center that runs FactCheck.org. "The reporter needs to be able to see what the candidate is saying, to whom the candidate is saying it and, ideally -- and here's the problem with the pen -- to be able to talk with those who are in the environment to find out what they are making of it."
Jamieson says with live-streaming, reporters can decline to accept being penned in, as long as there is at least one pool reporter to capture what the cameras may miss.
And as for defending ostracized colleagues:
"When a candidate says that an outlet cannot be admitted to the candidate's events, the press as a whole needs to ask what is it that that outlet did to elicit that response and if the answer is, 'good journalism,' then the others ought to aspire to the same."
