If there’s one fact in a tempestuous and confusing political scene that the vast majority of Americans agree about, it’s this:
You can’t trust the media.
According to Gallup, about 3/4ths of Americans disrespect the media. Among Republicans only 14 percent trust the media. Folks, it’s not daring and rebellious to blame the media for being irritating. It’s a daily occurrence.
Hell, it’s boring. It’s near idiotic.
Over the top? Not so much. Especially since the blaming has escalated. Reporters have gone from being verbally attacked as “among the most dishonest people on earth” to being attacked legally and physically. Funny how that happens.
A little over a week ago, a reporter in West Virginia was arrested for trying to talk to an agency director in a hallway. His crime? Asking a question. Pulitzer Prize-winner Deborah Blum reports in Undark:
On that morning in early May, Heyman, a 54-year-old journalist with the Public News Service, was running down a hallway in the West Virginia State Capitol building, waving his cell-phone recorder at Thomas E. Price, the newly installed Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was trying to get an answer on whether changes to health care law proposed by Congressional Republicans would allow health insurance companies to consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition. Such a designation could allow insurers to deny coverage to victims of abuse — principally women — or to charge them higher premiums.
Audio of Heyman’s encounter with Price went viral. “I heard that domestic violence is going to be a potential pre-existing condition,” Heyman called out upon encountering the secretary in a public corridor. “Do you think that’s right or not?” The recording is notable for many things: for the rapid thud of footsteps, for Price’s stony silence, and for Heyman’s increasingly out-of-breath and ultimately unfulfilled requests for an answer. It is also notable for concluding with the reporter’s arrest on a charge of “willful disruption of state government processes.”
But that was West Virginia, right? Couldn’t happen here.
Five days ago, in Washington, D.C. a reporter from Roll Call was pinned against the wall by two Federal Communications Commission employees and then throw out of the building. His crime?
He tried to ask a question.
From the NYTimes:
Fire days ago, a reporter said he was pinned against a wall by two security officials in a public hallway at the Federal Communications Commission in Washington on Thursday after he tried to ask a question of a commissioner.
The reporter, John M. Donnelly of CQ Roll Call, said the officials’ behavior did not end there. They then waited for him outside a restroom, one of them followed him to the lobby and, under the implied threat of force, ejected him from the building, Mr. Donnelly said on Friday.
And today, a Republican candidate running for Congress in Montana’s sole district, physically attacks and “body slams” a reporter to the ground for, what? Yes, asking a question:
The Republican candidate for Montana’s congressional seat has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he is alleged to have slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state’s special election, breaking his glasses and shouting, “Get the hell out of here.”
Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte, a tech millionaire endorsed by Donald Trump, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly “body-slammed” the reporter.
The attack was witnessed by a FOX News television team, which added this jaw-dropping detail.
At that point, Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him. Faith, Keith and I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the reporter. As Gianforte moved on top of Jacobs, he began yelling something to the effect of, “I’m sick and tired of this!”
Jacobs scrambled to his knees and said something about his glasses being broken. He asked Faith, Keith and myself for our names. In shock, we did not answer. Jacobs then said he wanted the police called and went to leave.
Jacobs went to the hospital for x-rays. After a couple of hours, the police charged the candidate with assault.
When do we start calling attacks on the press attacks on our democracy?
Maybe it starts with the Billings Gazette. Tonight they pulled their endorsement of Gianforte and added:
Although we’re greatly troubled by this action against a member of the media who was just doing his job, to make this an issue of media intrusion or even a passionate defense of the role of a free press during an election would be to miss the point.
If what was heard on tape and described by eye-witnesses is accurate, the incident in Bozeman is nothing short of assault. We wouldn’t condone it if it happened on the street. We wouldn’t condone it if it happened in a home or even a late-night bar fight. And we couldn’t accept it from a man who is running to become Montana’s lone Congressional representative.
We will not stand by that kind of violence, period.
[edit]
We’d point out that all the other questionable interactions Gianforte had with reporters, including one case where he joked about ganging up on a reporter, must now be seen through a much more sinister lens. What he passed off as a joke at the time now becomes much more serious.
Last month, it turns out, Gianforte made an appearance at a high school. A man in the crowd made an allusion to strangling a reporter in the crowd. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported what happened:
According to the Ravalli Republic, at a campaign event in Hamilton in April, a man in the audience asked Gianforte “how can we rein in the news media?” The man then looked at the Republic reporter and “raised his hands as if he would like to wring his neck,” the newspaper reported. In response, Gianforte said: “It seems like there is more of us than there is of him. I don’t have a simple solution for you. I will say that doing town hall meetings and getting out and visiting with people is very important.”
Yes, in other words, it was “a joke.” About killing a reporter. Ha ha ha.
Blame the media: what a hoot!
Kit Stolz 