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My old friend Kellyanne Conway seems to have a way of finding herself front and center in the news cycle these days.
First, there was the incident on CNN where Anderson Cooper rolled his eyes at her during an interview. Then there was MSNBC’s Mika Brezinski claiming on-air that during past interviews on behalf of President Trump, Kellyanne would claim “I need a shower” after the cameras were off.
The Anderson Cooper incident has been branded as sexist by some people, but that is silly. Unprofessional? Sure. Disrespectful? Absolutely. But sexist? No. This had far more to do with the president Kellyanne represents than anything having to do with her gender, and pretending otherwise plays right into the absurd identity politics so many of us have long detested.
As far as Mika Brezinski, the unprofessional manner in which she conducted herself was far worse than what Cooper did. I obviously have no way of knowing if Kellyanne said what Brezinski claims she said, but comments made off-air like that are generally understood to be off the record. But because Brezinski hates President Trump – and by extension Kellyanne – so much, she didn’t care.
It’s a tad ironic since she and her co-host/fiancé Joe Scarborough had no problem using the president for ratings when he was a candidate. But that’s her cross to bear.
The larger problem here, though, is that Cooper and Brezinski are representative of a much deeper issue, which is that it seems the media thinks it is ok to toss out all the rules when covering President Trump because they so strongly dislike him.
Let’s be honest here: Kellyanne Conway is somebody who is paid to push the president’s narrative. So is Sean Spicer, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and several others. So was Josh Earnest, Robert Gibbs, Jay Carney, David Axelrod, etc…..
All of these people are well-compensated spin doctors. They know it, we know it, and the media knows it. Thus, the media’s job is to understand that fact going in and aggressively challenge them during interviews.
The issue here is that despite the fact so many past spin doctors played very fast and loose with the facts that didn’t suit their agendas, they were never disrespected to the level that the representatives of President Trump have been.
The press are supposed to be the people who bring the truth to light, but it becomes much harder for the news to be reported fairly when the entire press corps hates the president so much that they lose and all objectivity.
There is a danger here and it goes far beyond President Trump. No matter what you think of him, there are going to be times when he is right and the press is going to go out of their way to make it look otherwise. In fact, this has already happened several times. And conversely, there will be a president for whom the reverse will be true.
But that is not acceptable. We are all human beings and we all have our own thoughts and feelings. But the news media is supposed to tell us what is happening, not sharpen their claws because they do not like who they are covering. Because then they are not news; they are nothing more than an advocacy arm.