
White House Bars NYT, CNN, and Politico from Briefing - ComputerGuru
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/white-house-sean-spicer-briefing.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share
======
clamprecht
For anyone who has actually watched these press briefings in their entirety:
Does anyone else think these are pretty much the worst way to get to the
bottom of issues? Here's how it seems to work:

* The press secretary (or President, or whoever) makes a statement

* He or she chooses a journalist to ask a question

* Journalist asks question

* Press secretary answers question in as much or as little detail as he/she wants

* Press secretary calls another journalist

* This goes on for maybe 20-30 minutes, and it's over.

How does this even help at all? It's not like the press secretary is going to
answer a question that he/she doesn't want to answer anyway.

~~~
bullfightonmars
These press briefings provide direct, multilateral, and unmoderated access to
the Presidential Administration by the Press Corps. They are incredibly
important to holding the administration to account for policy.

Can the administration spin their own narrative? Sure, but they can't directly
control or audit the questions asked.

~~~
maxerickson
Depends on if they start excluding organizations and lining up softballs from
cranks.

~~~
Dangeranger
This is exactly the strategy the WH is starting to employ.

Look at Russian tactics against the press in 2006-2007 and you can predict the
WH next move. They are stealing from their playbook.

Revoke. Replace. Erode.

~~~
maxerickson
Maybe Infowars will get the president on the record about Pizzagate.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Alex Jones loves Donald Trump. He's unlikely to hold him to account for
anything, except maybe not being paranoid enough, until his audience drops and
new ideas come crawling out of whatever hole Alex keeps them in.

I would say he's a joke, but it's way creepier than that.

------
meentsbk
I'm finding I'm having a hard time reconciling the current climate - not
necessarily at his supporters (or the opposite), but just at how polar
opposite everyone seems to be on this.

For me, I see these organizations as not treating him poorly, but actually
willing to call out things he is not being factual on.

But at the same time, maybe I'm being biased against him.

I want the discourse, but I'm just struggling to understand how the views can
be so strongly split from one extreme to the other, and what that means moving
forward.

~~~
dukeluke
In our FPTP voting system, a two party system naturally emerges. And during
times of hardship, instead of a middle-ground being found like would occur in
a multiparty system, things become even more partisan and contentious. It's a
fundamental facet of our political system, and won't ever change by using the
political system. The political momentum needed is just too great.

~~~
tdb7893
If you think about it a two party system has a tendency to make the parties
move towards the center in general. If a party gets much more extreme than the
populace then they will lose easily against an opponent just a little more
moderate than them. Trump's views seem a little more extreme than the general
populace but if you look at it he didn't even win the popular vote.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If you think about it a two party system has a tendency to make the parties
> move towards the center in general.

No, it doesn't.

> If a party gets much more extreme than the populace then they will lose
> easily against an opponent just a little more moderate than them.

This requires lots of assumptions that may not be true in the real world.
First, it assumes a party in power can't shift the electorate by suppressing
voting rights of its opponents. Second, it either ignores propensity to vote
effects, or assumes a unimodal distribution of preferences so that moderation
not only brings you closer to the median voter but also doesn't make people
who are closer to your position less likely to vote; whereas a two-party
system over time promotes a bimodal distribution where moving away from one of
those peaks, even toward the center between them, reduces enthusiasm and votes
recieved.) It also ignores communication assymetries and their relation to
money, and therefore support from moneyed interests.

~~~
tdb7893
There are a lot of things to pulls the two parties back out from the middle
again and I'm aware that practically it's not like both parties are actually
centrist. Maybe I should've been more clear but my intent was saying that a
two party system leads to more centrist parties than a multi-party system. I
honestly think that multi-party systems might be better but I also think that
two party systems aren't completely aweful

~~~
dragonwriter
> Maybe I should've been more clear but my intent was saying that a two party
> system leads to more centrist parties than a multi-party system.

It might result in more centrist _parties_ (though I've never seen a
convincing comparativr argument or evidence; median voter theorem is fine and
all for the abstract idealized world it applies to but ignores pretty much
every significant aspect of real-world political dynamics), but even so it
doesn't seem to lead to more centrist _governments_.

> I honestly think that multi-party systems might be better but I also think
> that two party systems aren't completely aweful

Among democracies, degree of proportionality of representation is pretty
directly correlated with popular satisfaction with government, and smaller
numbers of parties are correlated with poorer proportionality; from the
perspective of providing people the government they want, two-party systems
turn out to mostly be, empirically, pretty awful, and the US's particular
implementation near the bottom of the barrel among established democracies.

~~~
normaljoe
> Among democracies, degree of proportionality of representation is pretty
> directly correlated with popular satisfaction with government

While dual or multiple parties can affect this, the degree of representation
currently in the US is currently more of detriment to finding a middle ground.

The average member of the lower house has around 650K constituents more then
any senator did at our founding. The US Constitution was suppose to allow the
House to grow and expand as the country did, however Congress passes a law
setting the limit of members to the House almost a century ago.

If we multiply the House by 10, each member represents 65K we are still within
the Constitution and will get closer to what you are stating then a complete
overhaul. This has the effect of give more representation to people and makes
it more likely to get to a middle ground. As an example a district votes 60%
for one party in the current system results in 40% being unheard. With a 10x,
keeping in mind it wouldn't really work entirely we have, 6 members that agree
with the 60% and 4 members that agree with the 40%. It's not going to be that
exact but hopefully you get the idea. This is going to decrease the power of
each member of the lower house to state "Mandate" and force getting closer to
middle ground.

In the 60/40 example it is mostly likely gerrymandered or a state with a
single member in the House which results in no general election. The district
is already assumed to win the general and thus the primary becomes the real
election which is nominally 50% of the a general election. So in the current
system 30% of the 650K in our example district effectively elect the member to
House. Given typical 50% voter turnout we then can say that basically say that
about 15% of of a district pick the representation. So in our example 98K are
represented fully and 552K people are under represented. By scaling that back
we would probably have less gerrymandered districts but even in this extreme
we have 10K people vs 55K people and may even be able to increase voter
turnout since a vote actually matters at this point. In my district my vote is
worthless, I still vote in primary and general, but I live someplace more
gerrymandered than the 60/40 it's closer to 80/20.

------
KerrickStaley
The HN ranking algorithm buried this post really quickly.

Right now it has 466 points, 229 comments, is 1 hour old, and ranked at #32.

For comparision,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13725093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13725093)
has 197 points, 39 comments, is 4 hours old, and ranked at #13.

Does anyone know why the ranking algorithm demoted this article and not the
other (even though this one is younger and more popular)? I know it applies
penalties for certain sites and if an article is deemed "controversial" (more
comments than votes), but I don't think either would trigger here.

~~~
mjmsmith
Trump apologists downvoting/flagging. They seem to have infested HN to a
greater degree than other tech sites for some reason.

~~~
mememachine
Or paid upvotes.

------
mtgentry
Only the AP choose to not attend out of solidarity? Shame on ABC, CBS, and the
rest.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I don't recall the NYT, CNN or Politico refusing to attend when Obama kicked
the Washington Times and NY Post out.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=6156794&pag...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=6156794&page=1)

Shame on them too?

~~~
eterm
I'll save everyone the click: It's a false equivalence. Three reporters
(total) were dropped from a plane flight, once.

Being held here by yummyfajitas as equivalent to barring whole organisations
from a press conference.

~~~
georgemcbay
Also this event occurred before Obama was President...

Not only are the practical aspects of the two situations different, but on top
of that comparing the official actions of a sitting President versus those of
a non-incumbent candidate make it even more falsely equivalent.

------
Jun8
The reporting on this is a bit hazy right now, according to CNN it was not a
formal briefing but a "press gaggle"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_gaggle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_gaggle))
and the CNN reporter was barred by a WH staffer because the organization's
name "was not on the list"
([http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/24/cnn-blocked-
fr...](http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/24/cnn-blocked-from-white-
house-press-conference-murray-nr.cnn)).

This is a mostly symbolic gesture (these organizations still have their
assigned seats in the room) but is very much against WH press tradition.
Coupled with Trump's strong words at the Convention this is a sign for these
organizations to tune down their criticism of the President.

------
themgt
This country appears to be on a very dangerous path. I don't remotely deny
Trump and his administration's responsibility and complicity for taking us
down this path, but given how widely understood his issues are within
mainstream discourse, I wanted to take a step back and critically look at the
not-Trump aspects.

Firstly, Trump needs to be understood in context as the outsider who none of
the establishment took seriously, who disrespected everyone and touched every
third rail of US politics, who railed against a corrupt system and argued to
burn it all down. And 46% of voters bought that and won him 85% of US counties
and the presidency.

And ever since, a vast "bipartisan" swath of US media and civic institutions,
the deep state and many members of the elites of both political parties have
been edging towards outright hysteria, active #Resistance, bureaucratic mutiny
and widespread media/celebrity/talking-head delegitimization of Trump's
presidency on a level that is utterly unprecedented in modern US history. The
level of abject, contemptful hostility from ostensibly "objective" media
outlets like the NYT has been breathtaking.

Many, many stories have been exaggerated, slanted and framed in ways that cast
Trump as some comic-book villain/Manchurian candidate/Hiter-in-wait beyond any
basis in fact or contextualization within existing/recent US policy.

I want to just be clear that I don't support Trump or his policies, I've voted
and volunteered for Obama/Bernie and other Democrats, but what I see occurring
is a ratcheting up of tensions towards outright war between Trump and the
existing establishment of this country. And that in fact is exactly the way
Trump actually can justify cutting off media access and purging the ranks of
the IC after all the leaks. Bannon and Trump want a war against the
establishment, because they know how much of the country is disgusted by the
establishment and wants someone to use them as a punching bag.

Trump himself should be like a relatively harmless pathogen within our
government's co-equal constitutional immune system - perhaps even an excuse to
strengthen legislative and judicial oversight that's been badly lacking in
recent years of executive overreach. Instead we're witnessing the fourth
estate and military/spook bureaucracy go to war with Trump, which is exactly
the sort of non-credible/illegitimate opposition that can enable him to
actually consolidate more public support and power.

~~~
wfo
Trump's tactic is clear as it is effective. He behaves exactly as ridiculously
as the press makes him out to. The press look like they are exaggerating and
making him look bad because if they report true facts, those true facts are so
ridiculous that people assume they are the product of bias.

Trump really did say he wanted to murder the children of terrorists. He really
did say the press is the enemy of the American people. He really did trash
American war heroes who were captured in combat. Et cetera, ad nauseum.

How do you write a story about that without making it seem biased? Nobody
would believe he said those things. It must be an exaggeration. It must be
unfair reporting. And look, that's what he's claiming. That must be it.

But you can actually watch him speak and it's horrifying. What will it take
for people to accept he's an actual threat to the country? Will he have to
grow a tiny mustache before you believe he's Hitler-in-wait? He'll just muddy
the waters by explicitly lying and blame media bias no matter how bad the
things really are.

Maybe in 4 years when we have an election and he refuses to step down because
the election was illegitimate -- he actually won, the media lied about the
vote totals, millions of illegal voters tipped the scales -- after having
replaced the entire national security/military apparatus with rabid loyalists.

Perhaps a terrorist attack will happen and he'll execute a power grab, declare
the courts irrelevant or martial law during these trying times where national
security is the utmost concern.

Maybe then people will accept it. Or maybe they'll say "how do we know? There
must be something to what he's saying, I'm sure he's not really that sinister.
The media is biased too, we had better listen to both sides I'm sure the truth
is somewhere in the middle. "

~~~
pcmaffey
> How do you write a story about that without making it seem biased? Nobody
> would believe he said those things. It must be an exaggeration. It must be
> unfair reporting. And look, that's what he's claiming. That must be it. >
> But you can actually watch him speak and it's horrifying

I wonder if the appropriate response can be found in the medium. Use video
instead of words. Rather than writing about Trump or quoting him, perhaps we
need more video news, showing him saying the things he says. Make the 'story'
from the editing...

------
aestetix
Title is misleading. Press was blocked from a single press briefing. I do not
see anything in the article about briefings going forward.

Can someone change the title so it's less sensationalized?

Edit: thanks to the moderator for removing the "s" and making the word
"Briefing" singular to accurately reflect the article.

~~~
alexc05
I think even a single briefing is a scandal.

Consider the words of Admiral McRaven (who coordinated the raid which took
down Osama Bin Ladin):

> Donald Trump's war on media is 'biggest threat to democracy'

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-
trum...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-war-
media-press-threat-democracy-navy-seal-osama-bin-laden-william-h-mcraven-
operation-a7596856.html)

"He only did it once" is not a valid defense if you consider even doing it
once as a fundamental assault on the Fouth Estate
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate)

~~~
aestetix
I completely agree. My request can be satisfied by simply removing the "s"
from "briefings" to make it singular. As far as I know, this has only occurred
at a single briefing.

------
trequartista
According to The Hill, these organizations were also barred - BBC, Daily Mail,
The Hill, Buzzfeed, LA Times

[http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/321049-white-
hous...](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/321049-white-house-hand-
picks-select-media-for-briefing)

~~~
bsder
The LA Times?--not exactly a heavy hitter or even terribly liberal.

They must have just banned anybody with the word "Time" in their name.

------
dirkg
This country has gone mad. The Trump supporters will justify and applaud
everything he does while he burns down the world.

Why even pretend we have a democracy anymore? Trump and his WH are busy
eroding and suprressing every form of free speech and I can't think of a
single thing him or the Republicans stand for that actually helps people.

------
nappy-doo
Well, I guess it's time to up my subscription level to the NYT.

------
agildehaus
Not only are they barring news agencies they don't like from press briefings,
they're bringing in radio talk hosts in the form of submitted video to fill
the gap. Completely insane.

------
hackuser
> Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all
> with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street
> Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended.

The sentence is misleading and normalizes something that is very dangerous:
The WSJ and Fox absolutely have conservative leanings. IMHO, WSJ, at least
their editorial page, and Fox are propaganda outlets. (To be clear, I despise
propaganda of all stripes; the conservative side is far more powerful these
days - there is no left-wing propaganda outlet with a fraction of the power of
Fox and the WSJ (or Rush Limbaugh and the rest of conservative talk).
Huffington Post is maybe the biggest, but I don't read them enough to know if
they qualify as propaganda. Publications like Common Dreams or Tom Paine are
laughable as competition.)

~~~
perseusprime11
I am with you on HuffingtonPost but they also have so much fake news on their
site that it is hard for me to know which one is Outbrain and which one is
HuffPo. I am also afraid they will go out of business because of these
practices.

~~~
hackuser
> I am also afraid they will go out of business because of these practices.

Propaganda is a very good business - better than the real thing these days.
Look at who are the leaders by far on cable and talk radio, and in the
business community.

------
twoquestions
This is not the action a strong, secure ruler would take. This signals that
they're afraid of what they may ask and how their readers may react.

What does this accomplish that ignoring the reporters in question would not?

~~~
metalliqaz
The president is not a "ruler"

~~~
res0nat0r
He thinks of himself a dictator and is banning all of the papers who keep
outing his administration scandals and Russia ties.

The more he goes on Twitter blaming the FBI and the NYT of leaking fake info,
the more true it most likely is.

He didn't fire Flynn because the NYT pulled some random story out of their
ass.

------
praneshp
I was going to do a Ask HN, but will jump on this thread. What's the better
subscription to get, NYTimes or WSJ?

~~~
EduardoBautista
I have a subscription to the WSJ. I also subscribe to The Economist. You can
read the NYT for free easily, although if I were willing to spend more money I
would gladly support their work, but I already spent over $300 in annual
subscriptions.

I also like how the economist and the WSJ apps have weekly and daily editions
respectively. The NYT app is one continuously updating feed.

------
lisper
There was a time not so long ago when part of the argument for why we were
better than the Russians was that we had a free press and they didn't.

You might still be able to see Russia from parts of the U.S., but it's getting
harder and harder to see the moral high ground from here.

------
ComputerGuru
This story is being actively buried, fyi. [edit: confirmed that it's being
flagged. Guess all is normal.]

~~~
grzm
Do you have a link?

------
vturner
Does anyone else find this article confusing or misleading?

"Organizations allowed in included Breitbart News, the One America News
Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists
from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also
attended."

So, we're the only outlets allowed in the "conservative leaning" ones or the
not-so conservative ABC and CBS as well?

~~~
weaksauce
> Aides to Mr. Spicer only allowed in reporters from a handpicked group of
> news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed

from the paragraph before your first quote. My parsing of it is that the hand
picked news orgs were breitbart et. al. and the ones that weren't hand picked
were still allowed in as long as they were not specifically banned. awkward
writing though so who knows.

------
bsder
GOOD! Maybe the press will start doing their job of digging for truth instead
of pandering in order to get "access".

------
bnolsen
Considering NYT, CNN and Politico were all implicated via wikileaks for
directly colluding with the Hillary campaign I don't blame Trump one bit. The
mainstream media needs to be reigned in an not represent one single political
party in this whole current mess, but it's not the government's job to do it.

------
paradite
> Organizations allowed in included Breitbart News, the One America News
> Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings.
> Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News
> also attended.

I wonder if the message conveyed would be different if we rephrase it another
way:

> Organizations allowed in included ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and
> Bloomberg. Journalists from Breitbart News, the One America News Network,
> The Washington Times and Fox News, all with conservative leanings, also
> attended.

Also, I think NYT is playing with the word "allow" here. By saying
"Organizations allowed in included X, Y, Z. ... A, B, C also attended", this
gives the false impression that A, B, C are somewhat "not allowed" by
separating the list into "allowed" and "also attended". This is obviously
false since they attended it.

~~~
vikasg
Congratulations on burying the lede. Nowhere in the article's phrasing is an
intent to mislead. It clearly states that some organizations were not allowed
to attend --- which is the real story here --- and some were allowed to
attend.

Now I wonder, if my aunt had balls, would she be my uncle?

------
skolos
Is there a historic precedent for this?

~~~
jerf
[http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63167-congression...](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63167-congressional-
democrats-defend-white-houses-snub-of-fox-news)

It's not a 100% precise match, but I'd look dimly on anyone trying to argue
it's completely different somehow. Reverse the affiliations and you'd almost
think it was written today. (Almost.)

~~~
mintplant
I know many won't actually click through to read the linked article, so I
think it's important to cite this here in the comments:

> The effort hasn’t been a total blackout; _White House press secretary Robert
> Gibbs still calls on Fox News reporter Major Garrett at press briefings_ ,
> but the Obama White House is clearly targeting the network that it believes
> is biased.

> In a weekend interview with The New York Times, White House spokeswoman
> Anita Dunn said the administration would “treat them the way we would treat
> an opponent.”

A similar situation, and not "completely different", but not exactly the same,
either.

~~~
vacri
It's not that similar. Fox wasn't barred from the briefings. It's just that
folks weren't willing to be personally interviewed by them or go on their
panel shows. The latter requires active engagement from the establishment, as
people have to do a lot of prep work for interviews; the former is just
another reporter in the scrum.

------
ceejayoz
Well done to Time and AP, who skipped in protest.

~~~
neilsimp1
While I agree on the whole solidarity thing, isn't it better to have _more_
news organizations at the press briefings?

~~~
cyrus_
No, it's better to enforce the norms of a free and antagonistic press.

~~~
thehardsphere
Right, which usually requires press people to show up to do the reporting.

I mean it may not be as much of a requirement now in the age of live TV and
internet streaming, but if we're going to argue about norms then certainly the
norm of sending reporters to actually report on stuff is kind of important.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
It requires people to do reporting. It does not require them to show up at a
press briefing - that doesn't happen in a lot of countries, or if it does, the
press is a mouthpiece for the government to say whatever it wants to say
whether true or false.

It's certainly helpful for the White House to distill information into an
easy-to-digest press briefing. But the AP, Time, and other barred and
protesting organizations are certainly capable of reporting on what actually
happens rather than what they're told at a press briefing. Reuters described
it aptly here:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/rpb-adlertrump-
idUSKBN15F276](http://www.reuters.com/article/rpb-adlertrump-idUSKBN15F276)

> Become ever-more resourceful: If one door to information closes, open
> another one.

> Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never
> all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we
> have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.

> Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity
> for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around
> the world...

------
joshuawright11
[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-bars-
mu...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-bars-multiple-
outlets-receiving-press-briefing-article-1.2981448) non-paywalled link

------
MertsA
So I can see the rationale for Barring CNN, or more specifically, Jim Acosta
from attending Press briefings after his disruption back in January but as for
barring the rest, is this really as corrupt as it sounds? Only allow in press
who are "Trump friendly".

------
dmode
This is great. More ammunition to build a case against Trump. This type of
behavior doesn't benefit him, but scares a lot of independent voters. He will
be in for a rude awakening in the next election cycle

------
kylewest
much ado about nothing. press access has always been limited to a select
handful. even making it into the room doesn't guarantee you'll be acknowledged
or, if called on, have your question answered.

~~~
alphabettsy
The largest media outlets in the country being denied access to the WH Press
Room?

~~~
kylewest
at times there is literally one reporter in the room (MLK Bust story). I'm not
arguing they should be excluded forever, just think all perspective is lost
when dealing with Trump. Somehow CNN being excluded from a gaggle turns into
Trump being a dictator at war with the 1st amendment.

Maybe he is, and maybe this is a tiny piece of a multi-year plot. Or maybe
not.

~~~
alphabettsy
At times..but that's not what we're talking about. Why should they be excluded
at all? Regardless if it's a multi-year plot or just throwing a fit, it's
unacceptable. One of factors behind Trump becoming President is how much time
the media spent on him because of his unusual campaign style and rhetoric, and
now he wants to pick and choose the media allowed to cover him to suit his
narrative and it doesn't work that way.

What I don't understand is why so many tolerate his lies.

------
kingnight
I know this may be a tired question, but why is this falling on the front-page
when the points are continuing to increase?

------
beat
This isn't about banning particular media outlets for asking hard questions or
being fake news or whatever. This is about setting up the mainstream media as
the enemy, and treating them as such. Trump's target is his supporters. "Do
you trust me? If you trust me, then you can't trust _them_."

------
rafiki6
Trump thinks he's still on the apprentice...doesn't like a news outlet,
"You're fired!"

------
pasbesoin
I wrote a snarky if apt comment, but I'll rephrase it seriously.

I hope the resources put in limbo by this can be devoted to investigating and
reporting some independent and accurate accounts of what's happening.

Such as, say, refuting every false statement that is coming from the press
room podium.

I'd pay for that paper.

------
hackuser
Now we know which publications we can trust to stand up to the President. Why
isn't the WSJ banned?

------
tcoppi
Sounds like he is getting desperate.

------
coldcode
See 1984, Ministry of Truth. Sadly the novel seems to be a how to manual
instead of a warning.

------
a3n
I think at this point the White House Correspondents Association should
disband, and all reputable outlets should pull their reporters, similar to how
a government official might resign in protest of something.

What would we miss? Another story about spin?

------
ChicagoDave
Well proof will come out in the mid-terms. Do most voters want this kind of
leadership or not?

Of course the GOP is going to contract voting rights as much as possible in
the interim, so it's going to be a battle.

Liberals don't vote. Will that change?

~~~
gdulli
> Liberals don't vote

The Democrats won the popular vote by 3 million votes, so this doesn't seem
right. But for some surgical gerrymandering we might not be having a
conversation about President Trump at all.

~~~
belovedeagle
> surgical gerrymandering

Also known as "state lines", a great many of which have been in place for over
a century.

~~~
EduardoBautista
I don't know why you are being downvoted. Gerrymandering affects congressional
districts and has no direct effect on the presidential election.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Gerrymandering affects congressional districts and has no direct effect on
> the presidential election.

There are a couple states that assign Presidential electors on a basis of two
to the statewide winner plus one to the winner in each Congressional district,
rather than winner-take-all, so Congressional districting (including
gerrymandering) does have a direct effect on Presidential election s as well
as House elections.

~~~
EduardoBautista
They have a total of 5 electoral votes. When split the only election where
they could have made a difference was in 2000. But yes, in this case it those
have a direct effect but a VERY minor effect that has never affected the
outcome of an election.

------
throwaway13371
Not a Trump supporter in the slightest but after seeing how they mis-
characterized Pewdiepie I have to say I have no trust in the media either so
do hell with them.

------
alkonaut
Sane media should stop going. No point participating in a charade the
administration is directing.

Edit: apparently this is already happening. Time and AP among those who chose
not to attend.

Dystopia.

------
marcell
But is this literal or serious? /s

------
randomname2
Just for some perspective, the previous administration was also not great in
this regard:

"Obama shuts Fox out of press briefings related to Benghazi" [1]

"The Obama White House went to war against Fox News": Jake Tapper. [2]

"Fishbowl DC has been keeping tabs of which media outlets have been allowed to
ask a question at President-elect Barack Obama’s five press conferences so
far. They report Fox News is 0–5. “Questions instead went to such outlets as
ABC, New York Times, CBS, Reuters and the Associated Press.”" [3]

"In 2010, President Obama said that Fox News had a point of view which was
“ultimately destructive” for America...The University of Minnesota’s Eric
Ostermeier tallied up the number of questions each member of the White House
press corp had been able to ask during all of Obama’s first term press
conferences. ABC, CBS, the Associated Press and NBC led the pack, with ABC
having been selected for questioning 29 times over 36 solo press conferences.
(Overall, reporters have had fewer chances to ask questions than any White
House press corps since Ronald Reagan’s.)...Fox News, though it has a reach
that far outstrips its competitors and sometimes rivals the broadcast
networks, was in ninth place on the list, having been called on 14
times...NBC’s Chuck Todd and ABC’s Jake Tapper (now at CNN) were called on the
most of any reporters — they each got 23 chances to question Obama." [4]

"Mr. Axelrod said it was the view of the White House that Fox News had blurred
the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy...By the following weekend,
officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take
the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives
at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said
that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox
News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the
summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White
House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions
surrounding the community activist group Acorn...Those reports included a
critical segment on the schools safety official Kevin Jennings, with the on-
screen headline “School Czar’s Past May Be Too Radical”; urgent news coverage
of a video showing schoolchildren “singing the praises, quite literally, of
the president,” which the Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson later called
“pure Khmer Rouge stuff”...There followed, beginning in earnest more than two
weeks ago, an intensified volley of White House comments describing Fox as
“not a news network.”...Then, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, the
president went public. “What our advisers have simply said is that we are
going to take media as it comes,” he said. “And if media is operating,
basically, as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing. And if it’s
operating as a news outlet, then that’s another.”...“We simply decided to stop
abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press,
that Fox is a traditional news organization,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the deputy
White House communications director." [5]

December 2012: Several journalists reported that MSNBC hosts were meeting
privately with President Obama to discuss the impending “fiscal cliff” fight.
[6]

March 2015: Politico’s media reporter, Hadas Gold, reported that “a group of
journalists and columnists,” all on the left, met privately with President
Obama, but the White House refused to say “who else was at the meeting or what
was discussed.” [7]

[1] [http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/fox-anchor-team-obama-
threatened-...](http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/fox-anchor-team-obama-threatened-
benghazi-reporter/)

[2] [http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-
marsh/2017/01/1...](http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-
marsh/2017/01/17/tapper-press-conference-kerfuffle-obama-also-went-war-
against)

[3] [https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-shut-out-again-at-
obama-p...](https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-shut-out-again-at-obama-press-
conference-6d2eb5734390#.t6orlm2qb)

[4] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/obama-fox-news-
pres...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/obama-fox-news-press-
conferences_n_2495440.html)

[5]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/politics/23fox.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/politics/23fox.html)

[6] [http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-hosts-spotted-visiting-
obam...](http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-hosts-spotted-visiting-obama-white-
house/)

[7] [http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/03/obama-holds-
off-...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/03/obama-holds-off-the-
record-session-with-columnists-203519)

------
crispyambulance
Yes, its an offensive dick-move by Trump but rather than get agitated, I hope
that more people will try look behind this.

This has been a relatively slow news week, I get the feeling someone needs a
little attention?

~~~
SN76477
Im praying for 4 years of slow news.

------
kylewest
if we're going to be honest, most are upset because they have an issue with
trump to start with. after he was elected Trump did hour-long interviews with
60-minutes, ABC, O-Reily, and Hannity. Where's the outrage over that?
Shouldn't equal time have been given to Dateline, CBS, Anderson Cooper, and
Van Jones?

Sooner or later there will be a real issue and most of us are going to tune it
out because CNN/NYT/Others have treated every day since he took office as the
2nd coming of Hitler and beginning of WW3.

~~~
mejari
Granting long interviews is fundamentally different from access to briefings.

~~~
kylewest
agreed. being excluded from one is also different from being excluded from
all.

there's also 6+ other news organizations in there -- not all trump friendly. I
just don't see how CNN being excluded equates to the end of freedom of the
press. The reach of those included is far greater than those explicitly
excluded.

~~~
mejari
I don't think it's the end of freedom of the press, but it's a dangerous step
towards it. The fact that other groups have more reach doesn't lessen the
damage excluding a major news organization just because you don't like what
they're reporting. If they're not reporting the truth that's one thing, but
this isn't that.

------
DLA
Maybe this will send a message to said media outlets to stop making crap up
and traffic in real issues with some impartial professional journalism that
used to occur in this country.

~~~
scrollaway
It is absolutely not the place of the president to "send a message" to the
press.

~~~
MrZongle2
Whose place is it?

~~~
scrollaway
The journals' audience and, more generally, the citizens of the country.

A huge pillar of the press in the US is that it keeps the president in check.
You can't be the one regulating what keeps you in check. Have you ever heard
the phrase "judge, jury and executioner"?

------
alphabettsy
Completely unacceptable!

------
aestetix
Wow, the downvotes are rolling in.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this. It breaks the HN guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13727131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13727131)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
aestetix
Duly noted. Is there any way to report vote thrashing, or do you have tools to
detect it?

~~~
dang
If you think people are doing something abusive you're welcome to email
hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look into it for you.

------
boona
> He has taken to blatantly and explicitly lying about simple verifiable
> facts, and doubling down on those lies when challenged.

I'm not saying that's not true (I'm not a Trump supporter), but what sticks
out to you as an instance of him doubling down on a lie?

Edit: It's disappointing to be down voted rather than being directly engaged.
If you have a beef with what I said, please tell me where I've erred. I would
love to change my mind on this topic. This is Hacker News after all, not
Reddit.

~~~
mwpmaybe
Start here: [http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-
trump/stateme...](http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-
trump/statements/byruling/pants-fire/)

How about:

* Lying about his past opposition to the Iraq war

* Lying about Russia only hacking the DNC (they hacked the RNC too, or at least tried to, but didn't release anything)

* Lying about the size of the crowd at his inauguration

* Lying about his "historic" electoral win (it wasn't)

* Lying about the election being rigged against him (before the election)

* Lying about the state of African American communities

* Lying about inner-city crime rates

* Lying about Obama and Clinton literally "founding" ISIS

* Lying about Ted Cruz's father being involved in the JFK assassination

* Lying about his charitable donations and activities

* Lying about his inability to release his tax returns because of an ongoing IRS audit

* Lying about his association with David Duke and the white national movement

* Lying about his history and relationship with Vladimir Putin

That's just a taste. I could go on.

~~~
SnowFace
Shame on you. You don't like his politics, fine, but cut the propaganda.

> Lying about his past support for the Iraq war

Go watch his Howard Stern interview yourself:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OU_Vrb_QXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OU_Vrb_QXo).
Listen at how indecisive he is for that question compared to the rest of the
interview. It's wishy washy. It's hesitant. It's not a statement of support to
call someone a liar over, unless you have an agenda.

~~~
mwpmaybe
"I was totally against the war in Iraq." — Donald Trump on NBC News in 2016[0]

That's a lie, and one he's repeated often. Wishy-washy, hesitant support for a
thing is not the same as being totally against a thing. His assertion that he
was in opposition to it from the very beginning is a deliberate, egregious
misrepresentation of his past views intended to convey authority on a subject
that he simply does not possess.

I'll update the wording of my initial point to be more clear, since you have
my original wording quoted here for posterity.

0\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/09/07/th...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/09/07/the-first-hillary-clinton-vs-donald-trump-showdown-
of-2016-annotated/)

~~~
SnowFace
"Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have
handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a
wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and
gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead
the county? C’mon. Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a
revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take
over. And he’ll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn’t have. -
Trump in Esquire 2004

~~~
mwpmaybe
Sure. A lot of people were against it after it started, especially when it
began to go south. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about
statements like this:

"[H]ad I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a
vote in opposition." — Donald Trump at an education event on 8-Sep-2016[0]

Considering that the vote was on 11-Oct-2002, and we have audio of Trump
expressing hesitant, wishy-washy support for the war on 11-Sep-2002, that is
almost certainly not true.

0\.
[https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-09-10/ap-...](https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-09-10/ap-
fact-check-trumps-false-claim-of-opposing-the-iraq-war)

~~~
SnowFace
You're trying to put his statement into a different context now. I thought we
were talking about him saying that he was totally against the war in Iraq,
which he was. So we agree that wasn't a lie.

> "[H]ad I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a
> vote in opposition." — Donald Trump at an education event on September 8th,
> 2016[0]

You can't disprove a hypothetical situation that never happened to call him a
liar. Who knows what he would have done if he had been in congress instead of
a businessman. It's clear though he was questioning it publicly as early as
2003 in the Cavuto interview, which was before the war started, and came out
totally against it publicly in 2004 less than a year after it started. Who
knows what he was saying privately before that. You don't know. This isn't
grounds to call him a liar.

~~~
zepto
Being against the war after it started is utterly irrelevant.

If you remove that from your defense of him, there is nothing left.

He was weakly in support of the war before it started. That is a fact.

When he says he was against the way, he says it to differentiate himself from
the people who voted for it.

When he does that, he is lying.

There is no evidence whatever to support any other conclusion. Anything that
comes from after the war was in progress is of no relevance.

~~~
SnowFace
This is actually a great example of how modern day propaganda works. One
tactic to discredit someone is to combine two true statements by them that
look similar to create a false statement. Case in point:

Claim 1: Trump says he was against the war before it started. In the Cavuto
interview he's questioning the war, and he says he used to argue with Sean
Hannity about it. Sean Hannity backed this up. There's no reason to doubt
this.

Claim 2: Trump says he's different from his opponents because he came out
strongly against the war before anyone else did. That's a fact and there's
plenty of evidence.

Then comes the spin. The media will mix the two statements together to say
Trump said he came out strongly against the war _before_ it started. They'll
use this to call him a liar. Try to find me one example of him saying he came
out strongly against the war before it started. You can't, because he never
did.

This is why people don't trust the media.

~~~
zepto
Nope.

Claiming he was against the war, _after it started_ is irrelevant. It doesn't
matter how many times you act as though it is.

One person saying they had a private argument with him before the war is also
irrelevant. How many other people had private arguments but didn't express
these reservations publicly?

If Trump was against the war before it started and had been brave enough to
say so there would be evidence.

There is not. You can support Trump without having to be his propaganda
ministry. The man makes false statements.

~~~
SnowFace
When did Hillary come out against the war?

~~~
zepto
Irrelevant.

Hillary has nothing to do with Trump's lies. And no failure of hers excuses
him of anything.

It looks like you can't defend him anymore.

~~~
SnowFace
Seems my point flew over your head again. You keep calling things irrelevant
that you don't like. I'm done.

~~~
zepto
No - you tried to make this about Hilary - when it isn't - it's just about
Trump lying.

If you seriously don't see Trump lying, it probably is better for you to bow
out.

------
sidlls
I just can't get worked up about this. Had these "news" organizations been
doing their jobs I might be more concerned. As it stands this is just
elevating one group of propaganda orgs over others.

The difference between what Trump has done here and what prior administrations
did is the publicity and brazen transparency around it. I find it amusing that
people think this is somehow a terrible, ominous event. This is a trifling
thing compared to the egregious ethical violations and corruption, especially
around information dissemination through the press, that has existed in this
institution for decades.

The most interesting and concerning thing about it is the apparent weight
given to these briefings. Except in very rare circumstances (e.g. killing of
OBL, some attack like 9/11), these things are basically just PR displays by
the administration. They serve no _newsworthy_ purpose.

~~~
SonicSoul
what job are they not doing?

~~~
sidlls
They have only just started being critical of an administration. Prior to
Trump they basically played the "access" game: they would eschew doing
genuinely tough journalistic investigation in exchange for having access to
high profile politicians in interviews and other situations. This isn't a
liberal or conservative thing (I'm far to the left of this country's
mainstream). Even the stuff they're going after Trump for is shallow obvious
things, mainly because of the shallow obvious ways that Trump lies and
otherwise acts poorly.

------
mythrwy
Ya, well the press's treatment of Trump has been a bit one sided. And well out
of proportion to his actual comments and deeds.

You might not like Trump, and you might have good reasons but the above is
true all the same. And, he is sitting president of the USA right now,
irrespective of how you feel about him, his platforms and his supporters.

The amount of vitriol involving Trump is ridiculous. It really is. I'm not
saying Trump has good manners (because he doesn't) but the press hasn't been
many steps behind in utter nastiness. And they have, in most cases, stopped
even pretending to be objective. It's gotten where I can't even watch or read
the news anymore. It's just irrational nastiness from one side or the other
with zero nuance.

I don't know where this all ends if we stay on the trajectory. Gang warfare
and cutting off heads maybe. Seems the veneer of civilization indeed might be
pretty thin. Maybe we might have to relearn the hard way about the things we
take for granted in the social order.

~~~
runesoerensen
> It's just irrational nastiness

Can you point out any significant press coverage of Trump's nastiness that
qualifies as "irrational"?

If the press reports on Trump's nastiness, does that make the press nasty?

~~~
mythrwy
"Can you point out any significant press coverage of Trump's nastiness that
qualifies as "irrational"?"

Sure but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

~~~
runesoerensen
Seems like substantiating your allegation would increase the likelihood of
being taken seriously -- or proven wrong, of course, which is what I'll assume
you are as long as you are unwilling to prove it.

 _" As appealing as it might be for some people to believe your comment it
doesn't pass the basic sniff test."_

\- mythrwy, 13 days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620408)

~~~
mythrwy
Thanks for going back through my old comments. I love it when people take me
seriously enough to investigate.

You aren't going to be able to "prove me wrong" because what we are talking
about here is largely a matter of nuance and opinion. Or manifest and obvious
fact if you'd rather see it like that. I know what facts I see. Feel free to
register your disagreement.

~~~
res0nat0r
Look everyone understands Trump hates newspapers that call him out on his lies
which is why he banned them, it is pretty straightforward.

Hence that whole Flynn thing. Or did Trump fire a guy over a fake story?

