Acosta’s back, for now
Jim Acosta’s request for an injunction against Trump’s ban has been granted. In other words, for the moment, Trump is not allowed to ban him from press conferences without due process.
You can read about it in this post by William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:
Based on reports from reporters in the media room, it appears that the Judge ruled that while the White House doesn’t have to allow any reporters into the White House, by setting up a credentialing process it owes people like Acosta due process, and that it confers a First Amendment interest entitled to protection. The Court appears to have ruled that Acosta’s First Amendment rights supercede the White House interest in orderly press conferences, and that Acosta was not given due process in the revocation process.
Quick Assessment: This is a bad decision which effectively gives an individual reporter control over the White House press briefing process. It the White House can’t revoke the credentials of someone who disrupts a press conference in the way Acosta did, including refusing to turn over the microphone, then press conferences will turn into even more of a circus than they already are. Clearly, the lack of any formal process for revocation of press credentials influenced the court. Trump still appears to have the right not to call on Acosta. But what it Acosta refuses to stay silent, shouts, injects himself into the conference, and otherwise disrupts proceedings when he is not called on? The White House better set up, if it doesn’t have it already, a speedy but “due” process to revoke the credentials.
Trump has made a counter-announcement:
According to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he wants “total freedom of the press,” and that it’s “more important to me than anybody would believe.”
Knoller says, however, that the President added that reporters have to act with respect, and if they fail to do so, Trump will walk out of press events. He added that he told his aides to do the same.
The press stopped doing its job of reporting objectively a long time ago. But what’s more, for some of them (Acosta in particular, apparently) it has become about them—their bravery, their feistiness, their wonderfulness. But the funny thing is that they depend on Trump because they demonstrate those supposed qualities by pushing against him. A walkout would give them less to push back on—although of course they’d excoriate him for a walkout.
WH should now have written guidelines that stipulate that if a “newsperson” does not relinquish the mic they are in violation of the guidelines and thus automatically lose their hard pass. Add some more guidelines, tough ones, so the press will know that they lost a lot by this shameful episode propagated by CNN and Acosta. Make them play by their own stupidity.
Plus it is a bad ruling. What 1st Amd right to access to the WH? So wrong is so many ways.
The D-press will excoriate Trump for everything short of resignation & self-flagellation. So yes, set up a “credentialing/loss-of-credentials” process & use it ruthlessly. And yes, walk the hell out of the room if the monkeys start flinging poo across the cage.
AND he should NEVER use the name of disruptive reporters…just point & say “Fake News, it’s your turn.”
I have mentioned previously here that I was a journalism student in the 1980s, at what seems like an early phase of the fad of “active journalism.” I didn’t like it then. My belief was that as a journalist, it was my job to get facts and present them to the readership (for this was back when print newspapers were still the foundation of “real” news), so the readership could be informed of the facts and come to their own conclusions and opinions about the matter. How incredibly naïve that sounds today! But anyway, as a young, idealistic journalism student, I thought that was my mission and this “active journalism” cr@p basically attempted to inject the newsgatherer into the news, which is completely out of bounds for an impartial observer and reporter to do.
I left the field in disgust.
This kind of incident confirms I was right to be disgusted. This pompous, arrogant @sshole is NOT the news. I seriously doubt that he has any interest in being a news professional, and probably not even any idea of how to be one.
It’s ridiculous. I have no “1st Amendment Right” to speak to the president, much less be abrasively rude to him… why the f*** does Acosta?
This sounds similar to accreditors reviewing hospitals and manufacturers. They don’t necessarily tell you what your process should be, but they insist you have a process and then stick with it. Fair enough. Develop a process for both credentialing and de-credentialing a reporter, then stick with it. Did Trump offer that CNN could send someone else in Acosta’s slot? That might have made his case stronger. Don’t know.
Until then, I think President Trump is correct. Walk out yourself if necessary.
I like the walkout idea. I hope the WH chooses to not call on him, and to walk out when he rudely interrupts, which I’m sure he’ll do.
I also think Trump should start “making speeches”, and invite only a few journalists — plus video tape all of the official events. Let the WH have their own video “news” / C-SPAN style of coverage, plus WH news summary, suitable for any other news org. With nice editing…
And yes, get rules down and get signatures by the press that they understand and abide by the rules.
It might even be nice to auction off some “news seats” to anybody who wants to come, with the proceeds to Melania’s favorite charity…
They can just change the name of the White House press briefing to The Jim Acosta Show.
They’ll have to establish written rules and an appeals process for violations.
Either that, or stop these stupid press conferences entirely. When has actual news been uncovered at these made-for-TV shows? Let the press secretary issue news releases and answer questions by email. If Trump himself is going to answer questions in person, the rules must apply, with no exceptions.
This whole argument, including a number of the comments here, is pretty silly. Obviously Trump could stop bad behavior like that of Acosta by staring silently at anyone who persists in asking questions once he has called for the next question, but Trump doesn’t have the mental discipline of, say, John Tortorella. The law tends not to look kindly on people who can’t stop their own mouths.
Someone had a funny suggestion that I rather like: Call on Acosta and let him dominate the press conference. Don’t do anything to him, just let him be. Don’t answer him, don’t engage him.
“Obviously Trump could stop bad behavior like that of Acosta by staring silently at anyone who persists in asking questions once he has called for the next question” y81
Yeah, all Trump has to do is stare at Acosta and Acosta will stop his bad behavior… right. BTW, that’s not “pretty silly”, it’s appalling ignorant of the media’s motivations. News flash! Those ‘reporters’ are there to attack Trump not to honestly report on the Trump administration’s statements. Acosta is just more upfront about his hostility to Trump.
“The law tends not to look kindly on people who can’t stop their own mouths.”
It was Acosta who couldn’t stop his mouth not Trump. Yet the ‘judge’ ruled in favor of Acosta, inventing ‘law’ out of whole cloth. More of that ‘penumbra’ of the law leftist/liberal judges are so fond of citing.
Lee,
Yes, letting the inmates run the asylum always works out well…
Ann Althouse has an interesting post
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-trump-won-acosta-lawsuit.html
From LI commenter:
Matt_SE | November 16, 2018 at 4:38 pm
Trump should say that Acosta was afforded due process but the standards of behavior are proprietary and secret, just like Facebook’s.
From WWD commenter:
Ed Cross III • 4 hours ago
Had Acosta spoken like that to Obama, CNN would have fired him that afternoon and his career would be over.
* * *
Not much to add to that, except it’s interesting to see some people saying the judge shafted Trump and the Constitution, and others that the judge gave Trump a back-handed win.
Note to the Trump is Hitler crowd: Hitler never agreed to follow a judge’s ruling that went against him (if indeed there ever was a judge who had the temerity to issue one).
I do agree that, if the President doesn’t like the incivility, he has every right to leave, but that the Precious Press will then pout about it.
J E Dyer articulates precisely what a lot of people around the ‘net are saying.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/11/16/judge-cnns-acosta-gets-press-pass-back-underlying-1st-amendment-issue-not-ruled-on/
“Is it seriously in the judge’s mind that the only way to protect Fifth Amendment rights is to publish rules of behavior for every such event, affirmatively ensure there’s evidence that everyone knows what they are, and then go through some specialized “due process” ritual for removing people who scream and act out?
You know leftist activists as well as I do. That will be the only standard that would keep them from prevailing in lawsuits. But it’s a prohibitive standard, one that simply makes town halls and other forms of public access to government officials less frequent and less likely for everyone.
This reinstatement ruling is not one we should be comfortable with. Unless the entire Fifth Amendment argument is overruled as the case moves forward, this problem of the badly behaved ruining things for everyone else will metastasize. When you have to start writing rules because people don’t voluntarily adhere to universal social custom, harmony evaporates and the opportunity for useful, positive group interactions shrinks drastically. Accommodating the badly behaved instead of ejecting them quickly limits what everyone can do as a group. We all know how that works — from our days in grade school.
The second observation is that, if there’s a basis for arguing that Fifth Amendment rights aren’t really at issue here, there is also a remedy for the problem of judges ruling as if they are. Congress has the constitutional authority to limit what the federal courts can rule on. Perhaps it would be a good idea to consider doing that. For starters, I’m not a fan at all of a judge being able to order the reinstatement of any kind of pass suspended by one of the co-equal federal branches. We are sitting still for too much of this; it is improper, period, to see federal judges as the final arbiters of every question, whether in government or any other aspect of life.
…Should it really be necessary to develop a special, dedicated due process for removing unruly people from events in the White House? What kind of absurd mindset about law’s nature and purpose have we entered, when the absence of such a regulatory package is held to endanger Fifth Amendment rights?”
Acosta or any “jorurnalist” has zero rights to be an asshole at a presser with the POTUS. Period.
The President should issue a daily press release only (except for his Tweets).
The “press” then has the “freedom” to write ANYTHING THEY WANT regarding the release or anything else.
NO MORE PRESS CONFERENCES.
Of course, the President always has the right to grant an exclusive interview with anyone he chooses.
Bureaucrats only trust other bureaucrats.
The lack of an appropriate bureaucracy to handle the issue (here, for judging who deserves White House passes) is by itself evidence of guilt, in their eyes.
Individuals are untrustworthy, organizations are trustworthy.
This is evidence that the social compact is breaking down in the US. There is no longer a commonly agreed common-sense set of rules for conflict resolution. The first instinct is not to say “why can’t we discuss this and reach a compromise?”, but “we need a written rule to refer to”.
So the only way to be fair to everyone is to have written rules for everything. And the way forward is ever more bureaucracy to enforce them.
Yes. NO MORE PRESS CONFERENCES.
After all, if they are so trivial that a buffoon get to interrupt them as he pleases, they can’t be important enough to hold.