OPINION:
A Playboy journalist named Brian Karem who covers the White House said he’s been “bullied and browbeaten” daily by this President Donald Trump administration and, by God, he’s not going to take it anymore.
Well first things first: Boo-hoo. Quit your crying and do your job.
But as a quick aside: Brian Karem, you do have a bit of conservatives’ sympathies.
After all, conservatives — like Fox News peeps — had to deal with Barack Obama for eight years. Imagine that: Eight years of being blamed for all that ails America. Eight years of being slammed as a fake news outlet. Eight years of the special Justice Department treatment — you know, the kind where Fox’s James Rosen was placed under federal government watch because Team Obama didn’t like his coverage?
So be thankful, Brian, Trump’s not Obama.
Even The Associated Press, which saw its reporters’ telephone records seized, and 37 news organizations with the White House Correspondents’ Association, which protested Obama’s George Orwellian-like clampdowns on press freedoms, hated the most recent past administration.
That all to the side, Karem nonetheless finds more fault with this administration.
“We are bullied and browbeaten every day, and I pretty much have had enough of it,” he told the friendly anti-Trump team of “Morning Joe,” in a recent interview reported by Raw Story. “There’s really only two ways to deal with a bully — turn them into your friend, [and] I don’t think that’s a possibility. Or let them know exactly what’s up, and you’re not going to take the bullying anymore. We can’t take the bullying anymore. It’s undermining the Fourth Estate. It’s undermining the First Amendment.”
Well, everybody’s entitled to their view — even journalists. But Karem’s is flat-out wrong.
Team Obama was a good example of “undermining the First Amendment,” “undermining the Fourth Estate.”
But Team Trump?
They’re only responding to attacks the media have slung first — and by definition, that’s not an attack. That’s a defense.
“What it speaks to is dissolving the independent media, and that’s what — it’s trying to co-opt the media, make us, if we don’t print what they want or broadcast what they like, we’re automatically fake media,” Karem complained, speaking of the treatment some in the press have received from the White House.
Well, short, simple and to the point, here’s a thought: If the label isn’t true, it wouldn’t stick.
What Karem’s really upset about is that Team Trump’s call-out of fake news is not only resonating with voters — it’s based on fact. Can you say CNN?
It’s time for Karem and for those in the media like Karem to put on the big boy pants and realize it’s not the job of the government to make journalists’ lives easier. It’s rather the job of journalists to watchdog for the people, and dig hard into the uncomfortable truths the government wants to conceal. And if that means being browbeat and bullied in the process, so be it. Suck it up, or find another job.
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