If Donald Trump can sit down with Mitt Romney, who called him a con
man and failed businessman, it’s hardly shocking that he would invite a
bunch of network executives and anchors to Trump Tower.
Even if he spent much of the campaign calling their organizations dishonest and corrupt.
I’m told it was a relatively pleasant session at
which the president-elect made clear his unhappiness with certain
negative aspects of the coverage. He reminded his guests that they
misjudged the election and never believed, for instance, that he could
win Michigan, where he campaigned in the final days.
Variety describes it as a "tough" sitdown, with Trump "reserving particularly harsh words for CNN and NBC News."
The New York Post has a more dramatic version, saying
that Trump told CNN President Jeff Zucker--who worked with him at NBC
during "The Apprentice"--“I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar
and you should be ashamed."
“There was no need to mend fences,” Kellyanne Conway
told reporters. “It was off-the-record meeting. It was very cordial,
very productive, very congenial. It was also very candid and very
honest. From my own perspective, it's great to hit the reset button.”
And if the network folks had a chance to express
their concerns about media access, news conferences and press pools, all
the better.
Trump will meet today with executives from what he calls the “failing” New York Times and other outlets.
Trump is going to be the 45th president, and the
mainstream media aren’t going away. It would be good if they could find a
way to work together, despite what is always an adversarial
relationship.
After all, Trump was a gold mine for the cable
networks during the primaries. He was the most accessible candidate in
modern history when it came to granting interviews. The reality-show
veteran understands what makes good television. There are opportunities
here for both sides.
It’s not like other presidents-elect haven’t reached
out to the press with informal dinners and schmooze sessions. It’s just
that we’ve never been through a campaign where there was so much
hostility between candidate and press corps.
Four years of outright hostility wouldn’t be good for him, for us, or the country.
Meanwhile, there seems to be a culture war brewing against Donald Trump as well.
Less than two weeks after his election, his vice
president gets a stern lecture from the cast of “Hamilton.” At the
American Music Awards, Model Gigi Habib mocks Melania Trump’s accent and
demeanor.
These are entertainers and cultural figures who are
offended that their preferred candidate lost the presidency, and they
are refusing to “normalize” the 45th president, as I noted yesterday
about many in the mainstream media.
To me this is a finger in the eye of the 60 million
Americans who voted for Trump, at least in part because they didn’t like
the way the elites—political, media and cultural—look down on them.
I have no problem with a president being comedically skewered. Alec
Baldwin and “SNL,” have at it (with Kate McKinnon having to switch from
the old-news Hillary to the rising star Kellyanne Conway).
I have no problem with critics opposing Trump’s
policies or his appointments. That’s how democracy works. New presidents
used to get a bit of a honeymoon—that’s now a thing of the past—but at a
minimum a level of acceptance, even after a bitter campaign.
That’s not happening now.
Those of you who can’t stand Trump respond by telling
me all the terrible things about him. But how would you feel if Hillary
Clinton had won the election and Trump diehards remained hostile,
Broadway actors lectured Tim Kaine and crowds chanted “not my
president”?
In the political arena, one of the diehards is former
attorney general Eric Holder, who was far more liberal than part of the
country. At a funeral for PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, Holder asked media
people paying their respects, “Will you cower? Will you normalize that
which is anything but?”
At a funeral! Unlike Barack Obama, his former boss, Holder isn’t wishing the new president well.
And then Howard Dean called incoming White House
senior strategist Steve Bannon a “Nazi.” I know Dean is running for DNC
chair, but whatever the inflammatory nature of Bannon’s record—he
insists he’s a nationalist, not a white nationalist—that kind of
language is awful.
Here’s a hopeful sign. The new ombudsman at the New York Times, Liz Spayd, writes
that “from my conversations with readers, and from the emails that have
come into my office, I can tell you there is a searing level of
dissatisfaction out there with many aspects of the coverage.
“Readers complain heatedly and repeatedly about the
forecasting odometer from The Upshot that was anchored on the home page
and predicted that Hillary Clinton had an 80 percent chance or better of
winning. They complain that The Times’s attempt to tap the sentiments
of Trump supporters was lacking. And they complain about the liberal
tint The Times applies to its coverage, without awareness that it does.”
While partly faulting the candidates, Spayd says “the
media is at fault too, for turning his remarks into a grim caricature
that it applied to those who backed him. What struck me is how many
liberal voters I spoke with felt so, too. They were Clinton backers,
but, they want a news source that fairly covers people across the
spectrum.”
Perhaps it’s time to move beyond the “grim caricature.”
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.
