The ‘Perverse Bargain’ Behind Trump’s Night Out with the Press

Why do corporate news outlets routinely cave in the face of dishonest and corrupt political leaders?

It’s a question heard more and more during Donald Trump’s second term as many in the media capitulate to his administration’s erratic and unconstitutional demands.

This cowardice was on full display during the recent White House Correspondents Dinner. The gala DC event — rescheduled after a gunman disrupted an earlier-planner dinner in April — quickly devolved into another opportunity for President Trump to lash out at his favorite target: a Free Press. 

And while he bombarded journalists in the room with crude insults, Trump also bombed as a comedian. He subjected the crowd to an hour of rambling, unfunny jokes told by a man whose sense of humor is largely limited to degrading comments about a person’s physical appearance and belittling those who are supposed to question his actions in office.

Going AWOL

I say “supposed to question” Trump because so many in the audience at the dinner have failed in that role, or gone AWOL — instead tossing softballs to a president who has much to answer for.

Leading journalists from outlets including CBS, CNN and NBC sat in punch-drunk silence as Trump spat insult after insult in their direction. 

Why partake in the ritualised self-humiliation that is a White House Correspondents Dinner in the Trump era?

Part of the reason, according to veteran media minder Margaret Sullivan, is that “their corporate bosses wanted them to [attend] for reasons having to do with profits and other commercial interests.”

The Daily Show’s John Stewart called this arrangement a “perverse bargain” and an “act of submission.” 

“Quite frankly, memorializing the collegial and cozy relationship between the press and those that they cover is at best a very bad look,” Stewart said. 

Lurking behind the embarrassment of the correspondents dinner is the ownership structures of many of the news outlets in attendance. 

These owners include a small cartel of billionaires like Jeff Bezos (who owns The Washington Post), the Ellisons (who own CBS) and the Murdochs (who own Fox). Their first priority isn’t upholding the First Amendment or defending the Fourth Estate. It’s expanding their wealth and empire. 

Capitulating for cash

Far too often the media properties owned by these billionaires tend to normalize even the most shocking political extremism. 

To do otherwise — to admit that this administration is not normal, or even poses an existential threat to democracy — would mean that they have to fundamentally change their approach to reporting about it. 

Newsroom owners would prefer to conduct business as usual with those in power, as doing so doesn’t undermine their deals and acquisitions.

This unhealthy compromise is one of the many reasons that Free Press is fighting to block the Ellisons’ $111 billion mega-merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers. 

It’s why we applaud ABC for finally standing up to Trump’s FCC, which has threatened to revoke many of its local broadcast licenses. 

And it’s why we are working to restore diversity standards at the many corporate outlets that have abandoned them since Trump took office.

Free Press rejects a media system dominated by an authoritarian leader and his capitulating billionaire cronies. 

We’re focused every day on making an independent, diverse and tough-questioning media more than a throwaway punchline by the least accountable and most corrupt president in U.S. history.