A reporter on Tuesday pushed back on deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ complaint that the federal government is held to a different standard than the news media.
During the daily White House briefing, Sanders cited the resignation of three reporters from CNN after the network retracted a story about Trump’s associate Anthony Scaramucci.
“If we make the slightest mistake, the slightest word is off, it is just an absolute tirade from a lot of people in this room, but news outlets get to go on day after day and cite unnamed sources, use stories without sources,” Sanders said. “You mentioned the Scaramucci story where they had to have reporters resign.”
“Come on,” Sentinel editor Brian Karem interrupted. “You’re inflaming everybody right here, right now with those words. This administration has done that as well.”
He said news consumers can choose to read different coverage if they disagree with one outlet’s approach.
“Any one of us is replaceable, and any one of us, if we don’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us,” Karem said. “You have been elected to serve for four years at least. There’s no option other than that. We’re here to ask you questions. You’re here to provide the answers and what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country, who look at it and say, see, once again, the President’s right and everybody else out here is fake media. And everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.”
“I just — I disagree completely, first of all,” Sanders replied. “I think if anything has been inflamed, it’s the dishonesty that often takes place by the news media and I think it is outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to his question.”
Finally someone calls them on their bullshit. She looks like she just swallowed a frog.
No euphemism. That was nauseating…
Did someone spike the press room water cooler with some Viagra?
She’s from Arkansas, what was your point?
We Arkansawyers didn’t get to vote on her birthplace…And I didn’t vote for her Daddy.
However, to the ‘frog’ point…there is a town called Toad Suck Ferry in Arkansas.
Daily press briefings have now become complicated. Each side calling each other fake news. Guarantee the public would agree the Trump Administration has mastered it daily without accountability. In fact outright lying would be a much better description.