Politico
By Jack Shafer
August 26, 2015
Donald
Trump, a politician, and Jorge Ramos, a journalist, butted heads
Tuesday night at a news conference in Iowa. Although politicians and
journalists clash every day—exchanging
insults and trading slights—this tussle has spilled into the
quick-moving media stream because neither Trump nor Ramos is a normcore
performer. Trump loves playing the cantankerous truth-teller, and
Univision anchor Ramos subscribes to the provocateur school
of journalism. See this piece from 2010, when President Barack Obama
was the target of his pro-immigration scorn. As the Washington Post’s
Michael E. Miller noted in quick turnaround, both are conflict junkies.
The question wasn’t whether Trump and Ramos would
collide but when.
Conservatives
such as Charles C.W. Cooke and Allahpundit, who don’t necessarily
admire Trump, rose to praise Ramos’ ejection. “Having a press credential
in your pocket
does not entitle you to behave like Code Pink,” wrote Cooke, while
Allahpundit accused Ramos of “grandstanding” and “heckling.” Cooke and
Allahpundit are right, of course, but a political news conference is not
a memorial service at which all in attendance
must keep their heads bowed. Nor is it a dinner party, necessitating
the observance of high manners. A news conference is a news event at
which the interviewers attempt to get the interviewee to say something
he wished he hadn’t said, and on that score Ramos
succeeded by breaking decorum and getting Trump to lash out, “Go back
to Univision!”
Maybe
it’s not the worst thing in the world, though, for the news conference
template—perhaps the most wearisome news-collection form—to get a
serious rejiggering. The
high solemnity of political news conferences confers upon a politician
priestlike or kinglike status: He stands a foot or two higher than the
mortals questioning him, looking down. He makes them wait for their turn
to be called on. He begins and ends the questioning
by decree. Far from opposing these imperious ways, many reporters,
especially those who consider themselves members of the journalistic
guild, applaud the arrangement. Not to get all Chomskian on you, but by
virtue of their obedience, the guildsmen can count
on the king’s attention and convert that attention into bylines.
As
a work of culture-jamming, Ramos-style interruption works best when
used frugally. It’s just too easy for the organizers of news conferences
to ban a known agitator
from the premises, and nobody wants to view (or participate) in a news
conference that’s turned into a mosh pit. At the beginning of his
presidency, Ronald Reagan pacified the howlers in attendance at news
conferences. No more jumping up and down and shouting,
“Mr. President! Mr. President!”
Reagan’s
people decreed. By 1987, Reagan had gone too far in controlling the
news, holding only two news conferences in the first 10 months of the
year. Journalists like
Sam Donaldson of ABC News and Chris Wallace of NBC News were right to
start screaming their questions any time he appeared in public. The
“competition” between Donaldson and Wallace grew so heated, the New York
Times reported, that the two “engaged in a shoving
match over positions in the briefing room to broadcast their reports.”
At least Ramos didn’t push anybody.
A
modern article of journalistic faith holds that journalists should
never become the story, and by putting himself out there to unsettle the
Trump show, Ramos did just
that. Again, not every news conference can be improved by a reporter’s
showboating. But in the asymmetrical dynamic of a news conference, in
which the interviewee holds all the power, an occasional breach of
etiquette such as the one Ramos engaged in does
not spell the end of civil culture. Ramos didn’t splash Trump with
pig’s blood or anything, he merely violated convention in an attempt to
break news on his own terms by speaking out of turn.
One
strike against Ramos, offered by the journalistic orthodoxy, is that
he’s not an “objective” journalist but an advocacy journalist, therefore
he and his work can’t
be trusted. Yet advocacy journalism has enjoyed a rich and glowing
history in the United States: Such partisans as Tom Paine, William Lloyd
Garrison, Elijah Lovejoy, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, John
Swinton and Jacob Riis broke vital news in decades
past. Then came the muckrakers and their contemporary
inheritors—Jessica Mitford, Michael Harrington, Ralph Nader, Jack
Anderson, the gangs at Ramparts and Mother Jones magazines, and such
current partisans as Glenn Greenwald, David Corn and others who have
made important news without sacrificing their personal views.
By
virtue of Trump’s immigration views and the coarse way he expresses
them, his collision with Spanish-language media was inevitable. Add to
that the fact that Trump
has already filed suit against Univision for dropping his Miss Universe
pageant, and his tirade against the network’s most high-profile
journalist was doubly inevitable. Disrespected by Ramos, the
always-ready-to-insult mogul did what he always does when he
feels abused—he took out the verbal strap and started whipping. But
it’s all for show—on both sides. The Trump-Ramos incident will likely
redound to the mutual benefit of both. Trump wisely allowed Ramos back
in the room and took his questions, positioning
himself as the disciplinarian who can humanize himself when necessary
by adding a sprinkle of mensch, as they volleyed back and forth. Ramos
comes out of the rumble similarly fortified. He went after the king, he
was banished by the king, he returned to the
king’s court to battle the king once again.
In
the name of news, this calls for a repeat match. I can’t wait for
Ramos’ extended interview with Trump on Univision. May the best partisan
win!
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