Media Buzz

Dahlia Lithwick: “In other words, if you work in media, you would be well within your rights to have had a tequila shot with your breakfast every day this week. It’s all just terribly sick and sad and the constant stream makes it hard not to be sick and sad all the time. We’ve long since stopped describing news consumption as drinking from a firehose. It went from firehose to tidal wave a year ago. Nevertheless, we’ve persisted.”

“Perhaps the most common refrain journalists hear from strangers is ‘I feel bad for you. I feel sad that following all this is your job.’ The truth of the matter is that there is not enough hazard pay in the world. It’s hard not to want to shut it all off and just hope that some combination of Michael Avenatti, Bob Mueller, and the 2018 elections might restore normalcy. Normalcy would be nice, because weeks and months of being the head/desk emoji is hazardous to one’s mental health. Our brains, messed up from all that banging, still know something is amiss. It feels like the only way to exert any control at all over the insanity would be the capacity to turn it off.”

“And, of course, turning it off is exactly what a president who wants to kill the news is hoping for.”

“Executives at Salem Media Group, a conservative media company that syndicates some of the country’s most recognized talk radio hosts and operates a batch of popular commentary websites, pressured some of their radio talent to cover Donald Trump more favorably during the 2016 presidential campaign,” emails obtained by CNN show.

Neil Cavuto slammed President Trump on Fox News for the president’s “pattern of false statements.”

Margaret Sullivan: “It never has been a particularly good idea for journalists to don their fanciest clothes and cozy up to the people they cover, alongside Hollywood celebrities who have ventured to wonky Washington to join the fun. But in the current era, it’s become close to suicidal for the press’s credibility.”

“Trust in the mainstream media is low, a new populism has caught fire all over the Western world, and President Trump constantly pounds the news media as a bunch of out-of-touch elites who don’t represent the interests of real Americans.”

“The annual dinner — or at least the optics of the dinner — seem to back him up.”

Nate Silver: “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is one seriously screwed-up ritual. Like, it’s literally like some weird shit you’d read about in an anthropology textbook.”

“Salem Media, owner of the influential conservative outlet RedState, froze the site on Friday and dismissed many of its writers… Multiple sources told CNNMoney that they believed conservative critics of President Trump were the writers targeted for removal.”

Said one: “They fired everybody who was insufficiently supportive of Trump.”

A new Quinnipiac poll finds a majority of Republicans — 51% — see the news media as the enemy of the people, compared with 37% of them who view the media as an important part of democracy.

By contrast, 91% of Democrats and 70% of independents see the media as an important part of democracy.