Trump on The Wire
Why Trump should back off The Associated Press. What to expect from my former newsroom.
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It threatens the First Amendment. It’s petty. It’s vindictive. Denying access to The Associated Press is all that and, for President Trump, it’s damn short-sighted. Owned by every media outlet its serves, including MAGA-friendly newsrooms, AP arguably is the only modern media organization with a business model that demands fairness.
Disclosure: I’m radically biased, having joined The AP in Little Rock, Ark., in 1989 and then transferring to the Washington bureau in 1993 to cover Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama before running the DC bureau for two years. There’s a part of me that will always belong to “The Wire.”
That experience gives me insight into what motivates one of the world’s largest and oldest news organizations, founded in 1846 as a cooperative of local newspapers needing an efficient way to gather and distribute news from around the globe.
I can tell you why Trump is acting against his best interests. I can predict how my former colleagues will react.
But first some background
As reported by AP’s Dave Bauder, a straight-shooting media writer based in New York, “the White House blocked an Associated Press reporter from an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday after demanding the news agency alter its style on the Gulf of Mexico, which President Donald Trump has ordered renamed the Gulf of America.”
AP’s senior vice president and executive editor, Julie Pace, a former White House correspondent, called the action unacceptable.
It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.
At issue is the AP style guide, used by a vast majority of newsrooms to determine how to contextualize content. It does not bow to a president’s pen.
“Trump’s order only carries authority within the United States,” the style guide reads. “Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change.”
The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.
The AP regularly reviews its style guidance regarding name changes, in part to ensure its guidance reflects common usage. We’ll continue to apply that approach to this guidance and make updates as needed.
Please read the entire guideline here — and judge for yourself its thoughtfulness and fairness.
AP’s unique business model
While 19th and 20th century news organizations relied on advertising to produce revenue, AP thrived on subscriptions from its member newspapers — later radio, TV and digital outlets. For decades before the internet, the AP was an intranet of sorts, producing news and helping its members share news across its transmission wires.
The internet broke the business model for newspapers and broadcast outlets, forcing media executives to chase eyeballs online, where advertising is cheap and newsrooms scramble to monetize their audiences.
The incentives shifted. Buoyed by huge profits, news leaders in the 20th century could print and broadcast the news they felt was most important, relatively immune from the opinions of their readers. Sucked into a death spiral, 21st century news leaders must cater to their audiences, predominately people who want their biases confirmed.
The resulted is atomized, biased news coverage. Liberal outlets for liberal audiences. MAGA outlets for MAGA audiences. And a giant shrinking middle, where objective journalism staggers into the century’s second quarter.
AP is an outlier. Still a news cooperative with subscribers across the spectrum of platforms and ideologies, its reporters and editors are trained to be as objective as humanly possible.
I can remember addressing the AP Board of Director in the late 1990s and early aughts about the political landscape, and looking around the room to see leaders of conservative and liberal media conglomerates. They didn’t want or need my opinion on the news; they came to the boardroom with their own viewpoints. They wanted stories told fast and fairly from a news organization they all owned.
That is how AP still rolls. The Wire is truly — to borrow a phrase — fair and balanced.
If he thought about this rationally, Trump would embrace, not ban, the AP way.
Free speech
For a movement that considers itself a guardian of the First Amendment, MAGA is quick to cancel the efforts of independent media.
Punishing journalists for not accepted state-mandated language is Orwellian, a Soviet-style tactic to convert independent journalism to propaganda.
Please don’t give me examples of Democrats curbing speech. Unless your parents taught you that two wrongs make a right, let’s dispatch with whataboutism. Trump is setting a precedent that liberal White Houses will almost certainly follow, and that’s not good for any of us.
AP’s reaction
Julie Pace trains her reporters to be unbiased and objective — to speak truth to power and hold leaders accountable. Because that’s how she was taught by her bosses and that’s been the AP way for almost 200 years.
I would expect the AP staff at the White House to continue treating Trump fairly — to speak truth when he does not, and to hold him accountable. They might be forced to do it from outside the Oval Office or somewhere other than the West Wing. But that won’t stop them.
They’ll double down, work harder, and find a way around whatever roadblocks are put between themselves and their stories.
“There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe,” said 19th century American author Mark Twain, “the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.”
Don’t forget it, Mr. President.
Thank you AP.
Very comforting to know so many are on the side of truth, and work extra hard to deliver on it