THE POST (2017), the Press, and The Other Movie with Press-Freedom Issues

I'll start with, as we used to say, "Where I'm coming from."

• On at least two and possibly up to four or more occasions I've sworn "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," which for me starts with defense of the Bill of Rights. The people administering the oath weren't very serious about it, but I take my word seriously. 
• I'm a life-member of the ACLU and have depending upon the First Amendment to undergird (my) academic freedom. 
• Some of my best friends and students have been journalists and/or teachers of journalism, and I worked with reporters off and on between my first semester in high school and my retirement. 

So:
I haven't yet seen THE POST (nor seen it advertised as playing in my area), but I have seen The Other Movie with Press-Freedom Issues that's out there now: ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, on the kidnapping of John Paul Getty's grandson.

THE POST (2017) is something of a prequel to ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) and another celebration of the importance of journalism media for popular government ("of/by/and for the people") that was President Lincoln's ideal. ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD gives us glimpses of popular media in another sense, most strikingly as paparazzi, in their purest form in 1970s Italy.
And I — the guy in that opening 'graph — caught myself at points in ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD hoping that someone in those neat Italian sports cars, or a heavier vehicle, would run over a paparazzo or two.
I supported the ACLU when they defended the speech-rights of George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party to speak, and the rights of other neo-Nazis to parade through Skokie, Illinois — not far from where I grew up — in full regalia. And I declined to precipitate a riot when other neo-Nazis paraded in downtown Chicago near a very large, largely Jewish, teen dance at which I briefly spoke. For a Jew who's studied the Hitlerian Holocaust, these were much tougher calls than respecting the rights of paparazzi not to be run over.

But there's something about paparazzi and more important media in their "nightcrawler" mode when they are in the figurative and literal faces of people in pain. There's something about that kind of pornography of suffering that, clearly, really pisses me off.

Obviously, there are audiences for wall-to-wall disaster coverage and asking some Mr. Macduff what it felt like to learn his entire extended family had been massacred, and other wallowing in the pain of others that would get an upload thrown off a respectable S&M website for violating community standards of decency. Still: not every audience desire should be fulfilled, not even if there's enough money in that variety of prostitution to save one's media outlet as a viable business. 
So let us defend freedom of the press — but ask, quietly, for some internal pressures in the media from members of the media to keep themselves defensible.

Trump Ditches Media for a Bit: Good!

            Some of my best friends really are or have been journalists, or at least teachers of journalism, but here is one case in which I agree with Donald Trump against "the media."

            In a brief Associated Press article on 31 December 2016, Jill Colvin very elegantly told the world, Donald "Trump ditches media for golf game" in Jupiter, Florida. More specifically,  "President-elect Donald Trump has ditched his press pool once again — this time traveling to play golf at his club in Jupiter, Florida, without a pool of journalists on hand to ensure the public has knowledge of his whereabouts." Without straining AP objectivity too far, Ms. Clovin complains that "Trump, both as a candidate and during the transition, has often scoffed at tradition," specifically the tradition of an ever-present press pool, "allowing a group of reporters to follow him at all times, to ensure the public knows where he is. Not long after his election, Trump went out to dinner with his family in Manhattan without informing the pool of his whereabouts" and now — playing hooky to play golf!

            Clovin says, "The practice is meant to ensure that journalists are on hand to witness, on behalf of the public, the activities of the president or president-elect, rather than relying on secondhand accounts" and notes … generously? that "The White House also depends on having journalists nearby at all times to relay the president's first comments on breaking news." Repaying that generosity, "Trump aides appear to have made an effort in recent weeks to offer additional access, allowing reporters to camp out outside a doorway at Mar-a-Lago to document staff and Cabinet candidates' arrivals and departures and providing information about his meeting schedule."

            Uh, huh.

            Working backwards through the quotes:

                        * Camping out?! Are you people presidential paparazzi? Well, yes, with about as little self-respect, apparently as paparazzi.

                        * Getting the President's (or President-elect's) "first comments on breaking news": Gang, with any president, but especially with Donald Trump, the last thing that should go out to the world are comments on breaking news beyond a boilerplate notice, "We are following developments and will comment when we have more information." It may be cruel to note, but the 24/7 news cycle is your problem, and shouldn't be allowed to tempt officials and spokesfolk into making statements when they don't really know what's going on and prudence requires that they just shut the hell up until things settle down.

                        * I'm old enough to remember when stalking the president got started, and it may be that  "The practice is meant" in someone's theory "to ensure that journalists are on hand to witness, on behalf of the public, the activities of the president or president-elect, rather than relying on secondhand accounts" — but the specific occasions when the practice got started were the assassinations of the 1960s and the attempted assassinations later of Presidents Ford and Reagan.

            There's a morbid origin to constant coverage of the president, and as a continuing matter an assassination attempt is about the only thing that requires reporters right there reporting on what a president is doing in public. Where there's a pressing public right to know and media's obligation to report, we're talking policies decided on in private meetings and announced (if at all) in formal public addresses — not paparazzi stuff or shouted questions and over-the-shoulder answers.

            No. Guys and gals of the press corps: Go home or, and better, back to the office. News organizations: Enough already with the death-watch coverage of the president and other important people; put your money into bureaus — you can look the word up in histories of journalism — and into in-depth research of mostly public documents, with interviews with the aides and agency operatives of what has been insightfully called "the permanent government." That is, drop the celebrity-reporting already and do the sort of in-depth journalistic Scheisswerk that I. F. Stone and such were good at.

            Think about it. You guys and gals in the White House press corps look down your noses as the literal paparazzi and the "jock sniffers" who rush into locker rooms to get the very first post-game comments from players who really should be left alone to shower — and I'll bet show equal contempt for the on-air airheads who do celebrity interviews … right? Well, if you're camped out at goddamn Mar-a-Lago, you're no better.

            In this case, Trump is on the mark: he should ditch you and have dinner with his family or play a game of golf. He has a right to some privacy, and the public have a right to go a couple days without having to hear one word more about Donald J. Trump. Serious journalists should spend more time trying to get hold of Trump's financial data and the full-form prescription list from Dr. Feelgood, his hippy-dippy family physician, or spend more time on what the Congress might be up to and/or the bureaucrats who most directly affect people's lives.

            So Go Trump! / Lose the Press Corps! But not for too long. There's much to be said for your staying in the public eye, Mr. Trump, over-exposing yourself, and getting your enemies pool up to critical mass.