A Broken Press Gathers This Weekend To Normalize Fascism Over Cocktails

This weekend is the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner. Historically, it's when the ivy league trust fund journalism in-group meets in DC to rub elbows and share cocktails with powerful people, while a b or c-tier comedian tells sometimes-funny jokes about the President.

The annual dinner is supposed to be an event that raises money for scholarships, honors journalists with awards, and celebrates the First Amendment.

But it's steadily become a "see and be seen" affair where a cadre of affluent corporate media insiders (the ones that haven't been fired yet by our fascism-coddling oligarchs) share gossip and bask in self-importance at the fact they were invited to hobnob with an extraction class they're supposed to hold accountable.

Many thought this sort of lazy fraternization was ill-advised before the country fell into idiot totalitarianism. Back then it was just tacky and arguably unethical. Now, with President Trump attending the dinner for the first time ever (he skipped it entirely during his first term) it's far more akin to complicity.

The concern, and I believe it's the correct one, is that yukking it up with fascists over dill salmon crepes normalizes an administration whose masked gestapo murdered Americans in the street just a few months ago.

This year's event probably wouldn't be quite this contentious if our establishment press hadn't proven itself (with scattered exception) to be a catastrophic failure at nearly every turn during America's deadly descent into fascist kakistocracy.

During Trump 2.0, major media outlets have thrown their journalists under the bus for all manner of inanities, bribed the President to gain merger approvals, censored stories critical of administration horrors, abandoned race and gender equity on demand, and generally been a soggy, feckless mess.

Even the coverage of the dinner demonstrates an innate desire by the brunchlord class to normalize and coddle a shitty, virulently-racist President. New York Times columnist Michael Grynbaum, for example, actually put these words down in print:

"Mr. Trump, whose instinct for crowd work and note-perfect timing have drawn comparisons to the insult comic Don Rickles, will almost certainly take a few potshots. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on social media that the evening “will be fun!”

Yeah a real fucking hoot.

We can share a few good giggles over the administration's deadly and racist concentration camps. Perhaps a guffaw or two over the complete devastation of the social safety net and foundational civil rights. Mayhap a chortle over the 100+ dead schoolchildren killed in yet another pointless war.

If you want a real sense of the tone-deafness among the DC brunchlord set, check out this piece this morning from Politico Playbook (a DC politics "news" organization) about the WHCA dinner weekend party scene:

Gross.

Generally the WHCA dinner is hosted by a comedian that engages in a family-friendly roast of the President. Worried that any respectable comedian might wander too close to the truth, this year the WHCA has instead hired a "mentalist" (?) who I assume will make some light jokes about DC traffic in between card tricks.

Even the journalistic complaints about the dinner advertise a lack of any serious constitution. Some 250 journalists wrote an open letter to the WHCA, urging the organization to demonstrate courage. Their solution? A "standing toast" to the First Amendment in the middle of this Saturday's proceeding:

"We understand that some journalists plan to wear pocket handkerchiefs or lapel pins with the words of the First Amendment. And continuing in that spirit, we believe the White House Correspondents Association should take stronger action by issuing — from the podium — a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy.”

Surely that will fix it.

There's no doubt that somebody will say something in activist service to the public interest at some point during the several hour affair. But it's a little late for jokes, toasts, and First Amendment lapel pins. We're past performance. America's in the grip of the most corrupt kakistocracy it's ever seen (and that's saying something).

Barring some last-minute wildly uncharacteristic discovery of radical and creative activism, there's very little dinner attendees could do or say at this point that can make up for the broader industry’s abject failure to meet the current moment. The cost has simply been too high and the failure too great.

As such the best approach, for anybody with integrity, would be to not participate in the charade.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Most higher-paid corporate access journalists are broadly incentivized to remain obtuse to the ethical problems as a condition of their continued access and employment. Often they'll admit that the "optics" aren't great, but insist the dinner is useful for "source-building, vetting of coverage ideas and networking."

Over at Bluesky, former CNN media reporter Brian Stelter had one such response when criticized for his attendance by Dan Froomkin (whose Heads Up News media criticism newsletter is a good read):

The argument that cozying up to power and other access journalists makes for better journalism would make more sense if we hadn't all spent the last decade watching what's left of the U.S. press endlessly downplay corruption, mythologize assholes, undermine progressive reform, normalize fascist zealotry, and engage in base stenography of every insane thing that comes out of the mouths of our creepiest, fascism-enabling oligarchs.

If cocktails with the extraction class is helping you do better work, it sure as shit isn't outwardly apparent to anyone with taste and common sense.

This is, in case we've forgotten, an administration that just killed what's left of U.S. public media, has flung countless lawsuits and threats against media companies for doing even basic journalism, routinely gets journalists fired, and not long ago censored a comedian for the crime of making jokes about the President.

This goes well beyond an assault on the First Amendment. It's best viewed as part of a 50+ year battle being waged by the right wing extraction class against informed consensus, education, and U.S. journalism. It's been decidedly unsubtle, and by and large the fourth estate's response has been the tactical equivalent of a wet farting sound.

Sharing carbonara deviled eggs with fascists is just the pinnacle of garbage mountain.

A broad corporatist, authoritarian coalition has spent decades pushing effective propaganda that insists that any scientific, educational, or journalistic criticism of unpopular right wing policy suffers from irredeemable "liberal bias," and should be inherently discarded as unreliable (here they are doing it back in 1972).

The ad-based corporate press has repeatedly responded by obediently shifting its editorial overton window further to the right and being endlessly more accommodating to right wing voices, despite the endless (and baseless) claims Conservative ideology is somehow being "unfairly censored."

The response to this attack shouldn't be giggles, cocktails, and hors d'oeuvres. If you care about functional journalism and the truth, the response should be active, outward revulsion and hostility. This isn't a disagreement over established partisan tropes, it's corrupt fascism. You don't chat it up, you destroy it.

If you don't, there's no journalism. There's no democracy. There's just violent autocracy and the mass media propaganda used to lie about it.

This corporatist, authoritarian alliance has been buying up new and old media giants in a bid to create not just a massive right wing propaganda bullhorn, but a simulacrum of real journalism. A system that has the outward trappings of real journalism, but is generally toothless and polite to those in power.

It's a pseudo-journalistic system built to be decorative, not load bearing. As such it's not surprising that the kind of folks cultivated to participate in the artifice aren't particularly well attuned to the dangers of their ongoing compliance.

Corporate power isn't compatible with meaningful journalism, because oligarchal ownership motivations rarely align with the public interest. If a journalist consistently finds themselves on overly-friendly terms with mad oligarchal autocrats and CEOs, it's time for deep introspection, not dinnertime quips.

Meanwhile, the best thing you can do is stop giving your money to folks engaged in a pantomime of truth-to-power journalism. Give your time, attention, and money instead to worker-owned, independent, credible media outlets with something vaguely resembling ethics and an operational backbone.