The recent White House decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the premises has produced the predictable mixture of outrage, legal analysis and hand-wringing. Our ‘Free Speech” president announced the ban on September 18, accusing the outlets of publishing what he called “FAKE NEWS.” By the following morning, reporters from all three organizations were being turned away and having their credentials disabled or confiscated.
But amid the noise, something unusual happened.
C-SPAN showed some backbone.
C-SPAN, which has spent decades playing the media version of Switzerland, issued a statement standing in solidarity with the news organizations that had been excluded. But perhaps even more revealing was the network's appeal for a rational resolution.
A rational resolution!
From a president whose response to unfavorable coverage now includes banning the journalists responsible for reporting it.
And therein lies the problem.
C-SPAN absolutely deserves credit for standing with its colleagues (see how it’s done, Lesley Stahl?) But by appealing for a rational resolution from a president who has repeatedly demonstrated he has no qualms eviscerating every conventional political norm, the network inadvertently illustrates just how clueless it — and much of the mainstream media — still seems to be about the moment we're living through.
Demolish entire sections of the White House?
We can fix this over coffee.
Threaten to raze a memorial to one of history's most cherished presidents if your name doesn't replace his?
Let's talk about it in group.
Ban major news organizations from accessing the People's House?
We respectfully implore you to reconsider.
If this were 1939 Germany, would C-SPAN be asking Hitler to “reconsider” his plans for a master race?
Maybe over a cup of tea, he'd change his mind?
With all the combined intelligence of C-Span executives and its legal team, they’ve apparently still not learned one of history’s greatest lessons: A civilized response to an uncivilized man will get you nowhere. More importantly, at what point does a civilized response to an uncivilized act stop being civility and start becoming complicity through naiveté?
As I wrote previously in my piece about Whoopi Goldberg asking for decorum during Ted Cruz's appearance on The View, the insistence on decorum above all else can become absurd when it is combined with a refusal to acknowledge just how far outside ordinary political norms the situation has moved.
Civility is useful.
Civility is admirable.
But civility is not a strategy for dealing with someone who has decided the rules don't apply to him. Especially if that person swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution.
The failure by a majority of the mainstream media to acknowledge how far from the norms we really are all but guarantees our current national (and global) nightmare will last much, much longer than it needs to. And that’s a tragedy.
To put it simply using a metaphor from the Spielberg classic Back to the Future, we all know what would’ve happened if George McFly — C-Span — tried to defend Lorraine — America — by politely asking Biff — Donald Trump — to reconsider sexually assaulting her. Biff would’ve become president. Get the picture, media?
Again, C-SPAN absolutely deserves credit for standing with its colleagues. But the second part of its response — asking a president with a documented record of conflict with the press to reconsider his latest self-imposed conflict — also demonstrates the larger problem.
The question isn't whether the media should be civil.
The question is what the media does when civility isn't working.
How should the media respond to a president who repeatedly tests the boundaries of established norms, legal precedent and institutional restraints?
One thing seems increasingly clear: pretending every confrontation has a rational, diplomatic solution isn't working.
A ban isn't just another disagreement.
A threat isn't just another headline.
An attack on a journalist isn't just another news cycle.
And when the response to each successive escalation is, “Perhaps we should all sit down and talk about this,” eventually the people doing the talking need to ask whether they're actually accomplishing anything (Chuck Schumer take note).
Be it ballrooms, reflecting pools, press bans or military action, there comes a point when the question is no longer whether the gloves should come off.
It's whether we've waited so long to take the situation seriously that we're no longer allowed into the ring.
And maybe that's the real lesson of C-SPAN's statement.
The network finally stepped into the fight.
Now it needs to realize that asking the bully nicely to stop isn't the same thing as stopping him.