By Matt Rooney
The media establishment is suddenly very concerned about press freedom.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued the Trump Administration on Monday after President Donald Trump barred their reporters from the White House grounds, explicitly citing what he calls their persistent “fake news” coverage.
Predictably, the outrage machine kicked into overdrive.
Michael McGuire, the Republican nominee in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, joined the criticism.
“Banning members of the press is wrong—period,” McGuire said. “Freedom of the press and public accountability are not partisan principles. They are essential to our democracy.”
But here’s the problem with declaring something a universal principle: you actually need to apply it universally.
Rules that are vigorously defended when one ideological camp is affected — and ignored when the other camp gets hammered — aren’t really rules.
That’s tribalism.
I know something about it.
My SaveJersey.com Facebook account was frozen for weeks because I posted a Hunter Biden meme. Our reach was subsequently throttled for months.
Where were the defenders of press freedom then?
Not a single prominent New Jersey Democrat that I can remember rode to Save Jersey’s defense. Neither, for that matter, did New Jersey Republicans make our treatment a cause célèbre.
And this wasn’t happening in a vacuum. We subsequently learned much more about the Biden Administration’s efforts to influence social-media companies’ content-moderation decisions. The Supreme Court’s Murthy v. Missouri decision ultimately turned on standing and therefore did not decide the underlying First Amendment question.
Nor did hostility toward disfavored media begin with Donald Trump.
In 2009, the Obama Treasury Department tried to exclude Fox News from a round of interviews with “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg. The other television networks refused to participate unless Fox was included, forcing the administration to relent.
Four years later, dozens of major news organizations formally protested the Obama White House’s restrictions on photographers covering presidential events, accusing the administration of denying independent journalists access while distributing its own official imagery.
The Biden White House played the access game, too. In 2023, it instituted new requirements for permanent White House credentials. The number of hard-pass holders reportedly fell from 1,417 to 975 after the old passes expired, although reporters without hard passes remained eligible to request day passes.
Biden also developed a reputation for tightly managed press interactions. The Washington Post reported instances in which he called on a limited list of preselected reporters, while his overall interview schedule was considerably more restricted than those of his recent predecessors.
None of this automatically settles the constitutional questions raised by Trump’s latest move. CNN, MS NOW and Politico are entitled to make their arguments in court, and the courts can determine whether the White House crossed a legal line.
But I’m not required to pretend that the political and media establishment has consistently applied the principle it suddenly insists is sacrosanct.
McGuire says politicians “should not be allowed to control the conversation by shutting out questions they do not want to answer,” pointing to Rep. Herb Conaway’s refusal to debate him.
He adds: “Public officials work for the people. We must face the press, answer tough questions, defend our records, and debate our opponents.”
Great.
Apply that standard everywhere.
Apply it when the target is Politico.
Apply it when the target is Fox News.
Apply it when the target is the New York Post.
And apply it when the target is a conservative New Jersey website posting a meme that powerful people would rather you didn’t see.
A principle that only becomes sacred when your tribe is inconvenienced isn’t a principle. It’s a weapon.
