Salon - The daily White House press briefing has become, in 2017, a unique charade that typically has little to offer beyond baffling soundbites. This vapid, shallow parade is, unfortunately, perfect for cable news in 2017 — and all the more reason to move it off the airwaves.
"I see a lot of bright, talented well-sourced people in that room absolutely wasting their time. They should be putting their talents to use in better ways," Chris Daly, a journalism professor at Boston University, told Salon. "I think they've taken an institution of marginal value, and made it truly worthless."
In its current-day form, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders — who followed Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci — jousts with reporters to see who wins the day's messaging battle.
"I think it is a bankrupt, empty exercise at this point. Sanders does not make news, she does not even announce news, Daly explained. "She's just there to bat away questions and it's just a ridiculous waste of time" that is, in turn, "degrading" to the press corps.
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1 comment:
Recalling JFK's press conferences, how you conduct a democracy is by periodically answering the questions the nation wants answers to. Without ducking hard questions. From the fireside chat tradition from the bully pulpit. Although public opinion has been found to have no statistical impact today it would be possible for a president to bring about such a democratic revolution by winning over the press to popular programs. Or altering the environment for controversial but popular programs such as detente with Russia in JFK's case.
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