One of the best lines I read during the presidential campaign was Charles Krauthammer’s that we’d entered an alternate universe where “facts don’t matter, history and logic have disappeared.”
The observation is worth considering as we watch whether President-elect Donald Trump, who so far has flouted many traditions regarding media access, will end the longstanding tradition of the White House press pool.
After all, Trump’s surreal victory depended somewhat on criticism of Hillary Clinton’s arrogant decision to set up a private e-mail server to avoid public scrutiny.
No, to go to dinner at the “21” Club, as Trump and his entourage did last week, might not sound like much to get upset about. Granted.
But Trump’s demonization and treatment of the press does concern. And it should be a concern even for those who share the president-electap criticism of the fourth estate.
Here are two reasons why.
The decades-long tradition of the White House press pool works by allowing reporters from a range of news organizations to cycle in and out of the daily coverage of the president. Reporters and photographers are given special access in exchange for filing reports that any other outlet can use.
The pool also includes reporters from newsrooms far outside the swamp Trump promises to drain.
When I was The Denver Postap politics editor, I benefited from giving up our Washington correspondent for a day once every several weeks to White House pool coverage. When the president came to Colorado, Post journalists and reporters and photographers from other state newsrooms joined the local presidential pool.
While often presidential press pool duty is a grind — who in their right mind really wants to sit outside the “21” Club? — there are also times, like the presidential visit to Aurora following the theater shooting that left a dozen murdered and so many others wounded, that pool duty serves a vital role.
State readers benefit when a local reporter gets to work alongside White House staff. The contacts and the access allows for hard-hitting stories about other subjects of concern to our state and region. The arrangement understands from the outset that there is no quid-pro-quo.
The second reason we should all hope that a President Trump matures and sees the danger of his zeal for silencing his critics has to do with exactly the kind of thing Clinton was doing by setting up her private e-mail system while secretary of state.
Open records and open meetings laws are among the greatest of the many checks and balances built into our democratic system. Clinton wanted to control access to those communications that would be granted by such laws.
Open records laws (the Freedom of Information Act at the federal level and Colorado Open Records Act here at home) aren’t just a nifty perk for inky wretches at mainstream outlets. They are available to anyone.
The laws allow members of the public concerned about their school board, their city council, their state government and so on, all the way up to the White House, to gain access to all kinds of records that help keep power in check.
Because the laws are such a democratic tool, they also can be used to make sure the fourth estate isn’t missing important stories. I know this — and the memories arrive with something like PTSD — because it happened too often for my tastes that grassroots bloggers broke big stories my reporters should have broken.
That kind of competition is beneficial in a one-newspaper town.
So if draining the swamp is really what Trump wants to do, he should embrace the laws and traditions that allow for transparency. He has, in fact, a perfect opportunity to embarrass Barack Obama on this front. Itap no secret that the press routinely called Obama’s the most closed administration they’ve covered in their lifetimes.
As in business, the example the boss sets has a cascading influence. If Americans still value transparency, and don’t wish for the incoherence of the past election to become the new normal, they should hope that Trump embraces the press pool, toughens open records laws and demands that bureaucrats from town councils to his own office show the public their work.
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