The media has been in crisis mode since learning that a Republican was elected president. After eight years of too-cozy relations with the White House under President Obama, journalists have found a “renewed sense of mission,” according to the New York Times.
“Journalists, Battered and Groggy, Find a Renewed Sense of Mission,” read the Times headline for a lengthy article published February 15. The piece examines how members of the media have come to realize that investigating the White House, and having an adversarial relationship with the White House, is part of their job.
In the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency, members of the media have already compared Trump’s election to Pearl Harbor and September 11th. Each new scandal is “worse than Watergate,” and the barrage of newsmaking revelations is taking its toll on reporters.
“There is this sense of urgency and energy that I feel now that reminds me of being 29 and in a very different situation: in the middle of a revolutionary situation in Russia,” said New Yorker editor David Remnick, who covered the collapse of the Soviet Union as a reporter for the Washington Post. “I’m not saying it’s a revolution now. But there is this uncertainty about what is happening minute to minute, day to day.”
It’s fair to say that this “urgency and energy” was utterly absent during the eight years President Obama was in office. All too often, journalists given the opportunity to interview the president used the occasion to ask if Obama thought his critics were being fair, if he was being given enough credit for his success, and other softballs.
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