Ari Fleischer was my press secretary during 2001 and 2002 when I was in the White House Press Corps. He was unflappable and mild-mannered for President George W. Bush. He would also tell you that the reporters back then were less confrontational.
Their aggression has grown so dramatically that Fleischer wrote a new book titled “Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong—And Just Doesn’t Care.” That sounds harsh, but if they cared, wouldn’t they try to fix their fact-mangling tilt? They have not shown any interest in it.
My favorite chapter is about CNN. Fleischer notes he was a contributor there from 2011 to 2013, when it seemed a little more like “straight” news—at least compared with its incessant attacks on everything relating to Donald Trump.
Even personnel decisions demonstrated how deeply CNN loathed Trump. In 2019, when they announced the hiring of Sarah Isgur, who had served in Trump’s Justice Department, as a political editor, there was a nasty internal freakout. She had no journalism experience. The Daily Beast reported CNN employees were “upset and confused” that CNN would hire a “partisan political operative.” Brian Stelter reported employees questioned it as an “ethical breach.” CNN backed down and named Isgur a CNN analyst, not a political editor.
Fleischer points out there was no such freakout when CNN announced on Jan. 19, 2017, that top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett’s daughter Laura joined CNN as a Justice Department reporter—with no journalism experience. She’s now a morning anchor.
Another example is James Gagliano, a former FBI agent who was hired in 2017 as a CNN analyst after appearing on CNN to criticize the firing of FBI Director James Comey. He stated that he was initially very critical of Trump, but that his opinion changed after new details emerged about the partisanship of FBI employees Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and Andrew McCabe. After the Justice Department’s inspector general called out this behavior, Gagliano thought, “I’ve got to take a position and criticize the FBI here. This is the truth. Once I started doing that, I got moved off those issues.”
Suddenly, Gagliano was mostly analyzing crime stories on CNN’s Headline News channel. He was replaced by Josh Campbell, who was recruited straight from CNN’s public relations office. Campbell continued to sound like a Comey PR agent. CNN promoted Campbell to be a reporter, and not just an analyst. McCabe joined CNN as a contributor, even though he was caught lying to investigators regarding his press leaks.
Gagliano was spending time on the CNN benches and made his opinions on Twitter. He praised Drew Brees, the NFL quarterback, for standing for the national song. He said CNN executive Rebecca Kutler called to tell him to knock it off: “Your job at CNN is to be a law enforcement analyst.” He said he replied, “But you don’t use me” and pointed out the opinionated anti-Trump tweets from other CNN personalities. Kutler shot back, “You need to watch your social media.”
Gagliano was grateful for his CNN tenure but concluded the lesson was, “If you bash Trump, you can be political… If you dare push back the other way, you’re just not going to get airtime.”
Fleischer insists the American people deserve a media that won’t engage in suppression of news it hates and deception in overselling stories it loves. The people who aren’t as liberal as the press deserve respect, not snobbery. They deserve it, but it’s unlikely they’ll get it.
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