The president of the White House Correspondents’ Association criticizes CNN’s Jim Acosta in a new book, writing that the combative reporter’s “soapbox” approach to journalism has bolstered President Donald Trump.
Acosta has at times acted like an “opinion journalist” who has played “right into the explicit Trump strategy of portraying the press as the opposition party,” ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl writes in Front Row at the Trump Show, his account of reporting on the president since the early 1990s. Karl told the Washington Free Beacon that many media figures have mistaken editorializing for journalism since Trump took office.
“A sub-sub theme [of the book] is those of us reporters make a mistake if they appear to be too much like an opposition to the president or the resistance,” Karl, who is also president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, told the Free Beacon. “That’s not our job. We’re not the opposition party. We’re supposed to report and report aggressively on the president, on any president, but not to go over the top.”
Karl singles out Acosta for his dramatic sparring match with then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2018. The CNN correspondent insisted Sanders tell the assembled press they weren’t the “enemy of the people.” Acosta took to the airwaves to propose reporters should make bumper stickers or gather outside the White House and chant, “We are not the enemy of the people.”
Karl said it was a moment that could have been scripted by Trump, adding he’s also been tempted to “get on my soapbox” like Acosta did.
“The surest way to undermine the credibility of the White House press corps is to behave like the political opposition,” Karl writes. “Don’t give speeches from the White House briefing room…. Don’t talk about holding protests against the president in Lafayette Square.” – READ MORE
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