Over the last week, it was reported that President Donald Trump was finally under investigation for obstruction of justice of the original investigation on his campaign and White House aides. The main reasons for those investigations are over colluding with Russian officials which evolved from when it was learned that Russian officials gave orders to hack the Democratic National Committee. Now, it appears that the Trump administration is committing obstruction of the press by ordering off-camera briefings which according to the Hill, has the White House Press Corp Association fuming.
Jim Acosta accuses White House of 'stonewalling'
Their article titled: "White House reporters fume over off-camera briefings" said that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had an off-camera briefing with reporters on Monday as the press was told that they could not film or broadcast audio of their briefings. A reporter for CNN, Jim Acosta, said that the Press Secretary, "is just useless at this point" saying that. Acosta predicted that they might have gotten to the point where Spicer won't answer questions, go on camera or even have audio and then wondered why they were having them in the first place.
Make no mistake about what we are all witnessing. This is a WH that is stonewalling the news media. Hiding behind no camera/no audio gaggles
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017
State Dept. briefings first to get censored
After White House aides were unable to get the stories straight over the President firing FBI Director James Comey, he threatened to cancel all press briefings and start handing out statements every few weeks.
In fact, it was reported that the White House had already started doing this with the State Department as they've gone from airing daily press briefings to holding them sporadically, even shortening them. Many of those details were reported by the Washington Post in an article titled: "In first month of Trump presidency, State Department has been sidelined".
President Trump and his administration have made it no secret of their hatred for the press. White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has already referred to the media as "the opposition party" -- a person who has more to gain as the former CEO for Breitbart News. President Trump himself has called the media "the enemy of the American people" and over time has continuously added that the media was being "unfair" to him.
It's also been reported that some of President Trump's cabinet members have even "dumped" the press on more than one occasion.
Trumped-up trickle beat down of the press
As a candidate, Donald Trump had even encouraged his own supporters to attack members of the press at his rallies. His former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had apparently manhandled a female reporter in the primary during the early part of 2016. Much of this sentiment has already trickled down to Republican Trump surrogates who have also had reporters arrested for asking them questions and even attacked them just as Rep. Member-elect Greg Gianforte did to Ben Jacobs of the Guardian the eve of a special election for his state.
During the off-camera/audio "press briefing" last Monday, a reporter for Time Magazine, Zeke Miller asked Sean Spicer why their associates in radio and television couldn't use live feed. Spicer responded by saying that there are times when they will decide that it's the President who should speak for the administration. This shows an effort to centralize power for the White House where President Trump will be the only news feed for anyone to go by. That being the case, this means that not only will reporters not get access to Trump but that even if they did, there won't be a chance to ask him much less have him answer tough questions. Here is Acosta speaking to CNN about the stonewalling.
