Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

The exercise had established that the White House press pool consisted primarily of straight, pious white men. The press secretary had enlisted the reporters’ help in mocking the purpose of the briefing; no information was conveyed from the White House to the public. She had shown who was boss: she could hold journalists to an arbitrary rule by making them offer thanks before asking a question, which diminished the journalists’ ability to hold her to the task of answering their questions. She reaffirmed that both the president and she herself lied easily and blatantly—as he did when he issued a “rhetorical response” on the UCLA students, and as she did at the beginning of the briefing, when she claimed to be thankful for the reporters in the room. By making them laugh when she said that, and when she mocked April Ryan, and when she called the forced ritual a “fun exercise,” she gave them a role in debasing the job of reporting on the White House and their profession as a whole. Few media outlets reported on this small episode in the diminishment of journalism. It was just one of many minor steps in the rapid deterioration of the media’s ability to hold American power to account, but a striking example of the ways in which old assumptions no longer obtained. The journalists in the room had conflicting motivations: they were there to act as representatives of the public, but they also wanted to get to ask a question, get their question answered, avoid burning bridges so they...