By Phil Riske | Senior Reporter/Writer
Some news for those residing in lead mines: the Trump Administration is at war with the news media.
Most recently, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday demanded April Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, stop shaking her head as he continued to deny any connections between Trump’s campaign staff and Russian officials.
“Sean is . . . trying to make this Administration look better than what it does right now, and unfortunately I was road kill today,” Ryan said.
For those of you old enough to remember, the late Jack Anderson “was a flamboyant bridge between the muckrakers of the early decades of the 20th century and the battalions of investigative reporters unleashed by news organizations after Watergate, as described by The New York Times.
The connection
In 1973, I had the fortune (some days the misfortune, but that’s a story for another day about working in Washington, D.C.) of being hired as the press secretary to United States Senator Gale McGee. Going from being a reporter to a political position was difficult, but the goal did not change: truth.
Jack Anderson called the office one day saying he was working on a story that would show the senator had wielded his undue influence to get one of his children a job.
Sin of omission, admittedly, is a technique press secretaries use, without having to lie. Anderson kept asking whether [name of one of the senator’s kids] got the job because his father had pushed his position as a senator on the employer. I denied and continued to deny it as Anderson kept hammering on the allegation.
He finally gave up. While one of the senator’s kids did in fact get a job in government, Anderson had the wrong kid.
I had left that era’s best-known investigative reporter shaking his head.
