Eric Starkman Eric Starkman 

Contrary to popular opinion, Donald Trump isn’t a master of media relations, a position that can be illustrated particularly well by his inept handling of the New York Times. Trump’s skill at generating free publicity stems from an innate P.T. Barnum appreciation that if you bring a good circus to town, the media will cover it. Everyone loves a clown.

I always perceived White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as a modern-day Ed Bernays. Bannon is credited with Breitbart News’ rise to prominence, and I thought Bannon sincerely believed that the mainstream media “has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work.” That sentiment is even harsher than my own critical views of the media, and I admired Bannon for having the guts to publicly take on reporters with such zeal. I imagined Bannon focused all his energies on executing his plan to disrupt the world order and didn’t care what the media published about him.

But if stories posted by Vanity Fair’s Sarah Ellison and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni about his pending White House termination are accurate, Bannon is as big a fraud as his boss. Ellison reports that Bannon employs a personal publicist, which is career suicide if you’re working for a ringmaster who’s never shared center stage with anyone. And both Ellison and Bruni report that Bannon systematically leaked damaging information about Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, which indicates that Bannon not only views mainstream media coverage as credible, he took an active role in trying to shape his personal narrative.

Most surprising of all is Bannon’s apparent ignorance that there’s almost never such a thing as an off-the-record meeting. Bruni argues that a Time magazine cover celebrating Bannon as “The Great Manipulator” was ultimately his undoing, and makes this startling disclosure:

“While [Bannon] didn’t give Time any quotes for its ‘manipulator’ story and the photograph of him on the cover had been shot for a different reason three months earlier, he has spent plenty of time talking off the record with political reporters, too little of it actively tamping down his legend.”

If Bannon did indeed spend “plenty of time” speaking with reporters on a supposed off-the-record basis, how is it that Bruni is privy to the extent and specifics of the conversations? Bruni doesn’t reference any sourcing for this allegation, perhaps because he would have to admit it was reporters who agreed to speak with Bannon on background and then blabbed about the conversations with other journalists.

Consistency of message is PR 101. Bannon understandably has no credibility with the media if he was publicly trashing them with a vengeance publicly and then courting reporters privately.

Perhaps this explains Bruni’s vitriol towards Bannon. He maligns Bannon as a “guy who looks like a flea market made flesh.” It’s surprising that this comment made it into print, given that fat shaming is rightfully no longer considered acceptable (it’s apparently still okay to ridicule the appearance of a 63-year-old man). It’s no mean feat to generate so much media animosity that even a New York Times columnist can’t write about you with a certain degree of decorum.

Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist, noted in a commentary last week how former Times columnist and PR executive William Safire cautioned her to “never join a pile-on.” Safire was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for original investigative reporting about the business dealings of a key Carter Administration appointee at the peak of his power. Reporters today don’t want to work so hard, preferring information leaked to them on a silver platter or kicking sand on once powerful people who are badly wounded and no longer of use to them.

Anyone who chooses to play matches with reporters deserves to get burned.

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Eric Starkman is co-founder and president of public relations firm STARKMAN.