Bill HueyBill Huey

Pat Jackson would have been proud of the Trump White House press operation.

The legendary PR pro, whose media relations philosophy may be summed up in a comment he once made to the effect of, "Screw ‘em, we’ll go direct,” might have admired the box canyon the White House has constructed for the media.

With respect to the Russia investigation, the regulars at the White House press office won’t answer any questions, and instead direct them to the president’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, who doesn’t return their phone calls.

Instead, they have to deal with Kasowitz’s buffer, Mark Corallo, who refuses to comment. Why should he comment? He’s a private citizen working in the White House without taking any sort of oath of office. He has it made, for now.

As for the president, he is going direct, tweeting day and night to keep his base riled up at the media, the “deep state” (could he mean Alabama?), and whoever has incurred his displeasure that day. Any speculation that the presence of the First Lady might moderate the tweet storms has been laid to rest by now.

Lately the White House has taken to conducting “blind” briefings where television and audio aren’t permitted, taking us back to the days when reporters with cigarettes in their mouths and pencils in their hat bands (or vice versa) dashed for the public telephones and shouted down the horn, “Sweetheart, get me rewrite.”

The only difference is that now they have laptops and can file almost instantaneously.

This no-camera, no-audio stuff is clearly moving in the wrong direction as far as transparency is concerned. As CNN’s Jim Acosta put it in a recent tweet about the situation:

“There is a suppression of information going on at this WH that would not be tolerated at a city council mtg or press conf with a state gov.”

Adding, for good measure:

“Call me old fashioned but I think the White House of the United States of America should have the backbone to answer questions on camera.”

As a PR practitioner, would you expect to make such spayed and neutered briefings part of your media strategy and get away with it? Of course not. So how can the White House be permitted to get away with it?

I’ll tell you how: If the media go along with it. They shouldn’t. Instead, they should all pack up and leave the briefing room at once, letting someone hang behind to inform Sean Spicer that when he’s ready to resume full-on briefings, they’ll be back.

The media should have learned by now that if you let Trump push you around he will miss no opportunity to do it. They should have some backbone as well, and be supported by the spineless suits who run the news divisions.

***

Bill Huey is president of Strategic Communications, a consultancy he established 30 years ago, and the author of The Gookville Murders (Kindle, 2016).