Regardless of whose side you are in a divided nation and the vitriolic exchanges between CNN anchor Jim Acosta and POTUS Trump it begs the question is CNN openly biased with the incumbent US president ?

 

 

A striking example is on the current title on the CNN's online Frontpage claiming Trump is escaping the unpleasant outcome of the midterm elections by going to Europe.

Yet Trump's presence at the WWI commemorations in France where he is to meet Face to Face with the Russian President Putin were and are no secret and was expected and to public knowledge for a long time.

So one can legitimately ask why CNN insists on using provocative biased language when covering what should be reported as NEWS and nothing else.

Yet CNN continues to play into the US President's own well known provocative demeanor at the expense of coming across as equally biased.

The firing of Jim Acosta from the White House Press Corps may not be fair let alone appropriate when it comes to respecting the freedom of the press but it is not new.

Helen Thomas, veteran reporter: why she had to resign over innappropriate comments Jews getting the Hell out of Palestine (guardian)

Now there is no moral equivalence between Jim Acosta's questions on the "Migrant Caravan" and Helen Thomas vitriolic anti-semitic comments on the Jewish State fired by President Obama whose administration triggered controversy over  "chicken shit" comment on Israeli President Netanyahu ( read : Some background to the “Chickenshit” controversy - Washington Post).

 

However their is probably a similar inquisitory pattern that when repeated recurrently can be rightly interpreted as distruptive provocation during a press conference in the same way a troublesome student can draw too much attention on himself at the expense of the rest of his or her classmates who also wish to have answers and participate in the discourse.

CNN's Jim Acosta's persistent inquiries to a great degree has put himself in trouble in the same way a student can be sanctioned for distrupting the teacher.

Ok a nation is not a classroom but human nature is human nature. Good or Bad, nonesical or not the decision to ban Jim Acosta from the White House Press Conference is an opportunity for journalists to reflect on what is a news anchor's role ? To report or be an opinion maker ? 

The frontier between the two can overlap and sometimes even be justified. However when done on a repeated and consistent basis it can backfire in ways that are more detrimental to how news is factually reported than to the news anchor who can be assimilated to a "noisy nerd".

As such just like in a classroom where the teacher has the prerogative to fire a distruptive student out of the classroom blaming any incumbent President who fixes the rules and limits of a press conversation or a spokeswoman like Sarah Sanders of "censorship" for taking away Jim Acosta's press credentials will come across as unfair.

CNN may cry out as a victim but I get the feeling that in the public eye Trump may have scored a point or two in his vitriolic exchange with the Jim Acosta. 

Challenging the President in articles or in a one to one interview as is done often is one thing. Distrupting a press conference on a regular basis and creating an atmosphere of chaos and tension in what is meant to be a press conference is another.

Whether CNN want's it or not or whether this President is to their "liking" or not, the profession may well be facing a realization that even if the President can't make the laws he nevertheless is fixing the rules of engagement when it comes to the White House Press Conference and even one to one interviews given that he has that mandate based on the legitimacy of his  Presidential status.   

The press needs to acknowledge this and move on doing it's work reporting and leaving the public to decide as adults in their own right if the President is honest or not.

CNN however has since the advent of this presidency become an anti trump "propaganda tool" than anything else.

This is not just a personal assessment but one that is shared by respectable journalists ranging from Bob Woodward ( who published a recent book on Trump titled Fear) to Ted Koppel.

Is it a wonder then that a large franction of people are beginning to mistrust the media and CNN and tuning into less ethical news outlet such as Russia Today ?

The frontier between journalistic neutral reporting and bias has never been so overlapped since Trump's presidential election and with it the credibility of professional journalism as a whole.