… even though the media is “horrified.”
It’s pretty simple. The White House media operate on access. Reporters need to be able to call White House staffers and talk to them, either on the record, or “on background” – for information that won’t be attributed to the person being interviewed.
In exchange for access, reporters give what amounts to a veto, or at least a critical eye, to staffers. Reporters, knowing that they have to go back to the same sources over and over again, have to build trust with those sources. In part, this trust is based on the source’s knowing that the reporter won’t identify them, make them look bad, or otherwise damage the source’s career. They shade their stories in ways that sources will likely like. Doing so maintains the relationship going forward.
Reporters rationalize this self-editing as beneficial in the long term. They insist that while any individual story might be compromised by this source-reporter dynamic of maintaining a cordial relationship, over time the public will learn more about the administration than it would have learned had the reporter written everything they knew, but then had been cut off from access to their sources in retaliation.
This may well true, but the self-editing encourages an atmosphere of chumminess among the White House and the White House reporters that would likely surprise people. Reporters become friendly with their sources; sources come to expect a certain deference and mode of treatment from reporters, etc. It may or may not be mutually beneficial, but it is pleasant and friendly.
Michelle Wolf, of course, didn’t care. She needs no access, and needs no future access. She does not host a TV show onto which she will invite any Trump staffers (or the reporters who cover them). She doesn’t care if she never gets another “government gig.” So she was free to say what she wanted as she wanted.
Now, maybe she wasn’t funny. That’s a comedian’s ultimate nightmare. But she was truly free. And it scared the crap out of both the White House and the White House Correspondents.
Source
http://politicalprof.tumblr.com/post/173453877763/the-real-reason-michelle-wolf-didnt-care-about
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