The President With No Sound: Trump Inaugurates His Helicopter Landing Pad - The Helicopter Wins

The man who wanted to decide who gets to watch him stands on the South Lawn and cuts a ribbon in front of his new helicopter landing pad. His lips are moving. You can't hear a thing he's saying. Since he threw 3 news organizations out, the major networks have shut down their shared camera and audio coverage, and all that's left on the broadcast is the roar of the rotors, drowning him out like a verdict he handed down on himself. Even a network that usually turns every word he says into gold notes that his attack on the press is blowing up in his own face. Send the witnesses away, and you end up trying to talk over a helicopter.

Trump cuts a ribbon at the inauguration of the new helicopter landing pad on the White House South Lawn, but you can't make out a word he's saying. After CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were banned, the major U.S. television networks suspended their shared camera and audio coverage. Instead of Trump's speech, all you can hear on the broadcast is the roar of a helicopter. Even Newsmax, a right-wing conservative U.S. news network that regularly gives Trump favorable coverage, reports that his attack on the press is backfiring. The rest of the press wasn't there either, so we had a little time to spend at Starbucks.

The matter has been in court since Monday: 3 news organizations, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, sued Donald Trump's administration because they had been shut out of the White House. CNN was assigned to the pool that day, the system in which a small, rotating group accompanies the president on behalf of all the other journalists. But CNN wasn't allowed in. In response, the television pool of 5 networks stopped working altogether: From that day forward, there would be no more shared coverage of the president's appearances, and no replacement would be arranged. CNN is one of the country's biggest networks and normally rotates with 4 others.

The dispute looks small. It's about a traveling group. What we're talking about is the group that watches on everyone else's behalf because there's only room for a few people around the president. Behind that lies the bigger question of whether anyone should get to decide what goes into a news report. This is the most severe step in a long series: From the courts to the White House, the administration is working to keep reporters and newsrooms that aren't sufficiently friendly to it in check. The Defense Department belongs in that same series. In his 2nd term, Trump's anger keeps returning to this rotating group that keeps an eye on the president for the entire press corps.

Trump could have saved himself the trouble of holding a press conference for the inauguration of his new helicopter landing pad. The press wasn't there, and when he cut the ribbon, you couldn't make out a word he was saying.

The pool is a long-standing institution, and it rests on a sentence in the Constitution. Not every journalist can be everywhere at once. There simply isn't enough room, so a handful go along on behalf of the others and then share their notes and footage. That's how the public finds out what a president does or fails to do in the country's name and with taxpayers' money. The relationship between elected officials and those who watch them is built on friction. That friction was never a flaw in the arrangement. It's the whole point. The public pays for this office and has a right to see what goes on there, something no one person can provide alone. The press's job is to hold those in power accountable. That requires the access the pool provides and the independence that makes it credible. Without that kind of oversight, all that would be left of his time in office is whatever he chooses to tell us about it.

Schon im vergangenen Jahr hatte das Weiße Haus an der Einrichtung Hand angelegt. Über Jahrzehnte hatte ein unabhängiger Zusammenschluss von Journalisten selbst bestimmt, wer in den Pool gehört. Diese Wahl nahm die Regierung an sich. Seither sucht sie die Begleiter des Präsidenten aus, und unter den Ausgewählten finden sich verlässlich solche, die ihm zugetan sind. Die Vertretung des Publikums liegt damit in der Hand dessen, der beobachtet werden soll. Was die Öffentlichkeit zu sehen bekommt, ist vorsortiert, ehe die erste Zeile entsteht. Ein geneigter Begleiter stellt selten die unbequeme Frage.

The White House had already started tampering with the arrangement last year. For decades, an independent association of journalists had decided for itself who belonged in the pool. The administration took that choice away. Since then, it has picked the people who accompany the president, and those selected reliably include people who are friendly to him. The job of representing the public is now in the hands of the very person who is supposed to be watched. What the public gets to see is filtered before the first line is even written. A friendly companion rarely asks the uncomfortable question.

That same Monday, CNN was supposed to accompany the president to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Its name was missing from the White House's assignment list. The traveling group's response was brief: There would be no replacement. The person being watched should not get to choose who accompanies him. That was the objection. You can disinvite a network, but you can't replace the principle.

The administration has long maintained that nobody has a right to ask the president questions, especially not in the White House. The same goes for members of the pool, and their president regularly insults them personally. At the same time, he seeks them out, praising and scolding them in the same breath, just as he always has. The result is a press corps that gets invited in but is still expected not to ask questions. In this arrangement, insults and invitations don't cancel each other out. They go hand in hand.

The sentence on which all this rests appears at the very beginning of the Bill of Rights: The government shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press. Trying to control the content of a news report means reaching for free speech itself, one of the pillars of this republic. There's less distance between a seat in the motorcade and freedom of the press than this seemingly small dispute might suggest.

In principle, the pool is supposed to be wherever the president appears, from the Oval Office to the golf course. It rides along in the motorcade and flies aboard Air Force One, ready in case something happens in the world that requires the president to speak. The television portion is managed by the news executives of the major networks, who take turns covering him. Traditionally, the group includes every format, from news agencies to radio. Whatever comes out of one of these events, the footage and the notes, is then shared with everyone who needs it. One place at the scene becomes the eyes of many who can't get in. When that witness is missing, the public sees only what it's shown.

A day in Dallas showed just how much depends on this traveling group. The pool was part of the entourage when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Firsthand accounts made it possible to describe what had happened while conspiracy theories grew all around. Whether a country understands what is happening around its president depends on that kind of independent scrutiny. What happens on a day like that survives only if someone on the outside records it.

Anger at the people asking questions is nothing new. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to citizens over the radio while major newspapers pushed back against the expanding role of government under his policies. Later, television and social media offered similar ways around the press. Going further back, in 1798, John Adams signed a sedition law that made it a crime to print false and scandalous statements about the government. According to the National Archives, journalists went to prison over it. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson threatened to stop briefing reporters, and out of that came the correspondents' association that still exists today. Going around the press and shutting it out are 2 different things. A president's own address can stand alongside the press without pushing it aside. Keeping independent journalists away removes them altogether. The radio addresses of the past left the newspapers alone. A locked gate leaves no view at all.

A press entourage handpicked by the president is supposed to report mainly what pleases him. Ask uncomfortable questions, and you lose access. Fall in line, and you get to stay. Trump is trying to replace independent scrutiny of his time in office with reporting on his terms. At the inauguration of his helicopter landing pad, we got to see where that leads: The president's lips were moving, but all anyone could hear was the roar of the helicopter. He had shut out the press. And the sound went with it.

To be continued ...