Press Double-Standard: Media Howled When Reporter Interrupted Obama

In 2015, a reporter for the right-leaning Daily Caller announced he was pursuing a new career opportunity.

As is normal among the Washington, D.C.-area media, a few industry-related stories were written about the change made by Neil Munro. But one story on Mr. Munro’s career change, by Dylan Byers for Politico, stuck out.

“Neil Munro, the reporter who famously heckled President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden, is leaving The Daily Caller after four years with the conservative site,” Byers wrote.

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Byers wrote the story three years after the June 2012 incident in the Rose Garden, but to the White House press corps and the media in Washington, D.C., “the heckling” was an unforgettable moment during the Obama years, one worthy of top mention in a 2015 story about Munro.

Indeed, in June 2012, Politico was one of several outlets to write about the incident with Munro and Obama, a Democrat beloved by the White House press corps.

“In a surprising breach of etiquette, President Barack Obama’s Rose Garden remarks on Friday were interrupted by heckling from reporter Neil Munro of the website Daily Caller, whose editor-in-chief is conservative commentator Tucker Carlson,” wrote Byron Tau and Donovan Slack of Politico.

CNN wrote a story about how the incident showed an era of incivility. One source told CNN that Obama’s race may have played a role in Munro asking about immigration policies.

One of the harshest attacks on Munro came from The Washington Post’s virulently anti-Trump Dana Milbank, who said Tucker Carlson, then the editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller, should terminate Munro.

“Depends on whom you’re heckling … Trump apparently deserves it. To heckle Obama is unhelpful and racist.”

“I also don’t join the charge that Munro is necessarily racist (although some Obama disparagement surely is), and I don’t agree with those who say the White House should revoke his press pass. But I think Carlson should fire him,” Milbank wrote in The Post in June 2012.

Fast-forward to June 2017, when reporters shout questions at President Donald Trump and interrupt his press secretaries, speaking without being called upon — which is also a breach of etiquette.

On Monday, CNN’s White House reporter Jim Acosta badgered White House press secretary Sean Spicer because the cameras were not being turned on for the daily briefing. Spicer never called on Acosta on Monday, but Acosta interrupted Spicer several times to try to get answers.

That is a breach of etiquette in the White House Briefing Room. CNN liked the tactic, though — it wrote a story about Acosta’s attempts and posted the audio of the exchanges.

But that was small potatoes compared to Tuesday’s interruption by Brian Karem, a Playboy columnist and an editor of a Montgomery County, Maryland, newspaper.

Karem showed up at Tuesday’s on-camera briefing at the White House. As Sarah Huckabee Sanders, principal deputy press secretary, was criticizing CNN for its erroneous Thursday story on Russia, Karem interrupted and began lecturing Sanders on her criticism of the press.

“You’re inflaming everybody right here, right now, with those words,” Karem said, his voice rising, his tone angry. “Any one of us, right, are replaceable, and any one of us if we don’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You have been elected to serve for four years at least . . . And what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, ‘See, once again, the president is right, and everybody out here is fake media.’ And everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.”

Karem’s interruption — he was never called upon by Sanders — was generally not treated the same way by the Beltway press as the Munro incident in 2012. Angered by the decrease in on-camera briefings, liberals praised Karem for grabbing the spotlight.

By 8 p.m., Karem was invited to appear on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” On Wednesday morning, Karem was on CNN.

“We will see a reporter is going to face physical harm because of this,” Karem told CNN, criticizing the Trump White House’s treatment of the media.

Liberals were quick to praise Karem on Twitter.

“Sensational,” tweeted Alan White, a news editor for BuzzFeed UK.

A left-wing writer at New York magazine also raved.

“Must watch: White House reporter Brian Karem pushing back against Sarah Huckabee Sanders and saying what many people have been thinking,” tweeted Yashar Ali.

Ali also noted Karem added tens of thousands to his Twitter account after the Tuesday interruption. (go to page 2 to continue reading)[lz_pagination]