On a recent COVID-19 briefing, CNN reporter Jim Acosta interrupted White House CoronaVirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx to bash President Donald Trump. Birx has had enough of the media criticism of the Trump Administration addressing “who knew what when” with the following statement:
“We can talk about why didn’t Italy do something or Spain do something or Germany do something, or we can really say, right now, we all can do something. We can do the social distancing and all of the pieces that we know is starting to work around the globe in country after country. Then when we get through all of this, we can ask the questions about could we have done some piece of this better as a global community.”
She then continued to discuss the World Health Organization’s failures and that is when CNN reporter Jim Acosta interrupted with saying “I will remind you that on Feb. 3, the head of the WHO said there was no reason to ever do a travel ban. It wasn’t until January 14 that we knew that there was human-to-human transmission,” Birx said. Birx then said “The President was saying this was going to go away. It’s April.”
Dr. Deborah Birx later said she is tired of playing the blame game and politely nukes reporters trying to ask all of these “gotcha questions” during press briefings. It is nothing but an attempt to score political points and takes away from all important aspects of what the meetings actually entail.
CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s interruption of Dr. Birx is a perfect example of how the journalism model is destroying the media’s credibility. Everything is rage without relief and questions meant to instigate rather than learn more about the information being presented.
While many took to social media to blast the reporter, some even accused Acosta of attempting to “mansplain” to the female medical expert with his multiple interruptions. Others aren’t surprised that he interrupted Birx as she was making an interesting comment and being critical of the World Health Organization having been accused of shielding China amidst the outbreak.
This is not the first time Jim Acosta has made a name for himself amongst his many hostile exchanges with the President. He is even criticized among his White House press corps colleagues for playing into the explicit Trump strategy of portraying the press as the opposition party. ABC News correspondent Johnathan Karl has even gone so far knocking his CNN counterpart saying “The surest way to undermine the credibility of the White House press corps is to behave like the political opposition.”
So there you have it. Amongst a global pandemic, the left are still focused on splitting the room into two rather than listening to what the White House has to say and asking questions concerning the matters at hand. When did respect for the White House go out the window?
