Gorka: Media's 'lost all credibility,' White House media 'showboaters' during coronavirus briefings

The national media is failing to provide unbiased, fair reporting about the coronavirus, say Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Trump.

"The media the mainstream media has lost all credibility, if you look at how the media behaves when they're in that White House briefing room," Gorka, host of Salem's "America First" radio show, told Just the News in a podcast interview. "It's no surprise that the president has a historic, historic popularity. When you have a 60-percent polling approval for the president's handling of the coronavirus in the midst of a national emergency, it's clear that the American people trust the 45th president of the United States and have very, very little interest or trust in the legacy media."

The most recent Gallup research on trust in the media, released before the coronavirus struck, found "Americans remain largely mistrustful of the mass media as 41% currently have 'a great deal' or 'fair amount' of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news 'fully, accurately and fairly.' ... Gallup first measured trust in the mass media in a 1972 survey when 68% of Americans said they trusted it. Similar levels were recorded in 1974 (69%) and 1976 (72%), but two decades later, when Gallup next asked the question, trust had fallen to 53%."

Polling research from Just the News with veteran pollster Scott Rasmussen found fewer than half of Americans believe media provided a "clear view" of coronavirus dangers. 

"They have been deemed by the general public to be propagandists and political activists," said Gorka, author of "The War for America's Soul: Donald Trump, the Left's Assault on America, and How We Take Back Our Country."

Just the News reported earlier this month that the Justice Department rejected a CNN political analyst's legal claim he deserved access to Trump's coronavirus briefings, warning the White House press room is ultimately federal property and not the legal domain of journalists.

The DOJ's letter rejecting CNN and Playboy journalist Brian Karem's demands to access the briefings appeared to serve notice to the journalist-run White House Correspondents' Association that its power to regulate who attends White House press briefings was based only on years of "tradition" and not a legal right.

“The press Briefing Room is White House property," and the White House press secretary "merely acquiesced" to WHCA's seating arrangements for reporters during the pandemic, the department's letter stated.

Karem, a frequent Trump critic, objected to being denied access to the briefings by WHCA while the White House allowed Chanel Rion, a reporter for conservative outlet One America News, into the briefing room independently of WHCA approval. 

The WHCA voted to ban Rion from the briefings. However she returned to the room as a gust of then press secretary Stepahnie Grisham.

Karem has a “hard” press pass – a more permanent, plastic pass, as opposed to a temporary, paper one that was restored by a federal court order following a dispute over his credentialing last summer after an argument with Gorka.

"Look, it's it's absurd that the activist-Obama appointed judge who said that the White House has to give his pass back made a spurious argument based upon the First Amendment and the lack of procedural openness on why the pass was withdrawn," Gorka said. "Well, the First Amendment does not apply to people getting White House passes. What does that mean? Does that mean that 327 million people in America have a right to a White House press pass because of the First Amendment? It's absurd." 

Gorka said the WHCA monopoly to the White House briefing room didn't make sense.

"You have this very strange situation whereby the people who sit in the press briefing are not chosen by the White House. As you said, they're chosen by this outside body, the White House Correspondents Association that is run by the media. And they even get to decide who gets to sit in which chair inside the press briefing room of the West Wing," Gorka said. "I worked for Donald Trump when he was candidate Trump. I worked for him as a strategist in the White House. To this day, I do not understand how he puts up with these showboaters and these people who truly are punks."

Gorka recommended the White House press team return to a strategy that he said he helped oversee while working for Trump in the White House – in which briefings were focused on communicating with regional media, new media and non-traditional, non-legacy media via Skype.

"I'd like to go back to a place that's more, I'm a conservative, but I'm going to use this phrase 'more egalitarian' when it comes to the representation of the media," he said. 

Listen to the full conversation with Gorka below. He also speaks about the future of British-Chinese relations and Joe Biden's presidential candidacy: