On Beauty Queens, The Press Corps, And The Collapse Of Journalistic Courage

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

— Desmond Tutu

In November, the director of the Miss Universe Thailand publicly called Miss Mexico “dumb” (some reports say “dumbhead”) during a pre-competition briefing when she, quite literally, stood up to his personal attack. Outraged, many of her fellow contestants walked out in solidarity, even after he threatened to bar them from the competition. These beauty pageant contestants showed more courage than the White House press corps, which has rarely stood by its colleagues when confronted with similar abuse.

Donald Trump, America’s bully-in-chief, who once owned the Miss Universe pageant, has a long history of insulting and demeaning women when he is not physically assaulting them. That November, when asked about the release of his pedophile ex-BFF Jeffrey Epstein’s files, Trump told Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet, piggy.”

Some things never change. The 79-year-old man-child in the gilded Oval Office remains the same insecure misogynist he was in 1996, when he called then-Miss Universe Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and, alluding to her Latino heritage, “Miss Housekeeping,” among other demeaning epithets. Now, as president, he has continued the pattern, habitually dismissing women journalists, especially women of color, as “dumb,” “stupid,” and most recently labeling New York Times reporter Katie Rogers “ugly, both inside and out.”

Yet unlike Miss Universe contestants, the White House press corps has not stood by its colleagues. When Trump banned the Associated Press from the press pool for refusing to comply with his executive order to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the press corps should have walked out en masse. When he refuses to answer a reporter’s question, their colleagues, living up to their name sake, should press the question again – relentlessly – until it is finally answered. Instead, the press corps carries on as usual, apparently content to receive crumbs of information, however detached from reality.

Why? Perhaps because reporters believe it is their duty to stay no matter what. Perhaps they fear that if they leave, only sycophantic stenographers from right-wing outlets will remain. Perhaps it is because their corporate patrons invest in lavish, gilded ballrooms but not in investigative journalists whose reporting might lead to expensive lawsuits. In Washington, access is currency, and few are willing to risk bankruptcy.

In 2020, when asked by CNN’s Brian Stelter why the press corps just doesn’t walk out, ABC White House correspondent Jonathan Karl replied: “Because our job is to cover these things . . . and to ask the hard questions. Our job is to be there. The insults don’t matter. Who cares? We are there to try to get the facts and to put the questions to those who are in power in this country.”

But is it worth it if the facts are never forthcoming? When questions are met only with insults and lies. When the very act of inquiry feels like squeezing water from a stone – or juice from a shriveled orange. At what point does silence stop being professional and start becoming complicity?

In maintaining its silence, the press continues to sacrifice its role as self-proclaimed guardian of truth and democracy. “Democracy dies in darkness,” The Washington Post reminds us. Presumably it is the fearless light of a free press that keeps the shadows at bay and democracy alive.

That light has dimmed.

In this vacuum, independent media like MeidasTouch, ProPublica, Democracy Now! and a host of progressive YouTubejournalists and podcasters – many exiles from corporate mainstream outlets – have shouldered the responsibility of holding the regime accountable. In contrast, major networks and cable news chase spectacle, promoting verbal cage matches instead of honest, fact-driven debate.

These are dangerous times. America has crossed the threshold into authoritarianism, as institutions entrusted with protecting and guarding the Constitution – Congress, the Supreme Court, the military, the press – have largely capitulated to tyranny. Donald Trump, both metaphorically and literally, has taken a wrecking ball to those institutions, without facing effective resistance. Those who have risen to defend the rule of law in the face of Trump’s murderous lawlessness have been branded traitors and threatened with execution. Their alleged crime? Reminding those who serve the country of their duty to disobey unlawful orders. Trump may not, as he infamously boasted, lose any support if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue, but he has gotten away with the extrajudicial executions of Venezuelan, Colombian and Trinidadian fishermen under the pretext of targeting “narco-terrorists.” Meanwhile, cuts to USAID threaten hundreds of thousands of lives across the Global South, the “Third World” whose “huddled masses   yearning to breathe free” Trump and Deputy Chief of Staff Deputy Führer Stephen Miller immigration policies seek to ban.

At home, masked, state-sanctioned vigilantes roam our streets, harassing, abusing, kidnapping, disappearing and deporting immigrants and citizens, especially those with skin tones darker than Trump’s spray-on tan.

Trump and his acolytes have made clear that “making America great again” means making it white. As they abet Israel’s genocide in Gaza, they pursue their own form of ethnic cleansing at home – what they call “reverse migration,” with, naturally, “no right of return.” Borrowing the language of Europe’s far-right, Trump has floated plans to create an “Office of Remigration,” not simply to “permanently pause all migration from the Third World,” but to actively “reverse” it. Meanwhile, ICE agents detain Native Americans, dismissing their tribal IDs as “fake.”

Woody Guthrie famously sang, “this land was made for you and me.” Not so much, it appears.

Trump previously raved about “pet-eating Haitians.” Now he rants about Somalis “taking over Minnesota.” His diarrheal stream of racist invective makes the intent clear enough. Yet the regime’s aims are defended – and its racist intent denied – by smug operatives like Scott Jennings, who are given platforms on CNN. Abby Phillip may call them out, barring Islamophobes like Ryan Girdusky who threaten a co-panelist or commentators like Jillian Michaels who minimize the historical impact of American slavery. In the case of Michaels, CNN, faced with mounting criticism and recognizing its negligence, produced a monologue and segment to correct the record. But it set the course by providing her the platform in the first place. And the fact-averse statements of other right-wing panelists have not received such correctives.

And the cycle continues: reformed “Never Trumper” Jennings is invited back for additional fact-free shouting matches that shed heat, boost ratings, yet offer little in terms of illumination, accountability, or truth. MAGA cultist Katie Miller gets a seat at the table. If CNN’s strategy is to expose her contradictions by giving her enough airtime to embarrass herself, it has backfired, for the shameless cannot be shamed, only the enablers who continue to seat them.

What these roundtables reveal instead is the craven cynicism that fuels such corporate-sponsored spectacles. As Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius asks the Colosseum crowds in Gladiator, “Are you not entertained?” If not, just wait for the White House’s televised UFC wrestling match on the South Lawn – staged to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our democracy, if it survives.

The result is not journalism, nor even spirited debate, but cynical theater whose goal is not to provide insight but to incite, manufacturing conflict, normalizing extremism, and leaving viewers misinformed and more polarized in the process.

The irony is both stark and disturbing. The press corps has shown less solidarity than beauty queens. Miss Universe contestants risked their careers to stand up for one of their own. Journalists, entrusted with defending democracy, have chosen silence.

The myth of American exceptionalism aside, this is hardly unprecedented. History offers sobering parallels. In authoritarian regimes, the press is often the first institution to fall. In Nazi Germany, newspapers became mouthpieces for propaganda. “A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth,” its Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels is purported to have said. This is what happens when the press fails to challenge lies and its medium is co-opted to spread them. In Russia, independent journalists are harassed, jailed, and murdered. In Hungary, the government systematically dismantled press freedom, leaving only loyalist outlets. Not surprisingly, these regimes serve as models for Trump’s authoritarian project.

If journalists will not defend their own colleagues, who or what can we expect them to stand up for? If they will not defy abuse, how can they defend the truth? Or has the concept of truth itself, subordinated to the bottom-line, and sacrificed to the grab-them-by-the-ratings mindset of their corporate controllers, simply become an antiquated pre-postmodern fantasy – discarded when inconvenient, invoked only when profitable?

The press corps – and the mainstream corporate media in general – face a stark choice. They can continue business as usual: covering spectacle while ignoring substance, chasing access while surrendering integrity. Or they can recover their courage, stand by their colleagues, and reclaim their role as guardian of democracy, ensuring that the wrecking ball of authoritarianism does not demolish the Fourth Estate, and with it the nation itself.

Sadly, this may only be possible if the billionaire oligarchs, some holding controlling stakes in both the Fourth and Fifth Estates, permit it – perhaps in exchange for their names being etched on the walls of the Trump Ballroom or some other quid pro quo.

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