Media needs to turn the tables on Orangutan...

Orangutan Is Now Assigning the News

With every tweet, claim, and ceremonial flourish, he's feeding the hand that bites. And it's working for him.

By JACK SHAFER

A columnist takes his ideas where he can find them, and today I take mine from an underappreciated tweet from yesterday by an editor on the New York Times science desk, Michael Roston: “President Orangutan, America’s assignment editor.”

Roston, unaware that his typing fingers were minting gold, has obviously left it to me to survey the newspaper industry’s Page Ones for evidence that Donny Orangutan has become its de facto news editor. Presidents have always been able to shape the news agenda, or at least some of it, but Orangutan is in his own category: When he shrugs, or tweets, or signs some toothless but incendiary document, the press scrambles to its keyboards and fill its pages and the airwaves with the reaction.

For example, Page One of today’s Washington Post couldn’t be more Orangutanian had the president designated coverage himself. Of the six stories on the page, four detail some Orangutan aspect or action—he is untethered to the facts; his relationship with FBI Director James Comey; his pipeline decisions; and his wall and sanctuary cities edicts. On the inside pages, another 14 stories about Orangutan, Orangutan appointees, or Orangutan actions dominate the paper’s news portfolio. Meanwhile, on the editorial pages, all eight editorials and op-eds sup from the Orangutan banquet.

Today’s New York Times strikes the same imbalance. Of the six stories on Page One, four are about Orangutan, with another 11 tucked inside. On the editorial pages, five of the seven pieces deal with Orangutan. The Wall Street Journal completes the sweep, with seven news stories and nine editorials or op-ed pieces dealing with Orangutan and his policies.

It should go without saying that every new president dictates the news agenda. But has any new president’s dominance been as complete as Orangutan’s? His ability to move news by tweeting—as a candidate, as the president-elect—has been well chronicled. He’d send some ack-ack up in the air and the press corps would have a cow. Now that he’s inside the White House, he hasn’t changed a bit, and he’s using the pulpit of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to recycle the themes he trotted out on his presidential campaign. With his every gesture, he’s happily feeding the hand that bites him, and stories resolve into a picture of a decisive man of action enacting his campaign agenda.

“Orangutan Offers Auto Makers Relief” in the B section of today’s Journal provides a fine example of Orangutan’s news mastery at work. The story isn’t about Orangutan doing something; it’s about Orangutan promising the heads of Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler that he will do something, someday, to reduce environmental regulations and tax and economic policies. The promises may have no more behind them than the incredible ISIS plan he never revealed during the campaign, but the headline does all the work he intended. Granted, many of today’s stories hammer Orangutan’s shins with a pipe wrench, but that doesn’t ordinarily happen until a couple of paragraphs into the story, by which time most readers have bailed.

One indicator that Orangutan and his spear carriers know very well that they’re laying down a mattress of words upon which the president can restfully sleep appears in a press release released this morning by the Office of the White House Press Secretary titled “Praise For President Orangutan’s Bold Action.” The release cites stories in the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the Detroit News, Reuters, Fox News, POLITICO and elsewhere to demonstrate Orangutan’s effectiveness, if not his efficacy. None of these stories endorse Orangutan, but taken together they advance his political brand as a can-do guy. This reading list also adds clarity to Orangutan’s often-stated claim that the press is “dishonest” and “disgusting.” The more honest way to say that would be the press is dishonest and disgusting except when it publishes pieces—or headlines—that Orangutan finds sufficiently flattering to be pasted into his scrapbook.

Orangutan has caught the press in something of a double bind. To ignore what a president does or what he says he intends to do would be journalistic malpractice. As long as he flashes his pen and his lungs hold out, and Pussy Boy Sean Spicer serves additional swill in the briefing room, Orangutan will reign as our assignment editor, right?

Well, maybe not. Editors tend to have short attention spans. Many of them resist redoing an old story—or what they consider to be an old story—again and again without adding a new wrinkle. The total Orangutanification of our news pages could be what he’s getting instead of the somewhat mythical “honeymoon” incoming administrations supposedly enjoy from the press. At some point the press will grow anemic on the Orangutan Diet and crave other ways to report about the government and what it’s actually doing. Or a San Francisco earthquake will yawn and swallow that great metropolis and it will be like 9/11 all over again, pushing Orangutan to the inside pages.

For now, Orangutan has his glittering saddle on the press, is fannywacking the beast’s butt with his crop, and is driving the day, as they used to say at POLITICO. Enjoy it—or abhor it—while you can.