Opinion: What if the media acted like NATO?

Like the Wicked Witch of the West, the Wannabe King in the White House would likely melt down if the media ignored him for a week. 

Could the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News and all other media actually cover the craziness in D.C. and the White House without actually using the president's name for a full week? It would be great to see Maggie Haberman, Kaitlin Collins and all the others simply ignore the imploding temporary occupant of the White House.

That’s because our current president wants to pick and choose which outlets are allowed to cover him – banishing those that criticize him while still enjoying constant press attention from those that he allows into the White House. On Friday, he announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would be banned from the White House, after the three news organizations dared to publish stories that offended him. On Monday, Politico, CNN, and MS NOW sued the White House over the ban.

The rest of the White House press corps must now decide how to react – and I think they should take a page from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO’s credo is that any attack on a member country is like an attack on all the member countries. That’s an admirable pact, although the current U.S. president has alienated so many NATO treaty members that it would be interesting to see how they’d react to a foreign invasion on our shores.

Just as the U.S. would come to the aid of Britain or France if they were ever attacked, why shouldn’t The New York Times and ABC stick up for their brethren at Politico and CNN and MS NOW?

“First they came for the Socialists — but I did not speak out — because I am not a socialist,” starts the famous quote by German pastor Martin Niemoller, whose indictment of indifference to the Nazis is haunting to this day. He goes on to say the same for Trade Unionists and then Jews. “…But then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Just substitute journalists, reporters and editors and you have a current version of this malignant indifference.

There have already been some admirable demonstrations of media solidarity. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News all paused TV broadcasts of White House events. When the president’s team tried to bypass the networks and livestream his unveiling of a new helipad, they did such an amateur job that the president’s speech was completely inaudible – which might have actually been an improvement. Meanwhile, the Times, AP, Washington Post, Reuters and Getty all stopped publishing and distributing photographs of the president’s events on Monday.

At a press conference in New York City with Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday, the president dismissed the media’s efforts to deny him coverage. “They said they would boycott me, but they would never boycott me,” he said. “Look at all the press.” (Of course, most of the journalists were there for Mamdani, not him.)

All media should refuse to mention the leader of the Free World’s name for at least a week and provide him with no airtime or press briefings to air his never-ending string of untruths, hyperbole and outrageous fiction.

The First Amendment is at the top of the heap for a reason. Without a robust media checking power and delivering truth to voters, we could sink into autocracy and dictatorship rather than a functioning republic and democracy. At some point, the bullying and rule-breaking has to be met with drastic measures and unity to break the mad king’s streak of institution bashing.

I say the entire media should follow the lead of this column: don’t mention the name of the man who has an insatiable ego and an edifice complex, and watch his “superpowers” turn to putty.

The media should unify and show why it’s unwise to fight with people who buy ink (and pixels) by the barrel.