‘There’s No Camera on, Jim!’ Showboating CNN’s Acosta Yells at Spicer Over Press Access

Newsbusters.org ^ | June 26, 2017 | Curtis Houck

[Kaslin]

At Monday’s audio-only and photos-only White House press briefing, CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta continued to make a fool out of himself, melting down and screaming at press secretary Sean Spicer over the current set-up for briefings.

Acosta first interrupted after a female reporter didn’t get her question answered. When he yelled at Spicer to answer her question, Spicer lobbed some A+ shade at Acosta: “There's no camera on, Jim.”

‘There’s No Camera on, Jim!’ Showboating CNN’s Acosta Yells at Spicer Over Press Access

The CNN liberal immediately took Spicer’s bait, screaming as Spicer tried to move on: “Maybe we should turn the cameras on, Sean! Why don't we turn the cameras on? Why don't we turn the cameras on? Why not turn the cameras on, Sean?  They’re in the room, the lights are on.”

Roughly 10 minutes later, local Fox affiliate WTTG-5 reporter Ronica Cleary asked about White House Correspondents Association president Jeff Mason’s meetings with the Trump press team and if the lack of on-camera briefings represented “a new normal.”

Instead of respectfully going back and forth with Spicer like Cleary did, Acosta interjected to further badger Spicer, convincing absolutely no one that he’s a sober journalist (and the type Spicer referenced last week):

ACOSTA: Why are the cameras off, Sean? Why don’t you turn them on?

SPICER: Trey, Trey, Trey.

ACOSTA: Can you just give you an answer to that? Can you tell us why you turned the cameras off? Why are they off, Sean? 

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: It's a legitimate question. 

ACOSTA: It’s a legitimate question. You are a taxpayer-funded spokesman for the United States government. Can you at least give us an explanation of why the cameras are off? 

Thankfully for Acosta, One America News Network’s balanced White House reporter Trey Yingst bailed him out by pressing Spicer to “get this out of the way” and “address the cameras issue.”

Once the tape-delayed audio aired, Acosta was parked outside the White House to again pontificate with his grievances.

Taking the first issue of Spicer trolling CNN by not calling them, Acosta vented:

Sean Spicer has refused to take questions from CNN for weeks now. It has been going on for some time. You know, he may have taken a question here or there over the last couple of weeks, but we've largely been just blackballed during these briefings. We're just not getting questions to the press secretary. That would not have happened in previous administrations. Fox News always got a question every day at the briefing until President Obama, so let's just make sure that's perfectly clear to everybody watching out there. Fox News always got questions. MSNBC always got questions during the previous administrations. This is a new thing this White House is doing to us here at CNN and to a couple other news outlets as well.

“Let's make this clear. This is not a Trump campaign event. This is the United States government saying that we can't have cameras on inside the White House briefing room for an event that is typically covered with cameras...but, Ana, make no mistake, this is the gradual erosion of the expectations of the traditions that have been in this city for about a quarter of a century now, that these briefings be held on camera,” he added.

He finished on his third point by stating his concern that President Trump would be speaking this week with India’s Prime Minister in the Rose Garden but not holding a subsequent press conference.

“[H]e's getting the coverage without the accountability and I think that we just need to recognize what's happening here and that is what we are typically accustomed to in this town in terms of covering the White House, that is being eroded away right in front of our eyes,” Acosta concluded.

Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from June 26's CNN Newsroom:

CNN Newsroom
June 26, 2017
2:34 p.m. Eastern

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Can you just answer Jen’s question?

SEAN SPICER: There's no camera on, Jim. 

ACOSTA: Maybe we should turn the cameras on, Sean! Why don't we turn the cameras on? 

SPICER: Jen — 

ACOSTA: Why don't we turn the cameras on?

SPICER: — I'm sorry you have to deal with — Jen? Jen, go ahead.

ACOSTA: Why not turn the cameras on, Sean?  They’re in the room, the lights are on. 

(....)

RONICA CLEARY: Sean, thank you. Jeff Mason sent an account of the meeting that he had to the members of the White House Correspondents Association about the future of the press briefings, would you say his account of that meeting was accurate?

SPICER: I was not provided with that. I had the conver —

CLEARY: Could you give us an account from your perspective of what happened in that meeting and what we’ve — 

SPICER: We've had two since then, another one since then. Jeff has stated the position of the board that he believes, and I’ve shared with him where we are on that, that we have been consistent since December and January when we addressed this issue with them specifically and publicly and that we'll continue to have a mix of opportunities to stay in touch with the media. 

CLEARY: This seems to have been a drastic shift, starting form maybe the week before the President took his first trip abroad, but now we see you on camera once a week. Is that a new normal that we would expect? 

SPICER: We’ll see. We’ll just — we’ll continue to mix things? Trey?

SPICER: Trey, Trey, Trey.

ACOSTA: Can you just give you an answer to that? Can you tell us why you turned the cameras off? Why are they off, Sean? 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: It's a legitimate question. 

ACOSTA: It’s a legitimate question. You are a taxpayer-funded spokesman for the United States government. Can you at least give us an explanation of why the cameras are off? 

TREY YINGST: So we can get this out of the way? Can we address the cameras issue? Do you think this will —

SPICER: Yes. Some days we'll have them and some days we won't. The President’s going to speak today in the Rose Garden. I want the President's voice to carry the day — you know, and I think — so — look, this is nothing inconsistent from what we had since day one.

(....)

2:55 p.m. Eastern

ACOSTA: Well, a couple issues here, Ana, and let's separate them. One is Sean Spicer has refused to take questions from CNN for weeks now. It has been going on for some time. You know, he may have taken a question here or there over the last couple of weeks, but we've largely been just blackballed during these briefings. We're just not getting questions to the press secretary. That would not have happened in previous administrations. Fox News always got a question every day at the briefing until President Obama, so let's just make sure that's perfectly clear to everybody watching out there. Fox News always got questions. MSNBC always got questions during the previous administrations. This is a new thing this White House is doing to us here at CNN and to a couple other news outlets as well. But as for the camera issue, as you know Ana, and as you witnessed, that briefings was off camera once again today, so I asked a couple times during the briefing, why can't we turn these cameras on? 

People who are not accustomed to being in that briefing room need to understand. It is set up like a TV studio. You can turn the cameras on. The cameras can be on at any moment. There are TV lights on all the time, because the cameras can be turned on at any moment, and the White House — let's make this clear. This is not a Trump campaign event. This is the United States government saying that we can't have cameras on inside the White House briefing room for an event that is typically covered with cameras and, you know, I'll let the viewers decide why they're being kept off, but I tried a couple times during the briefing today to get a question to Sean Spicer and to ask why these cameras are not being turned on. Now, Trey Yingst, over at OANN, which is a conservative outlet, to his credit, when Sean Spicer was not answering my question about why the cameras are being kept off, did ask the question and said, hey, let's get this out of the way, why are these cameras being kept off, and Spicer basically punted on that issue and said, well, there will be times they're off and times they're on, but Ana, make no mistake, this is the gradual erosion of the expectations of the traditions that have been in this city for about a quarter of a century now, that these briefings be held on camera.

Further to that point, this openness and transparency point, the President is going to be making a statement this afternoon with Prime Minister Modi from India. Those head of state press conferences or statements are typically press conferences, where the American press gets two questions and the foreign press will get two questions. That is not happening today. So, the President is using the setting of the Rose Garden to talk about whatever he wants to talk about and presumably he may talk about this travel ban, but he's not going to be taking questions from the news media. And so, once again, he's getting the coverage without the accountability and I think that we just need to recognize what's happening here and that is what we are typically accustomed to in this town in terms of covering the White House, that is being eroded away right in front of our eyes.

[El Cid]

Although I’d have preferred that the OANN reporter, Trey, had piled on Acosta - I’ll give him a pass for trying to defuse the issue. Apparently the MSM folks, Acosta in particular, were getting the vapors and there were no fainting couches available.

[headstamp 2]

Chicken Noodle News

[HarleyLady27]

LOLOL...I like that one!!!

[Cboldt]

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Sean Spicer, 6/26/2017 | whitehouse.gov

Reading the transcript, the "no cameras" interruption really stands out as immature. There was pretty good back and forth with questions and answers, including a reference back to "Trump asking Russia to hack Hillary."

Q So what evidence does he have that President Obama was colluding or obstructing?

MR. SPICER: Well, again, I think it comes back to this idea that they've been very clear, they've been playing this card about blaming Trump and Russia. And yet, at the same time, they were the ones who, according to this report, knew about it and didn't take any action.

So the question is, were they -- if they didn't take any action, does that make them complicit? I think that there is a lot of questions that have to get answered about who didn't know what and when.

Q Well, is there an element of hypocrisy here, Sean? Because this was President Trump on the campaign trail: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

How can you accuse President Obama of obstructing, when he was egging Russia on?

MR. SPICER: He was joking at the time. We all know. I mean --

Q He was joking? He says that as a candidate, and he was pressed during that press conference over and over again.

MR. SPICER: I understand. And I think the idea was, is that you had Hillary Clinton with a secret server that was very clear about what she had done to evade it. And I think that that's probably a bigger concern right now in terms of what they were doing and the lack of security that they had.

[Elsie]

...the expectations of the traditions that have been in this city for about a quarter of a century now, ...

Damn that new sheriff!

[petitfour]

So do these wonderful, honest, insightful journalists believe that Russia hacked Hillary’s server????? Her basement server? Her off the books, not available for the media to video record server? My my my.

It was all Trump’s fault Hillary’s server was hacked and all her crooked emails were leaked to the American public. I’m sure one of the spouse journalists viewed the emails and determined that Hillary had nothing to hide. That’s why they never read them on the air. And maybe one of the spouses at the FBI decided it was A OK to have a basement server.

[Holdem Or Foldem]

White House reporters carpooling to work.

[Avalon Memories]

The White House does not owe the reporters a “traditional format” or any particular format or even a briefing.

Exactly. Reporters don't even need to be on White House grounds. It's something that grew in the television era. It was ok when reporters at least tried to be respectful of the presidency, if not whoever was president at the time. But these days most of them are open Dem partisans who also are spoiled brats accustomed to a privilege they are now demanding as a "right."

Furthermore, don't let anyone in the media convince you their role is something lofty that warrants their special privileges. Their role is the same as employees of any business...to make money for the company. Period.

[Fester Chugabrew]

“Because you’re ugly, inside and out. Next question?”

[Cobra64]

Yup.

[Joe Boucher]

Cnn is already lower than whale poo.
Hard for it to sink lower.

[Cboldt]

Funny subtitle on this article ...

Fake News Meltdown at CNN: Retractions, Resignations and Outbursts
Three network journalists pack their bags after bogus Russia story,
Acosta turns heckler at press briefing
by Jim Stinson - Lifezette.com

[poconopundit]

I say take his credentials away...permanently!!! Or send the anchor baby back to Mehhhico!

[zencycler]

Atypical actions in press briefings? My simple answer to Acosta et al is “You started it”!

[Hoffer Rand]

Next time Acosta starts down this path, Sean needs to just quietly say, “and this is why we can’t have nice things.” then turn around and walk out. He does that a couple times, and this will stop. Not that they won’t try other shenanigans, but hey, one thing at a time.