Media coverage of Trump's CNN ouster, Jack Smith spying on news outlets exposes double standard

Legacy media outlets that spent last week decrying President Donald Trump’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House access and pool duties largely shrugged Tuesday when Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed that former special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation swept up communications between government sources and nearly 50 journalists from more than a dozen news organizations.

"The partisan media is suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome. Jack Smith's weaponized investigation harmed thousands of Americans, including dozens of journalists, yet many in the partisan media still want to treat him like a folk hero," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Just The News.

Grassley, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary where the Smith hearing took place continued: "Arctic Frost and Jack Smith were a generational scandal, and it's a disservice to the American people not to report on the rampant misconduct honestly."

Grassley’s whistleblower-backed disclosure listed outlets including CNN, Fox News, CBS News (including 60 Minutes), NBC, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and NPR.

The records came from National Archives productions tied to 87 White House phones, capturing journalist-source exchanges as Smith’s team pursued Trump over Trump's actions following the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents.

Instead of examining that government collection of reporter communications, major headlines followed a familiar script. The Hill led with “Jack Smith stresses strength of Trump cases.” The New York Times declared “As Jack Smith Testifies, a Senator’s Accusation of Perjury Falls Apart,” focusing on Sen. Eric Schmitt’s mix-up of an Atlanta Hawks game with an Iowa Hawkeyes contest in Maryland. The Associated Press reported that Smith “forcefully defends investigations.”

“What is a bigger threat to freedom of the press: revoking special access to the White House or weaponizing the government to spy on journalists," David Bozell, CEO of the Media Research Center, raised to Just The News.

"The media went up in arms about the former, but the broadcast networks dedicated exactly ZERO minutes to the latter."

Legacy media's inconsistencies

The contrast is not new. The same institutions that treated a pool rotation dispute as an existential First Amendment crisis have historically downplayed or delayed stories that cut against preferred narratives — from the Hunter Biden laptop dismissed as Russian disinformation before the 2020 election to early COVID-19 lab-leak questions labeled as conspiracy theories.

Smith’s team issued 197 subpoenas touching at least 430 Republican individuals and entities, obtained lawmaker call logs and donor financial data, yet the dominant coverage framed the hearing as Smith standing by “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” while a senator’s basketball error unraveled.

Smith doesn't just have the legal system to answer to when it comes to those Republican records. Senator Marsha Blackburn is suing Smith personally and the Justice Department, alleging he unlawfully and secretly subpoenaed her Verizon phone toll records during the Arctic Frost probe of January 6 and the 2020 election challenges without notifying her or the court that she was a sitting senator.

Blackburn alleges this violated the Speech or Debate Clause and other rights, argues his appointment was unconstitutional, and seeks a court declaration that the actions were unlawful, return or destruction of the records, and $1 in nominal damages.

Mark Chenoweth, President of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), is representing Blackburn in the lawsuit and spoke exclusively to Just The News.

"If a member of of the current Department of Justice were to keep a federal district judge in the dark in this sort of deliberate way, in order to get a non-disclosure order in connection with a grand jury subpoena, I think that the media would think that was a really big deal. But that's exactly what Jack Smith and his team did, and I think that it's intolerable behavior," Chenoweth said.

However, Chenoweth is hopeful that the media double standard might not endure, at least in this instance: "I actually think that some of the media will come around. Maybe they all won't, but as these facts come to light, this is not some grand conspiracy that we're alleging here. This is a very particular set of unlawful behavior that violated a particular individual's rights, and I think that we're going to be able to prove that."

© Just The News