Access journalism, the corruption of governance.
It’s a perversion of journalism in service of propaganda.
There’s really no reason for reporter ride-alongs unless it’s for show to whip up and normalize “havoc” and turn violent raids into live streamed entertainment, a sort of bread and circus to appease certain crowds because we know a lot of the policies aren’t going to pan out to please most ordinary people.
PayDay Report - FOX News "Embeds" with ICE - Chicago Educators Deny ICE Entry - Trump Orders Fed Employees to Snitch on Covert DEI - Mike Elk Jan 25, 2025 Fox News “Embedded” with ICE on Immigration Raid in Boston As ICE targeted immigrants, Fox News was allowed to embed with immigration raids in the Boston area. The arrests were later broadcast on Fox News. While ICE does not have the resources to target immigrants at the level that many anti-immigrant groups desire, the video of the arrests has spread mass panic in immigrant communities, causing many immigrants to miss work and pay. "I worry that a lot of families will be retreating, will be very cautious about so many different public spaces, to their detriment, and really to all of our detriment," Elizabeth Sweet, the Director of the MIRA Coalition, told WBZ.
Punitive right-wing TV personality Phil McGraw is doing ride-alongs now with the mass deportation squads. This isn't access journalism, it's access influencering I guess.
This is not new, of course. Over a decade ago there was an article in Pennsylvania that I thought was outrageous. It painted large warrant sweep raids as something exciting and positive, and that "wreaking havoc" in neighborhoods was some kind of good thing.
PennLive - 'We're going to be wreaking havoc,' unit leader says of massive warrant sweep in Harrisburg - Updated: Nov. 14, 2014, 4:09 p.m. | Published: Nov. 14, 2014, 3:09 p.m. “Freer hits the gas and takes a sharp left turn on North Summit Street. Within the blink of an eye, half a dozen police vehicles descend upon this tiny, one-way road and Freer's agents and Harrisburg police officers pour out into the street. It takes the group only a few seconds to corral 20-year-old Deandre Thomas — clad in a pair of Batman slippers and a ragged Notre Dame T-shirt — near a marked "drug free" playground at the end of the block.”
At the time, I wrote to my reps to complain about this, pointing out how the article was glorifying violence and gleeful about roughing up neighborhoods creating “havoc” when surely police are supposed to keep the peace? The photojournalism and the mug shots included struck me as having a distinct slant, or perhaps that the operation itself was biased. A lot of the wording and descriptions were dehumanizing or at least tinged with a sense of disgust. Corral for instance is a word used with livestock.
I wrote these things to Governor Wolf. That “wreaking havoc” article came out in November 2014 just after Governor Tom Wolf was elected. I wrote mainly to register my dissent and disgust about state police doing puff pieces glorifying drug war operations that just further harm society and don’t do anything to help people in the grip of addiction. I don’t know how many people who would’ve objected even noticed that article, but I didn’t want it to go unremarked.
The author of the PennLive police raid ride-along narrative was a reporter named Jeffrey A. Johnson. In March 2015 he was hired as the Deputy Press Secretary for the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. (Jeffrey Johnson was listed in the PA Employee Salaries database “As of 03/15/2015” with the title “Assistant Press Secretary 2” and this job is listed on Jeffrey Johnson’s Linkedin.)
This was during the time Kathleen Kane from Lackawanna County, was Pennsylvania AG. Kane was by this point already embroiled in a scandal since March 2014 that wound up eventually resulting in Kane resigning as AG in 2016 after being convicted of actual crimes. Kane spent time in prison and was disbarred, and the public narrative on this was that she had played partisan favouritism to protect Democratic Party politicians involved in some kind of corruption in Philadelphia, which of course was fodder for a lot of conspiracy theories and partisan intrigue from every direction for a few years. A side note is that Bruce Castor served as acting PA AG for 2 weeks in 2016 before Governor Tom Wolf appointed Bruce Beemer until the next election, but in reality Castor had been considered the “de facto attorney general” in a newly created position of “Solicitor General” for several months because Kathleen Kane needed to hire him to do the legal stuff for the position because she had her license suspended at that time by the PA Supreme Court. Bruce Castor was later part of the defense team in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
According to Jeffrey Johnson’s Linkedin, (which states he’s “skilled in media relations, storytelling, social media, news writing and editing”), Johnson worked as the Deputy Press Secretary at the PA Office of AG until June 2017, when Josh Shapiro was the PA AG – until he became the governor of Pennsylvania. In September 2017 Jeffrey Johnson became the Communications Director at the PA Department of Revenue and he’s had the job title of Communications Director 3 for the past 7+ years. (The Linkedin dates match the dates in the PA Employee Salaries database.)
I’m going through all this to talk about how access journalism can be parlayed into a government career, and how there’s a relatively small pool of people who seem to move in all these circles. It’s another revolving door, like those at public agencies, presidential administrations, and even congress, move into and from lobbying and PR positions, for example. Journalists and commentators also do this dance with media, politics, and government. Do we think someone who had done critical journalism about those Harrisburg area drug war raids would’ve later been hired for comms by a state Attorney General's office already in the midst of being embroiled in controversy? Maybe, but doubtful. I think we should elect people into government offices who would be willing to hire hard nosed journalists unwilling to ass kiss for access and spin fun coded copaganda storytelling for grisly policing.
But I’d also rather have maybe some guardrails on all this to prevent this crap. For example, maybe at least a gift ban that would stop Pennsylvania government officials from taking legal bribes – I’m not even keen on them accepting “free lunches” frankly.
The fish rots from the head and this one is currently stinking. Which brings us to the epitome of ham handed access journalism corruption, as wielded on the whims of the felon politician currently in the White House.
AP statement on Oval Office access By Lauren Easton, The Associated Press FEB. 11, 2025 Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing. It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.