WaPo's Chris Cillizza's panic over Trump 'freezing out' MSM shows he's learned nothing

What scares me is how bad the mainstream media has gotten. https://t.co/C2uf6q6TpH

— NeoN: Automataster (@neontaster) February 15, 2017

Count The Fix’s Chris Cillizza among the MSM journos freaking out about Trump opting to call on Townhall’s Katie Pavlich and the Christian Broadcasting Network at today’s joint presser with Benjamin Netanyahu

Trump has called on ONLY conservative outlets in his last 3 joint press conferences.

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) February 15, 2017

I tried

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 15, 2017

Hell to the yeah https://t.co/fI8kzurlz6

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) February 15, 2017

I'm writing a bigger thing on this but if you think a president calling on only partisan outlets is a good thing, you are dead wrong

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) February 15, 2017

Here’s the “bigger thing on this”:

Donald Trump is purposely freezing out the mainstream media. That should scare you. https://t.co/1b9NJxP9Rg pic.twitter.com/JFeBQ8g9R8

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) February 15, 2017

Cillizza writes [emphasis ours]:

Now. Simply because all six of the media outlets that Trump has called on of late have varying degrees of conservative bent doesn’t mean their reporters aren’t serious and good journalists. But, there is a difference in taking questions from outlets with a partisan lean and taking them from mainstream media outlets who are absolutely committed to playing it straight. If Obama had only taken questions from the Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow, conservatives would be up in arms. And rightly so! (Sidebar: It was a major story when Obama called on a HuffPo reporter in a news conference even though that was one of a number of questions he answered.)

…

That’s a very dangerous precedent — and should worry you whether you voted for Trump, voted for Hillary Clinton or didn’t vote at all in the 2016 election. Why? Because the partisan press is not the same thing as the free and independent press. (That’s true of outlets on the right and the left.) The partisan press is playing to an audience who shares a certain viewpoint. The independent media is trying to hold power to account. That’s not the same mission even though those things do, sometimes, run in the same direction.

Hate Trump or love him, the idea that he is purposely freezing out mainstream media reporters because he doesn’t like the sort of questions they ask is chilling. Down that path lies nothing good for journalism — or democracy.