And we’re at it again! The Trump administration and the media are continuing down the road of being the ultimate frenemies. Our Secretary of State (the man who travels the world representing the US) Rex Tillerson, has made a very controversial decision to not travel with a press pool. Some background: in the past secretaries of state have always traveled with a group of reporters. These reporters fly with the secretary and are privy to the happenings with different countries. This then lets news outlets inform the public of what’s going on outside of our lovely 50 states. OK. So why is this such a BFD? Because now we’re dependent on the news outlets of different countries to tell us what’s happening with our secretary. For example, Tillerson recently went on a trip to Asia and we were as clueless as Alicia Silverstone regarding what was happening over there. Until, the South Korean press published articles that Tillerson’s trip was cut short due to fatigue. So the big problem with this is that now we’re relying on countries to provide us with super important information. This means that countries who maybe aren’t our BFFs (looking @ you Russia) can manipulate what’s happening during these trips. Which is never ideal. I mean would you want your frenemy explaining what was happening in your life to all your actual friends?
Outside of these not so cool implications, the US media outlets are also not so happy with this decision. As i’m sure you’ve all heard “Fake News” or “Alternative Facts” over the past two months, the media and trump administration aren’t necessarily besties. And this is just adding flames to the fire–the media thinks the administration is out to get them and vise versa. So by banning the press from a long-standing tradition of traveling with the secretary of state I’d have to say things aren’t looking to hot at a truce between these two groups.