If navel gazing were an Olympic sport, CNN would be the dream team.
As would the New York Times. The Washington Post. ABC and the rest.
The media sure enjoys the mirror.
I state this because the Washington Free Beacon ran a column, "‘Take Time To Be Sexual With Yourself’ and Other Self-Care Lessons for Professional Journalists."
Above the column, WFB ran a picture of Jeff Toobin, the CNN staffer who was was caught masturbating during a Zoom meeting.
Zing.
The column covered the Poynter Institute -- which sees itself as the mecca of American journalism -- advising stressed out journalists to, well, go Toobin.
WFB's Andrew Stiles wrote, "the Poynter Institute has developed a course for traumatized professional journalists that includes a long list of 'self-care' strategies to alleviate the stress of having to cover, for example, the brutal 'whipping'" of Haitian migrants at the southern border—whether or not it actually happened. (The Poynter Institute's fact-checking website, PolitiFact, was unwilling to issue a verdict.)
"'Take time to be sexual—with yourself, [or] with a partner,' reads one item of the list of suggested coping strategies. Perhaps Stelter could learn a thing or two from his colleague, disgraced CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who is an experienced practitioner of this particular form of self-care. Poynter does not, however, recommend forcing your colleagues to watch."
The column goes on like that because how journalists cope with stress is important because journalism is important.
Stiles quoted CNN's official navel-gazer, Brian Stelter, host of a Sunday morning show that is supposed to review how journalists covered stories in the past week. He uses the show to bash Fox News, Trump, Republicans and Fox News again, in that order.
Stelter tweeted in April 2020, "I crawled in bed and cried for our pre-pandemic lives. Tears that had been waiting a month to escape."
That's not stress. That's virtue signaling.
While Stelter was tweeting, a doctor was telling a family that their mother died of covid.
While Stelter was tweeting, a nurse was putting in a double shift.
While Stelter was tweeting, a governor was trying to line up ventilators, a purchasing agent was trying to secure N95s, and a mother was trying to find someone to watch her kids the next day because school was closed indefinitely and she had to go to work.
Journalists should worry more about getting their stories straight and care less about themselves. Journalists don't do. They watch. If Stelter cannot handle journalism, maybe he should learn to code.
Stiles gets it.
He closed his column, "Some media organizations have enlisted the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism training and research organization based in Florida, to instruct their employees in the art of self-care. On Monday, journalists from KATU News, an ABC affiliate in the Pacific Northwest, took the day off to attend 'a seminar to help deal with on-the-job stress and trauma.'
"Please keep America's long-suffering journalists in your thoughts and prayers."
