In case you needed one more reason to despise legacy-media journalists, Politico reports that White House correspondents have been routinely looting Air Force One -- to the point that they were just collectively asked to keep their sticky fingers off the taxpayers' property.
After the latest discovery of missing property, White House Correspondents' Association president and NBC reporter Kelly O'Donnell emailed members to inform them that stealing is not allowed, and that doing so harms the press corps' reputation, such as it is.
Looting Air Force One is entrenched in the press corps culture, to the extent that rookies are told to do it. As a current White House reporter told Politico:
“On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass.’ They were like: ‘Everyone does it.’”
That's not the most disgraceful anecdote...
"Several colleagues of one former White House correspondent for a major newspaper described them hosting a dinner party where all the food was served on gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time."
Others described how, when reporters disembark Air Force One, the sound of clinking glass and porcelain accompanies their descent down the rear stairway.
While it's apparently been a long-simmering phenomenon, the reporters' kleptomania on an extended West coast trip in February sufficiently irked the Air Force crew that they complained to the White House travel office. The director of press advance, in turn, told the press office that a USAF inventory found several items missing from the press cabin.
The press office sent a gentle email to all the journalists who'd been on that particular trip, with someone familiar with the matter telling Politico, “It was like, ‘Hey, if you inadvertently wound up taking something off the plane by mistake, we can help facilitate a quiet return.’”
The response was predictably pathetic: Exactly one of the thieving journalists demonstrated a semblance of morality. The guilty individual arranged a rendezvous next to the Andrew Jackson statue in Lafayette Square -- across from the White House -- and relinquished a stolen embroidered pillow.
The latest Gallup poll found that, when it comes to reporting the news accurately and fairly, a record 39% of Americans said they have no confidence in mass media whatsoever, and another 29% said they have "not very much."
Forget reporting...next time, Gallup should ask about the extent to which establishment journalists can be trusted not to steal your f***ing silverware.
