Donald Trump’s attack on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly Friday night proved the second adage of media relations: When you publicly accuse a journalist of unfair treatment, other journalists circle the wagons in defense.
We’ve often seen cases of a newsmaker crying foul about the behavior of a single reporter followed by that reporter’s competitors coming to his or her defense. Most journalists in the national press corps tend to dismiss the credibility of their colleagues at Fox News – to one degree or another – because the network is seen as leaning right. But over the weekend, as Megyn Kelly became the central focus of Trump’s press bashing, she was defended as a solid journalist asking fair questions by her colleagues at news outlets around the country.
Hartford’s Mark Twain is given credit for the first adage of media relations(related to the second): “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” The reference to ink has nothing to do with tattoos, but is a historical reference to the practice of printing news on paper with the final product delivered as a “newspaper.”
