The Independent Journal Review already has access to the Trump administration. Now it wants something else: respect from the rest of the media.
In a remarkably candid statement to Business Insider, which was first to report on the suspension, Skatell said “we got it wrong and ultimately deserve all the criticism if we want to be taken seriously.”
At times, it seems that all IJR wants is to generate Web traffic. Business Insider, citing interviews with more than a dozen of the site's current and former staffers, reported that “the website, chasing clicks, has veered sharply to the right in recent months to feed its conservative base the red meat it desired.”
Throwing red meat can be an effective way to endear a site to Team Trump. It has worked for Breitbart and Infowars (which also promoted the Obama-judge conspiracy theory), and it is working for IJR. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ditched his press corps and agreed to take only one journalist with him on a trip to Asia last week, that one journalist was IJR's Erin McPike.
But the red-meat strategy does little to elevate a site's standing among fellow news outlets, nor does being the lone selection to travel with the media-averse secretary of state. (McPike, to her credit, used an interview with Tillerson to ask several questions about press access.)
Skatell seems to understand that IJR can improve its reputation only by showing a commitment to journalistic principles. Benching Johnson, whom BuzzFeed fired for plagiarism in 2014, is one such attempt.
The move is similar to Fox News Channel's decision to pull legal analyst Andrew Napolitano off the air after he claimed without evidence last week that Obama asked British intelligence agencies to spy on Trump as a way of circumventing laws that set a high bar for U.S. intelligence agencies to surveil American citizens.
Fox News's programs are loaded with conservative opinion and commentary, to be sure, but its credibility as a news outlet depends on maintaining certain standards — standards that include disavowing the sort of wild accusation leveled by Napolitano.
Skatell appears to be striving for a Fox-like balance at IJR.
“We are committed to an editorial team that includes voices, perspectives and geographies that span the country but equally committed to quality standards in our newsroom,” he said.