Complicity.
Totalitarians need your complicity. It gives them legitimacy. Refuse to acknowledge their legitimacy. Reject them utterly and you shatter their system. The media is a system that depends on complicity. It's a left-wing echo chamber, but it still expects Republicans to show up for the occasional round of attacks and smears. This manufactures the illusion of media relevance.
President Trump is refusing to play with CNN.
The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively icing out the network from on-air administration voices.
“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.
A CNN reporter, speaking on background, was more blunt: The White House is trying to punish the network and force down its ratings.
“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,” the reporter said.
Administration officials are still answering questions from CNN reporters. But administration officials including White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway haven't appeared on the network's programming in recent weeks.
Since then, Conway, Spicer, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and even Vice President Mike Pence have made the rounds on the major Sunday shows but, notably, CNN’s “State of the Union" has been cut out.
CNN needs them on the air because it needs to be seen as influential and relevant. Without White House people, it's just MSNBC with better groomed and more articulate anchors. It's just an echo chamber.
And that is what CNN and the rest of the media is. But they don't want to be seen as such. It destroys their legitimacy and forces them to compete for the same narrow slice of the left-wing pie. That's fine if you're creating niche programming for Netflix or HBO, but doesn't work nearly as well when you're competing with a whole bunch of outlets of what used to be a national press.
That's how FOX already the media's lunch. And the last thing CNN wants is to be fighting over the last leftie with MSNBC.