Turf fight – Fox News reporter allegedly accosts Gateway Pundit correspondent
A metaphor for many battles taking place now in D.C.
What allegedly happened at a routine White House briefing yesterday may be the latest skirmish in the larger conflict between the D.C. insider class and outsider challengers.
Tensions between legacy Washington, D.C., media and new-entrant reporters who have been granted access under the Trump Administration came to a head Friday in an alleged attack leveled at Gateway Pundit’s Lucian Wintrich by Fox News Radio reporter Jon Decker.
As reporters entered Friday’s White House press briefing, witnesses reported that Decker loudly, and allegedly physically, accosted Wintrich personally, calling him a “Nazi,” and saying of the site, “they hate blacks, Jews, and Hispanics.”
Fox News Radio John Decker just loudly told everyone in briefing room that Gateway Pundit is here "they hate blacks, Jews, Hispanics." Wild
— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) March 10, 2017
Wintrich asserted that Decker physically blocked him from entering and that he will be pressing charges against the Fox reporter.
John Decker also asulted me, pushing me in the break room & then grabbing my arm in the briefing room while shouting that I'm a nazi. https://t.co/RiVM1yYCJv
— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) March 10, 2017
Jon Decker asulted me at today's briefing. @FoxNews – is this behavior something you tolerate over there? He's sick .https://t.co/gzZhhIzOMD pic.twitter.com/ThppoHpRQw
— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) March 10, 2017
After the incident, Politico reported that Decker’s actions were applauded by several White House reporters, who “shook Decker’s hands as he walked back to the Fox News radio booth.”
Decker also sent an email to the entire White House reporter email listserv, noting that the White House “has admitted Gateway Pundit into today’s White House Press Briefing.”
While some in the White House briefing room say the White House should be open to any and all outlets, others have expressed concern with certain outlets being legitimized via their White House credentials.
Fox News confirmed Decker was reacting to previous tweets Wintrich had posted. According to a White House Correspondent in the room, several reporters shook Decker’s hands as he walked back to the Fox News radio booth.
The recent admittance of Gateway Pundit and other new outlets to the White House press pool has ruffled many feathers across the ideological spectrum. Gateway Pundit has been attacked by several left-leaning and legacy media outlets and D.C. insiders as “fake news.”
Gateway Pundit, ranked 1,242 in terms of its internet traffic, saw its profile rise most recently due to its 2016 election coverage supporting Trump. Jim Hoft, the founder of Gateway Pundit, recently announced plans to host a rival dinner (the Real News Correspondents’ Dinner) to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, the latter of which President Trump had announced he will not be attending.
Decker, who is on the board of the White House Correspondents Association and has been a member of the White House Press Corps since 1995, is also an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., his resume includes such as outlets as PBS, NBC, and Reuters. He received his B.A. and a masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania, his law degree from George Washington University (in D.C.), and attended the Sorbonne in Paris.
Bretibart News White House reporter Lee Stranahan called the accusations against Decker “serious,” suggesting that his credentials should be revoked, and another correspondent who witnessed the events, Andrew Feinberg, tweeted that despite his dislike of Gateway Pundit, its reporter had a right to attend the press briefing:
I’ll say this again: I’m no fan of @gatewaypundit’s politics but @lucianwintrich has every right 2 be in the briefing room if there for work
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) March 10, 2017
Decker appears not to agree that outlets like Gateway Pundit enjoys such a “right.”
An email to Decker seeking comment has not been returned. But in a statement to Business Insider, Decker denied any physical contact took place:
Decker said in a statement provided to Business Insider that he had a “conversation with a representative from the online publication Gateway Pundit” but that at no time did he get physical with him.
“The conversation was straightforward and direct,” he said. “I also informed the full White House pool that this representative was present in the Briefing Room. At no time did I accost or assault this individual. More than a dozen witnesses will attest to this fact.”
A Fox News representative also denied the assault allegations to Business Insider and said that Decker, a lawyer, was upset with some of Wintrich’s previous tweets and sought only to notify other members of the press corps that the Gateway Pundit writer was attending the daily briefing.
Why would Decker feel the need to announce to the room that someone from Gateway Pundit was there?
This sounds like D.C. media trying to control the process and staking out White House press briefing seats as its own territory.
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Comments
Gateway Pundit is really #FakeNews however there is NO reason to block/assault anyone going to a WH Presser
Gateway Pundit absolutely is not “fake news.” Yes, they aggregate news sources but those sources are often MSM sources. In fact, Gateway has uncovered several “fake” news stories themselves.
Wrong;. Jim Hoft has no credibility. He is a buffoon and a bigot, and contributes absolutely nothing to news reporting.
Gateway Pundit’s headlines frequently overstate the substance of the accurate article below the headline.
You me like the NYT, Washington Post, NBC, CBS, ABc and so on do?
I never read Gateway Pundit, but if that is enough to ban them, it should apply across the board.
“You mean”
arghhhh
No, I mean that Gateway’s articles are usually accurate on substance but not headlines, whereas in the publications you mention there is usually little accuracy anywhere.
The NY Times changed a story from January 20 about Trump being wiretapped. Now they deny the article ever existed. Either they were fake news then or fake news now. Thomas Friedman claimed the release of Podesta’s emails was a Pearl Harbor 9-11 event. is that fake news? Gateway Pundit has more credibility than the Times.
having more credibility than the NUT is a rather low bar… 😉
the only things likely to be accurate in the NYT are the ads and the box scores on the sports page.
everything else is usually #FakeNews
Gee, what does THAT sound like.
It also sounds like this clown from Fox. (Will be quickly changing the station when he’s on – and immediately going on Gateway Pundit.com)
I hate to tell you Rick but all websites do that. Even this wonderful site does it on occasion. The Daily Crawler is one of the absolute worst.
and, of course you have a citation to GP’s #FakeNews, right?
kindly show your w*rk or retract your claim.
Let’s start with his brazen lying about Darren Wilson’s supposed injuries. That itself should be enough to totally discredit him.
This perfectly fits the narrative that once again the press is stuck up (which they are), corrupt, snobbish and out of touch.
And, it may still not fit well that an openly gay man is allowed into this exclusive club called the White House Press Corps and there is still a lot of so called allies who are uncomfortable with that.
Gateway Pundit may on occasion exaggerate through their headers and may not be as accurate in their reporting as I’d like them to be, they most definitely, in my humble opinion, are not racist, nazi, or whatever else garbage this Fox News Radio reporter spewed out.
Write Fox and demand this a-hole be fired. Then boycott Fox until he is fired.
Pul-eeeeeeze…
This poor lil’ queer (their word) fabulist is having a public pearl-clutching over being “asaulted” in a public forum. How many times have we seen this?
http://lucianwintrich.com/
Poor Dim Jim Hoft went insane over his Great God Cheeto, and turned on the very ladies who had cared for and supported him, including Dana Loesch and Mary Catherine Hamm.
His blog is a cartoon.
He should change his last name to “Fields”. You’d be able to see an assault then.
Jim Hoft and gateway pundit were able to clearly see early on that only Trump could beat Hillary because only Trump was a leader, fighter, and projecting a positive agenda in tune with a majority of legal voters in this country. I never read them before 2015 but their intelligent coverage of Trump versus Cruz made me a daily reader of gateway pundit.
Your boy Cruz was a horrible candidate who couldn’t out think or out fight Trump. Cruz would have lost in a huge landslide against Hillary and her media lackeys.
In the end Cruz lacked the necessary adult qualities to lose with dignity and fall in line against Hillary for the good of the country. Now he is irrelevant.
Gary, your post is Exhibit “A” as to why I quit reading Gateway. (Your boy Cruz. Really?) So much sanctimony and moral preening by the Trumpeteers.
Don’t get me wrong. Trump was the nominee and I voted for him. That being said, many like you at Gateway Pundit thought it necessary to try to destroy Cruz in the process. Piss on all of you . . .
I had not heard that he turned on his caregivers, Dana and Mary Katherine, as you describe. Could you please site your source?
Both Dana and MK were Cruz supporters, so when GP turned on Cruz (not just supported Trump but literally turned on Cruz), they also attacked Dana and MK. It was ugly.
Here are a few examples:
https://wonkette.com/600153/rightwing-loons-all-out-of-love-after-lewandowski-arrest
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/04/apologize-now-16-cruz-supporting-female-reporters-wrong-trump-campaign-manager-fess/
http://www.redstate.com/jimjamitis/2017/02/26/fake-news-king-gateway-pundit-proves-hes-not-just-bad-reporter-hes-bad-person/
https://twitter.com/DLoesch/status/835715504069349377
Additionally, GP portrayed anyone who did not support Trump as “treasonous”:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/02/treasonous-nevertrumper-blog-attacks-gateway-pundit-desperately-seeks-relevance/
There’s a lot more, of course, but this should get you started.
Thank you Fuzzy….you’re right….UGLY! But I will still contend that Gateway Pundit does not represent the labels this fellow from Fox News Radio tried to apply. I think White Supremist, Racist, etc. is just too much beyond the pale.
Oh, I completely agree, Helen. Personally, I think it’s great that the knee-jerk Trump-hating crowd apply these labels because they are so obviously incorrect that it does nothing to bolster support for anti-Trumpers and only boosts support for Trump. This is a lesson that the progressives (both left and right) just can’t seem to learn.
I used to have Gateway Pundit bookmarked along with other Conservative or interesting sites. Something happened about the time Mr. Hoft got sick and almost died. Sure, his headlines were pure click bait, but the substance was informative. I think I dropped them when Hoft went all in for Trump. That part was ok with me, it’s opinion journalism. But then Hoft and GP attacked Cruz without mercy. That was the last straw. Haven’t gone back since.
This was pretty much my experience with Gateway Pundit. The site used to be pretty good about surfing the net and finding/foregrounding little-reported stories, and I always got a kick out of the hyperbolic headlines (mostly because I knew them for what they were: clickbait). But yeah, along the way, the site went off the rails and lost whatever ideological grounding it had. Attacking Cruz was a marker for that (not just at GP, but at other such sites). The bizarre and unsubstantiated hate and fury directed at Cruz coupled with the disgusting lies, misrepresentations, and pure spiteful meanness was a real turn off to me. GP wasn’t the only site I removed from my reading list over that exact point, but it was among the first. Every once in a while I go back to see how it is, but I can’t see any reason to re-add it to my reading list.
Gateway Pundit is a news aggregater but sometimes has original reporting. I know of no time they’ve stated anti-jewish, anti-black, or Nazi opinions.
This is BS. Fox needs to fire him.
I hear Jon Decker on Fox News every day…..His says “fair and balanced” like it actually disgusts him to say that. Whatever……I’m okay with the bias, it signals to me that Trump is driving them insane.
Deckeris Fox Radio’s version of Shepard Smith. Both need to go.
The old WH press corps is to news what taxi cabs are to Uber.
Isn’t it the purview of the WH to decide who to admit to the press briefing room? Did someone die and make Decker the final word?
IMO people who are p*ssy about GP tend to be anti-Trump and that site is openly pro-Trump. Just like the sites like Politico /Salon/Red State/etc. spin their article headlines to make them as negative as possible to Trump – GP goes the other way. I find it kind of funny to read objections about their headlines being click bait – many sites use headlines to draw in the readers. How many sites lived off of Palin articles which carried outrageous headlines?
http://www.redstate.com/jaycaruso/2017/03/12/can-stop-pretending-trumps-dismissal-us-attorneys-scandal/
Your opinion is wrong.
BFD – even you understand the phrase “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.”
I understand you are an opinionated, ill-read crank.
You’ll find posts from various view-points on RedState. But only if you read.
Not that it matters but once again you’ve confirmed my opinion that you are the nastiest poster on LI.
What strikes me about this exchange is the way that Decker seems to have internalized the leftist talking points about Trump being a fascist, racist, anti-woman xenophobe, and etc.
There is exactly zero evidence that Trump is any of those things, yet that’s the carved-in-stone talking point script the media follows and that the uninformed gobble up as Gospel. For Decker to spout this nonsense publicly is reason enough for Fox to think about reassigning him to the mailroom or something.
Maybe you can cite anywhere Decker said what you claim he did regarding T-rump.
I don’t find it anywhere.
The talking points are well-known and covered often on this site among many. Reports are that Decker called the GP reporter a fascist, a Nazi, a rep for a white supremacist site, and that he hates Jews, black people, and Hispanics. The sources are all linked in Anne’s article.
Do you imagine Decker would say any of this if the site wasn’t a staunch Trump supporter? Or that these same unfounded accusations are rooted in Trump and the perception of him as the godlet presiding over his basket of deplorables (whom, you may recall, are identifiable by their long list of isms)?
It is very unhelpful to engage in knee-jerk, Pavlovian responses to all things Trump. Doing so discredits any and all subsequent genuine concerns. Kinda like when the left screeched, “RAAAAACIST” until . . . we just didn’t care anymore.
I don’t imagine anything, including what you related, but obviously can’t support.
It seems you are the pooch in the Pavlovian scenario you try to smear me with.
You are better than that.
I don’t get what you are saying, Rags. Decker said what Anne reported, are you saying he didn’t? Or are you saying that what he said had nothing to do with GP’s all-in and often counterproductive support for Trump? I’m not being deliberately obtuse, I really don’t get your point here (and I want to).
One thing is crystal clear – Decker has no business assailing anyone asked to attend the White House briefing. It’s none of his business. Period. He should be fired.
If he wishes to report, editorialize, render opinion on the reporters invited, so be it.
I don’t recall visiting the GP sight in several years. I’ve been now and find nothing to support his claims. Regardless, it is not his place to confront those invited to attend.
There is NO difference between Gayway Pundit and FNC.
Pretty soon we can add CR to the list of beyond the pale sincophantisy.