Scaramucci learned his press tactics from Wall Street. They'll only get uglier.

Source: Washington Post

Scaramucci learned his press tactics from Wall Street. They’ll only get uglier.

By Heidi N. Moore July 28 at 1:24 PM

When Anthony Scaramucci took over as White House communications director, prompting the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer, the initial reaction from Washington journalists was warily optimistic. Where Spicer was aggressive and hostile, Scaramucci would be “smooth ” and affable. He even blew a kiss to end his first press briefing. These looked like signs of a thaw. After all, officials and reporters in Washington may still joke around after a bad story or a slight; the hostility is often for show. Politics is communal and built on co-dependency.

Finance is different. It is individualist and zero-sum. As a reporter and editor covering Wall Street for 18 years, I studied the industry’s aggressive approach toward the press: Financiers, and the multibillion-dollar companies they work for, are friendly and charming as long as you see things their way, and they do everything they can to win reporters over. But when reporters don’t buy their line, the Wall Street answer is to get intransigent journalists removed from stories.

Scaramucci’s vulgar phone call to the New Yorker this past week was far more typical than his genteel first briefing was. If the Trump administration’s approach to the media was alarming before, importing the attitudes and practices Scaramucci learned in New York will only make things worse.

Scaramucci, who ran a relatively modest firm in the enormous world of hedge funds, has proved himself adept at this style. President Trump reportedly liked that Scaramucci’s pushback about an inaccurate CNN story — complete with rumored threat of legal action — led to the departures of three veteran investigative journalists. Scaramucci pointedly called on a CNN reporter at his first briefing and a few days later said, on a hot microphone, that network boss Jeff Zucker “helped me get the job by hitting those guys,” referring to the unemployed reporters. To Trump, the fact that Scaramucci kneecapped three journalists in one swoop surely made him the kind of press guy he was looking for: effective in eliminating enemies.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/scaramucci-learned-his-press-tactics-from-wall-street-theyll-only-get-uglier/2017/07/28/aa085a3a-72e4-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html