The King Shoots the Messenger
Trump Solves Bad News by Banning the People Carrying It Into the Building
President Trump announced this week that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred from the White House, saying the organizations produced “fake news.” Reporters from the three outlets were turned away the following day, and Trump warned that additional outlets could face the same treatment. The organizations objected, and press freedom groups immediately called on news outlets to fight the bans.
Human civilization has finally improved upon the ancient political tradition of shooting the messenger.
We no longer shoot him.
We deactivate his badge.
That’s progress.
For thousands of years, kings struggled with the same terrible administrative problem: somebody keeps arriving with information.
The Persians had messengers. Rome had couriers. Medieval Europe had heralds. Western Union had telegram boys. Washington has cable correspondents wearing laminated cards around their necks.
Different technology. Same management crisis.
“Your Majesty, the northern army has been defeated.”
“Who told you?”
“A messenger.”
“Get rid of the messenger.”
“Excellent, sire. What about the northern army?”
“What northern army?”
Government solved.
Trump’s dispute with CNN, MS NOW and Politico therefore belongs to one of civilization’s oldest political genres: the ruler versus the person holding the envelope.
The beauty of shooting the messenger is efficiency.
Fixing the underlying problem might require committees, advisers, policy changes, meetings, lawyers and one of those enormous binders nobody has opened since 1997.
Removing the messenger requires a security guard.
Imagine if ordinary Americans could use this system.
Your doctor says your cholesterol is high? Ban the doctor from the kitchen.
Your accountant says you owe taxes? Revoke his access to QuickBooks.
Your bathroom scale says 238? Effective immediately, that scale is prohibited from entering the bathroom because of its continued reporting of fake weight.
Suddenly you weigh 175.
Democracy has finally discovered Weight Watchers by executive order.
Shooting the messenger is the oldest communications strategy in government, mainly because correcting the message requires paperwork. – Alan Nafzger
Western Union Would Have Been in Serious Trouble
Had modern political media management existed in 1870, Western Union would have lasted approximately six weeks.
“Mr. President, another telegram has arrived.”
“What does it say?”
“Railroad strike.”
“Fake telegram.”
“But sir…”
“Ban Western Union.”
By Thursday, the administration would be communicating exclusively through a telegraph company called Patriot Wire, whose messages would read:
ECONOMY EXCELLENT STOP
PRESIDENT HANDSOME STOP
WEATHER RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING ELSE STOP
Please tip your operator.
The fundamental difficulty with messengers is that they insist on bringing messages.
This has always been their weakness.
Nobody ever complains about the courier arriving with: “Great news, Your Majesty! The harvest is enormous, taxes are down and everyone says you look ten years younger.”
That messenger gets dinner.
The troublesome fellow is always the one standing nervously at the throne saying: “There has been a development.”
Whenever someone says, “There has been a development,” nobody has ever followed it with: “We found another birthday cake.”
The Modern Castle Gate
The modern White House press controversy has replaced drawbridges with access credentials.
Reporters from the affected organizations were turned away over the weekend, with photographers capturing an MS NOW correspondent reporting from the sidewalk outside the White House.
And that exposes the unfortunate weakness in banning reporters from buildings.
Outside still exists.
Washington has sidewalks. It has cameras. It has telephones. There is even an internet now, although Congress reportedly remains suspicious.
A correspondent expelled from the White House does not evaporate into constitutional mist. He walks approximately thirty yards, turns around and announces: “I’m reporting live from outside the White House because we have been banned from inside the White House.”
Congratulations. You have created programming.
Cable television can turn a locked door into nine hours of coverage.
At 8:00: “THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS BAN.”
At 9:00: “WHAT DOES THE BAN MEAN?”
At 10:00: “THE BAN: DAY TWO.”
By midnight there is a touchscreen map showing the exact location where a journalist’s credential stopped working.
A retired prosecutor appears. A constitutional scholar appears. A campaign strategist appears. Somebody appears whose only qualification seems to be owning glasses.
Eventually a cable anchor is standing beside a hologram of the First Amendment.
The King Discovers Public Relations
The paradox of attacking messengers is that the attack itself becomes another message.
Trump said the barred outlets report “fiction and lies” and suggested other organizations could be added. CNN defended its reporting, and the affected outlets indicated they would challenge the action — a fight that arrives with precedent already on the books, since a federal appeals court is still weighing the Associated Press’s ongoing lawsuit over its own White House access restrictions.
Thus begins the great communications merry-go-round.
President says reporters publish bad stories.
Reporters publish story about president saying reporters publish bad stories.
President sees story about reporters publishing story about his complaint about reporters publishing stories.
President complains again. Reporters cover complaint.
Eventually nobody remembers what the original story was.
This is political perpetual motion. If scientists could connect a turbine to Washington outrage, America could shut down every power plant by Tuesday.
The Royal Department of Pleasant Information
Every government eventually fantasizes about the perfect press corps.
The ideal reporter enters the briefing room.
“Mr. President, congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“My question is: congratulations?”
“Excellent question.”
“Follow-up: How magnificent?”
Now that is journalism government officials can work with.
The reporter receives renewed credentials, complimentary parking and perhaps a small commemorative mug.
But troublesome reporters keep asking questions containing words such as “why,” “when,” “how much” and the particularly inflammatory phrase: “Is that accurate?”
These people have clearly misunderstood communications.
A proper messenger should arrive at the castle gate carrying a scroll reading: EVERYTHING FINE.
He should then bow, collect his parking validation and leave.
The Messenger Always Comes Back
There is a reason the shoot-the-messenger joke has survived emperors, kings, dictators, presidents, editors and corporate executives.
Bad news possesses an irritating characteristic. It does not require the messenger’s cooperation to remain bad news.
If your basement is flooding, firing the plumber does not improve the carpet.
If your car’s warning light appears, covering it with electrical tape does not rebuild the transmission.
And if Western Union brings you an unpleasant telegram, arresting Western Union merely guarantees that tomorrow’s telegram reads: WESTERN UNION ARRESTED STOP
Which is worse.
That is the ancient lesson of the messenger.
He may be annoying. He may be biased. He may exaggerate. He may interrupt dinner. He may even work for cable television and say “breaking news” seventeen times before explaining that nothing has broken.
But once you throw him outside the castle, he does something rulers throughout history have found absolutely infuriating.
He turns around. He faces the castle. And he keeps talking.
15 Humorous Observations Behind the Premise
- If a newspaper prints unpleasant news, banning the newspaper creates the exciting possibility that the unpleasant news now gets a sequel.
- A White House press credential is apparently the modern version of being allowed through the castle gate without being attacked by geese.
- Kings once executed couriers. Modern governments have discovered the more civilized alternative: make their plastic badge stop working.
- Nothing says “that story is unimportant” quite like creating an entirely new national story about the reporter who wrote it.
- The medieval messenger at least had a horse. Today’s correspondent gets a rideshare, a security line, and six analysts discussing the security line.
- Banning journalists from a building does not prevent journalism, because reporters possess the dangerous technological breakthrough known as standing outside.
- The messenger problem exists because rulers have historically confused information about reality with responsibility for reality.
- If Western Union still delivered telegrams, Washington would eventually hold hearings demanding to know why the telegram seemed so negative.
- Government communications increasingly resembles restaurant management: “Your review was disappointing, so unfortunately you may no longer enter the kitchen.”
- The press and politicians have achieved a remarkable symbiosis: politicians complain about reporters, reporters report the complaint, politicians complain about that report.
- Removing journalists because they annoy you is like removing the bathroom scale because Thanksgiving happened.
- The most dangerous sentence in any palace remains: “Your Majesty, there’s something you should probably see.”
- The safest job in politics may eventually be royal herald whose entire vocabulary consists of, “Everything is tremendous.”
- America has modernized shooting the messenger. Nobody gets shot. The Wi-Fi password just stops working.
Satire Disclaimer: This is satire based on a real September 2026 dispute over White House press access. The historical scenes, Western Union conversations, royal heralds, bathroom scales, Patriot Wire telegrams and imagined dialogue are comic inventions, not factual quotations or reported events. The underlying access dispute is sourced to contemporaneous reporting from Reuters, the Associated Press and Axios.