April 16, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Jim Acosta, the CNN White House correspondent best known for his bombastic sparring with White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will be receiving an award dedicated to speaking “truth to power” and defending journalism.
The New York Press Club announced Friday it has selected Acosta to receive its “Truth to Power” award, The Wrap reports.
“We are proud to honor a man such as Jim Acosta, who has proven himself throughout his storied, decades-long career to be a journalist of the utmost integrity,” Press Club president Jane Tillman Irving said. “For his unwavering commitment to fact and journalism, we are pleased to add to Jim’s many accolades with the Gabe Pressman ‘Truth to Power’ award.”
Acosta has been with CNN since 2007 but raised his profile primarily through his questioning of Trump administration figures through White House press conferences. Liberals frame Acosta’s performance as tenacity in holding public figures accountable, while conservatives consider him rude and unprofessional. In an incident last year, Acosta not only attempted to speak over President Donald Trump’s attempts to take someone else’s question but pushed away a female aide attempting to take the microphone to give it to the next journalist.
The administration subsequently revoked Acosta’s White House credentials, but a federal judge ordered that they be reinstated on First Amendment grounds.
Rather than “asking hard questions,” the Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry argues that Acosta uses his turns at the White House microphone as “ploys meant to provoke a fight so that CNN can air it around the clock and analyze how brave Acosta is on a scale of ‘hero’ to ‘have my baby.’”
Even left-wing The Late Show host Stephen Colbert criticized Acosta during the confirmation hearings over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, of pulling a “d*** move” in requesting that Trump take questions specifically from female reporters about the unsupported assault allegations against Kavanaugh (Trump agreed to take questions from anyone on the subject). “We get it, you’re woke,” Colbert said.