By DANNY LAROSE

This week, President Donald Trump paused during a speech to take a sip of water. Similar to the Marco Rubio mid-speech sip from a few years back, the country had fun with it.

However, CNN introduced a four-person panel to analyze Trump’s sip and gave it a “breaking news” banner to boot.

CNN has been abusing that “breaking news” banner on their news programs for years. Seemingly every story they run earns the privilege. That, in its own right, is deserving of criticism. CNN has de-legitimized the definition of breaking news by applying the phrase to every single story.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but the president of the United States pausing during a speech to sip some water is not breaking news.

Furthermore, the four-person panel headed by Wolf Blitzer began to criticize the fact that Trump drank from a Fiji brand water bottle — saying it went against his “America First” agenda by drinking from a foreign brand.

The absurdity is evident. Like one conservative pundit has said, “Trump could walk on water and CNN would find a way to criticize him for it.”

This semester, I have spent a lot of time criticizing the apparent agenda the mainstream news media have against our president, but I am in fact quite happy that this occurs. When Donald Trump suggested the incarnation of a federally run news network, “Trump TV,” I was incensed. One of the best aspects of American news media is the absence of state-run TV, essentially pro-government propaganda generators, the likes of which we see most notably in North Korea, but across Europe as well.

The fact that America has a news media that continually keeps the president in check is a privilege we often overlook. Criticizing the government and the man or woman at the helm is part and parcel of what makes a democratic republic so appealing. That right to free speech to praise, criticize and pontificate is so important today, especially because many other countries do not enjoy that right nearly to the extent that we Americans do.

So, yes, I am in fact a fan of news media criticizing and judging the merits of a president and the government as a whole. I just wish they were consistent with their criticism across party lines and were a little more selective in these critiques — instead of spending precious air time talking about a drink from a water bottle.