‘Free press under assault in Trump era’ – Clinton
HILLARY Clinton has said press rights and free speech are “under open assault” under Donald Trump, and has likened his administration to an authoritarian regime.
The former US secretary of state did not mince words in a lecture on freedom of speech in New York City on Sunday night. She said Mr Trump seems to reject the role of a free press in a democracy in “an all-out war on truth, facts and reason”.
She told the PEN America World Voices festival in Manhattan: “We are living through an all-out war on truth, facts and reason.
“When leaders deny things we can see with our own eyes, like the size of a crowd at the inauguration, when they refuse to accept settled science when it comes to urgent challenges like climate change ... it is the beginning of the end of freedom, and that is not hyperbole. It’s what authoritarian regimes through history have done.”
Mrs Clinton, who was delivering the festival’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, began by discussing threats to press freedom and free speech around the globe, including in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
But she soon turned her remarks to the United States under Mr Trump, saying that such freedoms are “in the most perilous position I’ve seen in my lifetime”.
Mrs Clinton said of her 2016 election opponent: “Today we have a president who seems to reject the role of a free press in our democracy.
“Although obsessed with his own press coverage, he evaluates it based not on whether it provides knowledge or understanding, but solely on whether the daily coverage helps him and hurts his opponents.”
And she added: “Now, given his track record, is it any surprise that according to the latest round of revelations, he joked about throwing reporters in jail to make them talk?”
Mrs Clinton was referring to recent revelations from memos by former FBI director James Comey. It was her only reference to Comey, who was sacked by Mr Trump.
Mrs Clinton’s remarks were followed by an onstage conversation with Nigerian-born novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, largely about the 2016 election.
in conversation with Ms Adichie, Mrs Clinton spoke of the difficulty she had in finding a balance between one’s personal roles and relationships and one’s professional roles.
“It shouldn’t be either-or,” she said, noting that she had long searched for the right mix.