Nationwide editorials draw response from Trump
WASHINGTON» Hundreds of newspaper editorial boards across the country answered a nationwide call Thursday to express disdain for President Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media, while some explained their decision not to do so. The same morning, the president tweeted that the “fake news media” is the “opposition party.”
The editorials came after The Boston Globe’s editorial board called on others to use their collective voice to respond to Trump’s war of words with news organizations in the United States.
Trump has labeled the news media “the enemy of the American people” and called a lot of the coverage “fake news.”
“Today in the United States we have a president who has created a mantra that members of the media who do not blatantly support the policies of the current U.S. administration are the ‘enemy of the peoand
Free press gets a boost with Senate resolution declaring it is not the enemy.
WASHINGTON» The Senate on Thursday went on record declaring “that the press is not the enemy of the people” — a rebuke to President Donald Trump, who declares the opposite on a regular basis.
Senators adopted by unanimous consent a resolution from Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York to declare the Senate’s support for a free press and the First Amendment protections afforded to journalists.
The Schatz-Schumer resolution “reaffirms the vital and indispensable role the free press serves to inform the electorate, uncover the truth, act as a check on the inherent power of the government, further national discourse and debate, and otherwise advance our most basic and cherished democratic norms and freedoms.” — CQ-Roll Call ple,’ ” stated The Globe’s editorial, which was published online Wednesday. “This is one of the many lies that have been thrown out by this president, much like an old-time charlatan threw out ‘magic’ dust or water on a hopeful crowd.”
The Globe’s editorial board made the appeal last week, urging newspaper editorial boards to produce opinion pieces about Trump’s attacks on the media. These boards, staffed by opinion writers, operate independently from news reporters and editors.
And as The Washington Post’s policy explains, the separation is intended to serve the reader, “who is entitled to the facts in the news columns to opinions on the editorial and ‘op-ed’ pages.”
The Globe reported Thursday that more than 300 of them obliged.
Trump responded to the editorials, tweeting Thursday that The Globe is “in collusion with other papers on free press” and that much of the media is “pushing a political agenda.”
Trump also tweeted: “There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!”
A month after taking the oath of office, Trump labeled the news media “the enemy of the American people.” In the year that followed, a CNN analysis concluded, he used the word “fake” — as in “fake news,” “fake stories,” “fake media” or “fake polls” — more than 400 times. He once fumed, The New York Times reported, because a TV on Air Force One was tuned to CNN.
Then last week, at a political rally in Pennsylvania, Trump told his audience that the media was “fake, fake disgusting news.”
“Whatever happened to honest reporting?” Trump asked the crowd. Then he pointed to a group of journalists covering the event. “They don’t report it. They only make up stories.”
In response, the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s editorial board wrote: “Let’s start with a fundamental truth: It is and always has been in the interests of the powerful to dismiss and discredit those who could prove a check on their power. President Donald Trump is not the first politician to openly attack the media for fulfilling its watchdog role. He is, perhaps, the most blatant and relentless about it.”
This was in the Houston Chronicle: “What makes Trump’s undermining of the press worse is that it’s not taking place in bureaucracy’s backrooms. Trump’s insults directed at reporters and news organizations, and his threats to limit press access and freedoms, are front and center at news conferences, at rallies, on Twitter. And they’re incessant.”
And this was from The Denver Post: “We believe that an informed electorate is critical to democracy; that the public has a right to know what elected officials, public figures and government bureaucracies are doing behind closed doors; that journalism is integral to the checks and balances of power; and that the public can trust the facts it reads in this newspaper and those facts coming from the mainstream media.”