Nation should be alarmed by GOP cries of ‘fake news’
Catherine Rampell
We members of the media probably sound a little self-serving when we complain about constant attacks on press freedom.
Press freedom is a sacred democratic value, enshrined right there in the Constitution, we huff to whoever will listen.
Lots of Americans remain unconvinced. A recent American Press Institute survey found that 6 in 10 Republicans believe news organizations primarily just prevent political leaders from doing their jobs.
Maybe, Americans think, efforts to “open up our libel laws,” dismissals of the “lamestream media” as “fake news” and even threats of violence against journalists could do the country some good.
To those indifferent to abstract political ideals, let me offer a more practical reason to be alarmed by assaults on media freedom: the fact that the government can, and inevitably will, screw up.
Recent events suggest that Republicans’ war on the media should not be viewed in isolation. It’s part of a broader strategy to discredit and disempower any independent voice trying to hold politicians to account.
Take, for example, the relentless attacks on the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency created in 1974 precisely so that Congress and the public could rely on technical expertise from independent analysts with no dog in the fight.
Sensing that the news on the Senate’s latest health care bill would be bad, though, Republicans have been doing everything they can to smear the character, motives and competence of the agency.
In March, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a surrogate for President Donald Trump, called the agency “corrupt” and “dishonest.”
This past week the White House criticized the accuracy of the CBO in a video that misspelled the word “inaccurately.” (You can’t make this stuff up.)
The last straw came in an op-ed in The Washington Post, where two Trump officials pre-emptively declared that whatever the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported on the Senate Republicans’ health care bill, “the CBO’s estimates will be little more than fake news.”
That is, now the CBO is being slurred with the nastiest comparison of all: to the media.
The nation’s independent federal statistical agencies have found themselves in similar crosshairs — praised when their numbers reflect favorably upon Republicans but mercilessly attacked when their data show otherwise.
The nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics has also been repeatedly and unfairly accused of partisanship under this administration. The neutering of this agency has made it much harder to ensure that federal officials are making decisions in the best interests of the country — an embarrassment at home and abroad.
And then there’s the Trump administration’s unrelenting attacks on an independent federal judiciary, the last best hope against government excess and impropriety.
The common message from Trump officials and co-partisans on Capitol Hill through all these actions: Trust us, and us alone. Anyone who contradicts us is spouting #fakenews.
Maybe this plan will buy Republicans some time, but they can’t outrun bad news forever. At some point, presumably, members of the public will notice if they, oh, lose their health insurance. Just because Trump declares a Russia story or the unemployment rate “fake” doesn’t make it so.