More than 350 US newspapers rebuke Trump
US newspapers big and small hit back on Thursday at US President Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on the news media, launching a coordinated campaign of editorials stressing the importance of a free press.
The Boston Globe and the New York Times took part in the push along with more than 350 other newspapers of all sizes including some in states that Trump won during the 2016 presidential election.
The Globe said it coordinated publication among the newspapers and carried details of it on a database on its website.
Each paper ran an editorial, which is usually an unsigned article that reflects the opinion of an editorial board on a particular subject and is separate from the news and other sections in a paper.
The Globe’s editorial accused Trump of carrying out a “sustained assault on the free press.”
“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 US administration are the ‘enemy of the people,’” the Globe editorial said.
“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,” it added in a piece entitled Journalists Are Not The Enemy.
The coordinated effort comes amid Trump’s persistent claims that mainstream media outlets that publish articles critical of him are churning out “fake news.”
WASHINGTON:
Free press advocates argue that Trump’s efforts threaten the role of the news media as a check against abuse of power in government and imperil the constitutional First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.
The New York Times, one of the most frequent targets of Trump’s criticism, ran a short, seven-paragraph editorial under a giant headline with all capital letters that read A FREE PRESS NEEDS YOU and with the statement that it is only right for people to criticise the press, say, for getting something wrong.
Free press advocates say Trump is a real threat to the role of the press.
“I don’t think the press can just sit back and take it, they need to make their case when the most powerful man in the world tries to undercut the First Amendment,” said Ken Paulson, a former editor-in-chief of USA Today who heads the Newseum’s First Amendment Center and is dean of communications at Middle Tennessee State University.
But Paulson questioned whether editorials would be effective. “The people who read editorials don’t need to be convinced,” he said. “They are not the ones trying to shout you down at presidential rallies.”