Amal attacks Trump for ‘vilifying’ media
AMAL Clooney yesterday said Donald Trump “vilifies the media” and makes journalists all over the world more vulnerable to abuse.
The human rights lawyer championed the benefits of a free press as she took aim at the US president, who often attacks reporters for what he calls fake news.
The blast by Mrs Clooney, wife of movie star George, came in a speech at the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London, where Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt also spoke. Mrs Clooney said: “When it comes to the right to a free press we are seeing the 13th consecutive year of decline.
“This decline in media freedom doesn’t only mean that journalists have fewer rights, it means we all have.
“Because as James Madison, one of America’s Founding Fathers, warned us more than 200 years ago – the right to a free press is the only effectual guardian of every other right.
“Yet today, journalists are under attack like never before. They are dying not only while covering wars but because they are exposing crimes committed in war, exposing abuses of power committed in peacetime.”
She added: “Reports suggest that only one in 10 people in the world lives in a country with a free press.
“And today, the country of James Madison has a leader who vilifies the media – making honest journalists all over the world more vulnerable to abuse.” She also slammed world leaders for giving “little more than a collective shrug” over the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabian agents in Istanbul last year.