Tag: freedom of the press

Conservatives’ war on the press has gotten dangerous — and it’s only going to get worse

Credit: Melissa Joskow, Media Matters

President Donald Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric is putting the lives of American journalists at risk, Mother Jones’ Mark Follman reported Thursday, citing comments from law enforcement leaders and top security officials at two major news outlets.

Trump’s years of vicious invective — echoed by his allies at Fox News — are bearing fruit. Reporters are facing a surge in bomb and death threats, organized harassment, online publication of their personal information (“doxxing”), and threatening mail sent to their home addresses, Follman’s sources warn. One security director at a major television news network told Follman that the threats spike when Trump rails against the network by name, with the harassers often using Trump’s “fake news” language, and that they are primarily aimed at journalists who report on the White House and the Trump-Russia probe — the very targets of the president’s ire.

This heightened fear of violence against reporters will certainly continue throughout Trump’s tenure as president. There’s no indication that he will ever stop demonizing journalists — this is a deliberate strategy to discredit them for political gain that he has continued employing even after a man was arrested for threatening to murder reporters while using Trump’s anti-press rhetoric. But there’s reason to fear that even after Trump is no longer president — especially if he wins re-election in 2020 — his party will continue down the same path. Naked, vicious hostility to the press could become a central plank of the Republican Party, turning elevated concerns about potential violence into the new normal.

View the complete September 14 article on the MediaMatters.org website here.

‘Totally dishonest’: Trump asserts only he can be trusted over opponents and ‘fake news’

The following article by Ashley Parker was posted on the Washington Post website August 30, 2018:

President Trump criticized the media, calling many reports “fake news” at a rally on Aug. 2 in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (The Washington Post)

Over roughly the past day, President Trump has decried the “totally dishonest” media, with its “fake news” and “fake books.” He has argued that Google is biased against conservatives. And he has accused NBC News of “fudging” the tape of an interview with him that has been available online for more than a year.

The president has even declared there is no chaos in his White House, which he claimed is a “ ‘smooth running machine’ with changing parts,” despite the tumult that emanates almost daily from within its walls.

Trump’s assertions — all on Twitter, some false, some without clear evidence — come just over nine weeks before the midterm elections that could help determine his fate, and they are bound by one unifying theme: All of his perceived opponents are peddling false facts and only Trump can be trusted.

View the complete article here.

‘Not the enemy of the people’: 70 news organizations will blast Trump’s attack on the media

The following article by Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., was posted on the Washington Post website August 12, 2018:

President Trump is not the first leader to label journalists as “enemies of the people” and creators of “fake news.” Credit: Melissa Macaya, The Washington Post

For most of the past 19 months, President Trump’s war of words with American news organizations has been more of a one-sided barrage — at least according to the Boston Globe’s editorial board.

Trump labeled the news media “the enemy of the American people” a month after taking the oath of office. 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.

And last week, at a political rally in Pennsylvania, Trump told his audience that the media was “fake, fake disgusting news.”

View the complete article here.

Trump Will Have Blood on His Hands

The following commentary by Bret Stephens was posted on the New York Times August 3, 2018:

His demonization of the news media won’t fall on deaf ears.

The crowd at a Make America Great Again rally in Pennsylvania, stoked by President Trump’s statements, was particularly hostile to the press. Credit: Al Drago, The New York Times

The voice, if I had to guess, belongs to that of a white American male in late middle age. The accent is faintly Southern, the manner taunting but relaxed. It’s also familiar: I’m pretty sure he’s left a message on my office number before. But the last voice mail left almost no impression. Not this time.

“Hey Bret, what do you think? Do you think the pen is mightier than the sword, or that the AR is mightier than the pen?”

He continues: “I don’t carry an AR but once we start shooting you f—ers you aren’t going to pop off like you do now. You’re worthless, the press is the enemy of the United States people and, you know what, rather than me shoot you, I hope a Mexican and, even better yet, I hope a n— shoots you in the head, dead.”

View the complete post here.

Trump takes us-versus-them media war to new heights

The following article by Amie Parnes was posted on the Hill website August 3, 2018:

When CNN’s Jim Acosta was booed and cursed at a campaign rally for President Trump this week, many political observers said it exemplified how much the media environment has changed under the current administration — and that it is a sign of what’s to come.

On Thursday, tensions reached new heights when Acosta walked out of the White House briefing room after press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to answer a pointed question about whether she agreed with Trump that the press was the “enemy of the people.”

Acosta noted that Ivanka Trump, earlier on Thursday, had said she did not agree with that sentiment.

View the complete article here.

Pence: Press freedom is great, until reporters do something we don’t like

The following article by Tommy Christopher was posted on the ShareBlue.com website July 29, 2018:

Pence claimed he and Trump ‘stand for’ freedom of the press — then immediately contradicted himself.

Credit: Fox News

Mike Pence added insult to injury when he claimed that he and Trump’s administration are big believers in freedom of the press — and then immediately defended Trump’s decision to ban a CNN reporter from covering an event.

On this week’s edition of Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” even host and pro-Trump zealot Maria Bartiromo seemed disgusted with Pence over the administration’s decision to bar CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from a White House event last week just because she asked questions at the end of another event.

“Was it necessary to throw out Kaitlin Collins from CNN the other day?” Bartiromo asked Pence in an interview. “What happened?”

View the complete article here.

Trump’s favorite conspiracy theorist joins his attacks on CNN

The following article by Oliver Willis was posted on the ShareBlue.com website July 27, 2018:

Trump and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones are both smearing CNN this week and pushing a fake story that conservatives are being ‘silenced.’

Less than 48 hours after Trump banned a CNN reporter from covering a White House event just for asking a question, his ally and informal adviser Alex Jones joined him in attacking the news network.

On Wednesday, after CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins asked Trump a series of questions during a press availability, Trump’s new deputy communications director Bill Shine personally banned Collins from covering another supposedly open press event later that day.

Taking his cue from the administration’s hostility to the free press — Trump prefers sycophantic outlets like Fox News — Jones followed suit with his own attacks on CNN.

View the complete article here.

New White House official defends decision to ban CNN reporter by scolding other reporters

The following article by Aaron Rupar was posted on the ThinkProgress website July 26, 2018:

“You ask her if we ever used the word ‘ban.'”

Credit: Screengrab

On Thursday morning, incoming White House Communications Director Bill Shine defended the Trump administration’s decision to bar CNN reporter Kaitlan Collinsfrom a public event at the White House by making a fuss over the exact language he used during the meeting in which he informed Collins of his decision.

During a brief interaction with reporters, the former Fox News executive admonished reporters to ask Collins “if we ever used the word ‘ban.’”

“What word would you use, Bill?” a reporter asked him.

View the complete article here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cnn-reporter-barred-from-white-house-event-drawing-journalists-protests/2018/07/25/81dd6b5e-9057-11e8-bcd5-9d911c784c38_story.html?utm_term=.2ad4a4e61880&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

The following article by Paul Farhi and Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website July 25 2018:

CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins said she was barred on July 25, from an open White House media event after officials objected to her questions. (Melissa Macaya /The Washington Post)

A CNN reporter said she was blocked from an open media event at the White House on Wednesday after officials objected to questions she asked President Trump at an event earlier in the day.

Reporter Kaitlan Collins said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and communications director Bill Shine told her she was banned from a late-afternoon announcement in the Rose Garden involving Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker a few hours after she sought to question Trump during a press-pool “spray” in the Oval Office.

Blocking a credentialed White House reporter from an event open to all members of the media is highly unusual and possibly unprecedented, and it marks another low point in the Trump White House’s highly strained relationship with the news media.

View the complete article here.

After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the American press

The following article by Margaret Sullivan was posted on the Washington Post website July 16, 2018:

Here are the full remarks and responses to questions from President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a news conference on July 16 in Helsinki. (The Washington Post)

It was press conference as national nightmare, summed up succinctly by the BBC on its home page minutes later with this headline: “Trump Sides With Russia Against FBI.”

And though Monday’s joint Trump-Putin post-summit appearance in Helsinki was a news conference — with some admirably tough questions from two experienced wire-service reporters — it also was a moment in which no media interpretation was really necessary.

Everything was right out there in the open. Believe your eyes and ears.

View the complete article on the Washington Post website here.