Today is the press’ day to publish editorials supporting freedom of the press, but not every newspaper is doing it. Their reasons are varied. Some simply don’t have the financial structure to take on a major issue anymore.
Those papers have already lost the war. Like New York’s Daily News, taken over by the Trump mouthpiece of Sinclair to be the “nothing much” somewhere on the internet.
Illustration: Bangor Daily Tribune
As editorials show up in my inbox, I’ll reblog or post them, as I can. Some of them are “Pay to Read” and this is one of those days when that policy is downright foolish, so modern or not, I think press editorials need to be seen and read by as many people as possible, whether or not they are subscribers.
If trampling truth and publishing only what “our leader” (not my leader, but maybe yours) wants to hear is “the modern way,” then heaven help us all.
Thatis tyranny and our freedom will be, as they say, toast.
Hundreds of newspaper editorial boards across the country answered a nationwide call Thursday to express disdain for President 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” are 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.
The Globe’s op-ed board wrote in an editorial published online Wednesday that, “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.
“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.
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 and 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 Thursday morning, tweeting that the Globe is “in collusion with other papers on free press” and that many of the media are “pushing a political agenda.”
The Boston Globe, which was sold to the the Failing New York Times for 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (plus 800 million dollars in losses & investment), or 2.1 BILLION DOLLARS, was then sold by the Times for 1 DOLLAR. Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!
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 are “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.”
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.
To this president, the journalist’s time-honored role in a democracy is meaningless. Reporters present a fact-finding counter to the fanciful narrative Trump spins daily.
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.
Not only do they pose a danger to journalists’ safety — history tells us mere bias can progress to harsh words, to bullying and even to violence if society comes to accept the escalating forms of ridicule as normal — but there’s a more insidious threat. Trump’s broad brush undermines the collective credibility of thousands of American journalists across the country, and the world, who make up the Fourth Estate — so called for its watchdog role over the other three branches of government.
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.
Trump is a difficult politician to cover. His tweets and factually inaccurate statements frequently put him at loggerheads with the media. In a vacuum void of his outlandish statements, some of Trump’s policies would earn more straightforward media coverage. It has become a destructive cycle where the media covers Trump’s words and instead of self-reflection following scathing media reports, Trump cries fake news.
We all — as citizens — have a stake in this fight, and the battle lines seem pretty clear. If one first comes successfully for the press as an “enemy of the American People,” what stops someone for coming next for your friends? Your family? Or you?
Not even President Richard Nixon, whose original “enemies list” of the 20 private citizens he hoped to use his public office to “screw” included three journalists, tried to incite violence against reporters. While stewing privately about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as “enemies . . . trying to stick the knife right in our groin,” not even Nixon tagged the lot of us, Soviet-style, as “enemies of the people.” Nor did even he dare to take on the idea that our free press is worth protecting.
President Donald Trump. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)
However, some newspapers decided not to run editorials on the issue, including The Washington Post. This newspaper’s editorial board haspreviouslyresponded to Trump’s attacks on news organizations, but Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt said Saturday that the board would not participate in the organized response.
Neither did the Los Angeles Times.
Or the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Chronicle’s editorial page editor, John Diaz, wrote that “It’s not that we take issue with the argument that Trump’s assault on the truth generally, and his efforts to diminish the free press specifically, pose a serious threat to American democracy.” But, he said, the newspaper values independence — a sentiment that was shared by the Los Angeles Times.
“The Globe’s argument is that having a united front on the issue — with voices from Boise to Boston taking a stand for the First Amendment, each in a newspaper’s own words — makes a powerful statement,” Diaz wrote. “However, I would counter that answering a call to join the crowd, no matter how worthy the cause, is not the same as an institution deciding on its own to raise a matter.”
The Globe’s call represents one side of a debate about how the media should view and respond to the president’s splenetic attacks on the press — or whether they should do anything at all.
Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who has responded directly to Trump’s attacks, said the paper’s reporting on the president is not a result of hostility. Baron told the Code Media conference in California: “The way I view it is, we’re not at war with the administration; we’re at work. We’re doing our jobs.”
Baron told interviewers that The Post would have approached a Hillary Clinton administration with the same aggressive reporting.
On Thursday the Senate unanimously passed a resolution that “affirms the press is not the enemy of the people” and “condemns the attacks on the institution of the free press.”
But at least one newspaper said that the president is not its primary concern.
The editorial board for the Capital Gazette in Annapolis wrote that the newspaper is more concerned with how its community sees it.
“It’s not that we disagree with concerns about the president’s language in speeches and on social media,” the op-ed board said. “We noted with regret the hurtful nature of his remarks last month calling most journalists dishonest even as we attended funerals for five friends and colleagues killed in the June 28 attack on our newsroom.
“We’re just not coordinating with other news organizations because the president’s opinion, frankly, is just not that important to us. We are far more concerned about what this community thinks of us.”
Editor’s Note: The Shinbone Star today joins hundreds of America’s newspapers by participating in a call for editorials defending the vital role of a free press in our democracy.
By SHINBONE STAR EDITORIAL BOARD
Longtime journalists expect a certain amount of abuse. We work for hours on a story or a beautiful page layout that later in the day will be trampled underfoot on a city bus or sail down a rain-washed gutter.
We’re unappreciated, but most of us understand that it comes with the territory.
We’re bearers of bad news, vultures perching outside a dead man’s home. We’re the ones asking tough questions on your darkest day, sharks in the chum, feeding hungrily and seeming to exult in your personal tragedy.
We “never print any good news,” and we’re just the kind of people who will wryly point out that you don’t remember it when we do. We like dark…
I have a very nice life. By most objective standards, I have nothing to complain about. Then why do I walk around with a knot in my stomach and a sense of dread in my heart? The answer is – I read the news. Every day. Somewhat obsessively.
The question is – Why? Why do I subject myself to ongoing angst when I could be living a minimally stressful retirement? The daily workings of the government usually have no effect on my existence. Even a major international crisis rarely intrudes on my day-to-day life. The policies of HUD rarely, if ever interfere with my peaceful existence in the ruralish suburbs of Connecticut.
Dogs playing in my peaceful backyard in the woods
So why can’t I stay away from the major source of anxiety in my life? And why do I feel anxiety about things that will probably have little or no effect on me or my family? Other than masochistic tendencies, I’m not sure about the answer.
I do know that I came from generations of passionately involved women who actively protested the injustices of their day. My grandmother protested against the czar in Russia and my mother marched in favor of labor unions in America. They brought me up to feel connected to the world around me. They made sure I empathized with those less fortunate than me. They made sure I chaffed at injustice and inequality. They made me incapable of turning away from the deprivation and suffering of others.
Early 1900’s protests against the czar in Russia
My mother and grandmother were both activists. They put their money where their mouths were. I’m not like that. I’m an introverted coward. I’m slightly claustrophobic about crowds. I don’t do rallies or marches or protests. But I sit at home and cheer them on and worry. Maybe staying informed is my penitence for not being out on the barricades.
Protests in favor of Unions in the 1930’s and 1940’s
In the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, my grandmother chided me for not being a part of the protests that were taking place at Columbia University, where I was at college. The whole anti-Vietnam war movement started with Mark Rudd and the Columbia SDS chapter.
Their protests made the news. Photos of police on horseback clubbing students at my school were everywhere. The movement that was created there shaped the world for the next few years until the war was finally ended. It also shaped the whole Baby Boomer generation.
1967-1971 protests at Columbia University in NYC
My grandmother said that if the young generation didn’t make a revolution to change things for the better, then who would? I could have easily been a part of my generation’s ‘revolution’. But I wasn’t. It was a good one and I missed out.
My form of political involvement
So today, I read. I can’t stop, even when what I read depresses and scares me. On some level, I believe that being informed is a way of being involved. I also talk to family and friends and try to get them involved with the issues that interest me.
On Facebook, I take comfort in knowing there are so many others out there who also care about what I care about. So, I post and share articles that I think my online ‘friends’ should know about. Some of these people are honest to God activists. At least I can encourage and support them. It wouldn’t satisfy my grandmother, but it’s the best I can do.
The kids in the orphanage in Nicaragua where we adopted three children didn’t cry. They’d already done their crying someplace else.
They might have looked concerned but they didn’t cry when passed from one person to the next like a bowl of mashed potatoes being passed at Thanksgiving dinner. In their tiny heads they had figured out the futility of complaint. There was no use crying, it wouldn’t change anything.
They had already lost everything.
Children cope with abandonment. They will appear to cope at least. And how they appear to cope is that they don’t cry. It won’t be long before the little children who have been separated from their parents by American immigration officials, who feel the same as if their parents had abandoned them on the side of the road, it won’t be long before they stop crying. Because crying won’t change anything.
Something has changed in me. A switch has been turned off. I am no longer obsessed with Donald Trump. I don’t feel compelled to follow every statement, every interview, every tweet from the President. He no longer seems as important or relevant.
Trump’s National Security and Foreign Policy Cabinet members apparently agree with me. They have recently told the rest of the world to basically ignore Trump, particularly his tweets. They have tried to reassure everyone that our foreign policy is what it always was, not what Trump seems to think it is — or wants it to be.
Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said that he doesn’t even read Trump’s tweets. Nothing to see here folks. Move along!
The government seems to be working over and around Trump in many ways. Not with him or for him. He can still veto things and issue signing statements, but what he says and does on a daily basis is no longer of major importance to the rest of his administration. Or to me.
I don’t want to watch Trump any more or hear him talk. It’s like chalk on a blackboard. I’m over him. I’m sick of being sickened or outraged. At least first-hand.
I still read editorials and articles analyzing the effects of things that Trump says and does. I can’t avoid him completely on Cable News, which I still watch. But it’s as if he is dead to me now. I don’t get a knot in my stomach every time I hear him say something awful. He no longer has the power to push all my buttons up to eleven, over and over, day after day.
I expect him to be vile and psychopathic, outrageously ignorant and untruthful, narcissistic, annoying and enraging. All the time. So nothing surprises me or ‘gets’ to me anymore. Everything he does is a big “Whatever! What else is new?”
I don’t know where this leaves me going forward. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to sustain this healthy distance from the toxicity of Donald Trump. I just know that this attitude is better for my blood pressure and my overall physical and mental well-being. My mood has improved and I’m more upbeat and positive. So far, so good.
I’m still passionate about what is happening in my country. I’m still following the news closely every day. It’s just not all about Donald Trump anymore for me. Maybe the key to surviving the rest of his term is for everyone to marginalize him. Make him irrelevant. Laugh at him and don’t take him seriously.
If nothing else, it will drive Trump friggin’ crazy!
You don’t need to try to find the soul of every evil person and group on the planet. It’s perfectly fine to recognize evil when you see it and walk away. This is the point when I begin to get edgy, worried, and frankly irritable.
If it isn’t Twitter’s place to suspend a hate group operating on their system, who else should do it? Would you prefer the government stop it?
Hitler could have been stopped. There was more than enough time to put an end to him, but no one did it. No one stopped him. Everyone was worried about protecting Hitler’s freedom of expression. You wouldn’t want to impinge on the man who hates everyone’s civil rights, would you?
I’m sure these same people who hate all the rest of us — and if in power, would probably kill us — will now take legal action because their “civil rights” are supposed to protect them from … what? Spreading the evil they spew? But of course, they entirely object to us — “those people” — having civil rights at all. Dig into the irony. It’s a deep, profound irony.
There has to be a stopping point. There must be a “no more” point.
I get civil rights better than most people, but I also understand that failing to have a “stop, this has to end” point has had catastrophic results not only in England, but everywhere.
Someone has to say “No more. It’s over.” I’m glad it’s Twitter because it is their company and they do have the right to shut them down. If there’s one plus to private industry, the right to not serve parties who do not observe company policy has got to be a big one. If a cake maker can refuse to bake for a gay couple, I’m pretty sure Twitter can stop propagating a hate group.
You want my opinion? I think any group which objects to others having civil rights and First Amendment protections should be relieved of their own. After all, they don’t need them anyway. They said so.
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We’re unappreciated, but most of us understand that it comes with the territory.
