Trump Against the Media
Published in El País
(Spain) on 24 January 2017
by Ron Sachs (link to original)
The president of the U.S. could become a threat to freedom of speech.
During the election campaign, Donald Trump had an enormously tense and openly hostile relationship toward the media. Now installed in the White House, the president of the United States seems to be determined to intensify his quarrel with journalists, whom he considers “the most dishonest human beings on earth.” He has accused them of falsifying data and lying only because they showed that the public attendance at his inauguration was lower than the attendance recorded at Barack Obama’s inauguration. His attacks are unbelievable, intolerable and inappropriate for a president.
You only need to see the aerial images broadcast by major newspapers and North American TV stations to verify that Obama was surrounded by many more people than Trump. That the presidential team of the most powerful nation in the world refutes data that is so overwhelmingly obvious, affirming that there are “alternative facts,” is an insult to intelligence.
In all seriousness, the most terrifying issue in this discrediting of the press is that neither Trump nor his advisers seem to understand that it is journalists who scrutinize the powerful, and not vice versa. Questioning the credibility of the media, ridiculing them, calling them “scum,” and accusing them of acting out of political interest was a part of the Trump campaign strategy. The truly dangerous thing is that Trump’s administration considers journalists an obstacle to governing and holds that they delegitimize the administration’s work. If the U.S. president continues down this road, he has every chance of becoming a serious threat to freedom of speech and democracy.
During the election campaign, Donald Trump had an enormously tense and openly hostile relationship toward the media. Now installed in the White House, the president of the United States seems to be determined to intensify his quarrel with journalists, whom he considers “the most dishonest human beings on earth.” He has accused them of falsifying data and lying only because they showed that the public attendance at his inauguration was lower than the attendance recorded at Barack Obama’s inauguration. His attacks are unbelievable, intolerable and inappropriate for a president.
You only need to see the aerial images broadcast by major newspapers and North American TV stations to verify that Obama was surrounded by many more people than Trump. That the presidential team of the most powerful nation in the world refutes data that is so overwhelmingly obvious, affirming that there are “alternative facts,” is an insult to intelligence.
In all seriousness, the most terrifying issue in this discrediting of the press is that neither Trump nor his advisers seem to understand that it is journalists who scrutinize the powerful, and not vice versa. Questioning the credibility of the media, ridiculing them, calling them “scum,” and accusing them of acting out of political interest was a part of the Trump campaign strategy. The truly dangerous thing is that Trump’s administration considers journalists an obstacle to governing and holds that they delegitimize the administration’s work. If the U.S. president continues down this road, he has every chance of becoming a serious threat to freedom of speech and democracy.
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