While it might be tempting to dismiss President Donald Trump’s incendiary characterization of the news media as the “enemy of the American people” as simply more reckless hyperbole, it would be wrong to do so.
Words have power, and none so much here in the United States as the words of the president.
The news media are not enemies of the people, and a free press is critical to an informed citizenry that seeks to hold its government accountable. Disparaging the press in the face of unfavorable coverage is a cheap way to dodge the issues and wouldn’t be allowed in a basic debate class.
That’s why we are joining hundreds of other newspapers throughout the country in publishing editorials on the importance of a free press and protesting the characterization of the news media as an enemy of the people.
Donald Trump is not the first president to be frustrated by negative press coverage. The press has been adversarial since the earliest days of our nation, when our founding fathers made frequent use of newspapers — some of them owned newspapers — to advance their political ideologies, and more frequently, to disparage each other, often anonymously.
And that frustration, from Trump and every other president before him, is not always unwarranted. The press is not perfect and never has been, and bias has always existed in media, from the earliest days of American newspapers.
Trump is also not the first president to go after the press in an effort to blunt criticism or halt it altogether. That honor goes to our second president, John Adams, who signed a law making it illegal to make false statements disparaging the government. A newspaper editor was prosecuted under that law for criticizing Adams in a manner so mild it would barely be noticed today.
The Sedition Act of 1798 was repealed a few years later, after Thomas Jefferson was elected president.
Said Jefferson: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
That did not, however, put a stop to the storied history of presidents feuding with the press.
That includes the Obama administration, which also limited press access to information and was particularly hostile to Fox News. Not only did that administration try to temporarily ban Fox journalists from some press conferences (as Trump has done with reporters as well) — the Department of Justice under Obama took the unprecedented step of investigating a Fox News reporter for allegedly violating the Espionage Act of 1917 in reporting on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
What’s different here is that Trump has engaged in a consistent and sustained campaign against the news media, and when the president talks, people listen.
A recent Ipsos poll found that 29 percent of Americans, primed by the president, believe the news media to be the enemy of the people. Among Republicans, that number climbs to 48 percent. A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday had similar findings: 26 percent of Americans believe it, and among Republicans, it’s 51 percent.
That’s cause for concern.
More alarming is the fact that 26 percent of Americans believe the president should have the power to shut down news outlets that are “behaving badly.”
This is not thin-skinned editors whining about mean things the president said, and it’s not a secret media conspiracy to advance a liberal agenda.
This strikes right at the heart of the First Amendment.
Freedom of speech and of the press and the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances are the fundamental rights that ensure our government is accountable to the people. They are the very rights that give power to the people, and we should not take those rights lightly or allow them to be threatened.
If the government is allowed to regulate what news we receive or if we really allow ourselves to believe that the only real news is news that reinforces what we already believe, we’re in trouble.
We cannot allow government to silence dissent or discourage free speech, and we should be wary of the very idea whenever it arises.
In these polarized times, we may not agree on much, but we should at least agree upon that.
And we should recognize that journalists are not enemies of the people.
