President Donald Trump will be in Upstate New York on Monday, campaigning for House Republicans Rep. Claudia Tenney in Utica, and Rep. Elise Stefanik at Fort Drum in Watertown.
We hope he doesn't, but if the he holds true to recent form, at some point during the rally, the president of the United States will point to the journalists corralled in a holding pen, call them an "enemy of the people" and invite people in the crowd to harass them.
It's just words ... until somebody gets hurt. If the president keeps ratcheting up the hostility against the media, that becomes a real concern -- an unacceptable one.
Presidents from George Washington to the present have complained bitterly about the press. The scrutiny and the criticism are hard to take, even for the most powerful person in the world. The polarization of the electorate, the always-on news cycle and glare of social media have only made it worse.
So has this president, whose thin skin, inexperience and inability to tell the truth have given the media plenty to criticize. And that's even before we get to the Trump administration's questionable policy decisions to ban refugees, put asylum-seeking children in cages, kowtow to dictators and diss our closest allies.
The relationship between the president and the press is contentious -- and it's meant to be. In a democracy, a free press is here to report to the public what the government is doing, to examine and question the wisdom of it, and to hold to account the elected and unelected officials who make and carry out its policies.
We are the eyes and ears of the people. We are not the enemy of the people.
When Trump visits Central and Northern New York on Monday, he'll be accompanied by a pool of journalists from national media outlets, plus local journalists from our news operation and many others. We are all doing the same job for different audiences. We are not the enemy of the people.
Journalists at Syracuse.com/The Post-Standard cover local news. While working, we are at the crime scene, at the council or school board meeting, in the courtroom, on the campaign trail, investigating state government corruption, covering games at the high school or the Carrier Dome. The rest of the time, we are your neighbor, the worshiper in the next pew, the parent on the sidelines of the lacrosse tournament, the Little League coach and the PTG volunteer at your kids' school. We are not the enemy of the people.
We'd like to think we've earned your trust over the 189-odd years we've been publishing a newspaper in Syracuse. But we don't take it for granted. We work hard every day to earn it. Journalists also are human and make mistakes. That does not make us an enemy of the people.
When Trump tells Americans not to believe what they see, hear and read; when he bashes the media to discredit negative stories; when he labels unflattering coverage "fake news"; when he declares journalists an enemy of the people - these are things we expect a dictator to say. His message is working; a recent poll showed 43 percent of Republicans think the president should have the power to shut down news outlets.
Government censorship is what you see in North Korea, China, Russia and Turkey, not the United States. A free press is one of the things that keeps us free. The Founding Fathers were militant believers in the power of criticism and a free press unencumbered by a boorish king. The American free press will be around much longer than President Trump. Don't fall for the president's rhetoric.
Syracuse.com editorials
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Members of the editorial board are Tim Kennedy, Jason Murray and Marie Morelli.
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