'Fake news' and all the president's taunts
If, like many readers, you worked your way back to these opinion pages from Page 1, you saw a lot of news — national, international, state and local. And not a word of it was made up or invented to serve one political cause or another. Newspapers deal in fact. We have to — if we lose our credibility, we go out of business. Publishing fantasy labeled as truth is a fast way to get there. Our readers are no fools and they'll drop us like a bad habit if they aren't getting straight, accurate reporting.
So we're here today, as are hundreds of other newspapers across the country, to take issue with President Donald Trump's regular characterization of the media as "fake news" and his assertions that journalists are "un-American" or "enemies of the people." Last we checked, we are the people. A look around any newsroom will reveal people who look just like your neighbors — people who raise families, shop in the local stores, go to church on Sunday, try to lose a couple pounds, get a parking ticket, and vote regularly — some for Democrats and some for Republicans. Yes, that's right. Some of us actually believe in conservative ideals. Saying all journalists are liberals is about as accurate as saying all people of Scottish heritage eat (and like) haggis.
What we do during our work day is tell the stories of our community, finding the information you need and publishing it, in print and online. Our staffers are pretty good fact checkers, but sometimes they miss a whopper. We're only human, after all. When that happens, we correct the error as fast as we can. Getting it right is important. It's a matter of pride and business success for us.
So we take considerable issue with those who would paint us as Trump-hating ideologues who deliberately publish falsehoods. We publish news about the president and his administration. We run stories about the president's agenda and actions, and how he's running the executive branch of our federal government. We also publish, on these opinion pages, commentary about the president's performance. He is not a typical president and some of that commentary finds problems with his performance. Other writers support many of his platforms. We seldom comment on the distant intrigues of the federal government, save for those parts that most directly touch our readers. And in those areas — especially defense and veterans affairs — we've been supportive of many of this president's policies and decisions. In that, we've hardly been an enemy of the president, let alone an enemy of the people.
But understanding this presidency requires some understanding of the Trump mystique. The art of his deal involves great quantities of bluster and overblown rhetoric, seasoned with whatever interpretation of "fact" will bolster his case. Donald Trump built a career on manipulating imagery and dancing on either side of the fine line between truth and fiction. He did not, after seven decades of life, alter that strategy when he took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Taking everything this president says as literally true can be a dangerous mistake, even for his most ardent supporters. And we see worrisome signs that many people in the Trump "base" would gladly restrict the freedom of the press to report and opine on the president's actions. Going there could be a fatal mistake for our nation, because it signal the tearing up of the First Amendment, among other constitutional issues. That could be the first foray into the destruction of our democracy and the transition of government to something more worthy of a banana republic.
We hope the president will abandon his increasingly damning slurs of the entirety of the press and its legitimacy as an American institution. We hope for it, but we're not holding our breath. Rather, we hope all the president's supporters will recognize what he's doing — manipulating reality to get what he wants. He is a man given to exaggeration, the most frequently used tool on his workbench. President Trump's fans should keep that in mind and not rush to trample the Constitution — a bad idea that truly would be un-American.