Abstract
President Trump’s record on the campaign trail raises the prospect of a full-scale attack on First Amendment rights and press freedoms, warns US media expert
A Donald Trump supporter wears a T-shirt with a threatening slogan at a campaign rally in Minnesota on November 6, 2016.
Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
During his campaign, we saw tactics never used before by a political candidate. Journalists were confined to “pens” at political rallies and the crowd incited to throw insults at them. Trump egged them on, describing the media as “scum’’ and “among the most dishonest groups of people”. He would shout from the platform: “We are living in a rigged system. And believe me, they are a big part of the rigging, those people.”
Once in office, President Trump will have the power of the executive branch (at least) of the US government on his side. We fear what will happen next to freedom of the press in this country.
Many in the media hoped that Trump would “mature” after becoming presidentelect, and discontinue the kind of attacks on the media that characterised his campaign. The first week after the election considerably dampened their optimism. He attacked the media in a tweet for allegedly “inciting” protests against him, as usual without evidence. He specifically attacked The New York Times on Twitter for reporting on problems with his transition. In another tweet, he alleged that the paper “is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage” – a claim it flatly denies. The Twitter storm against the paper raged on for a while, before Trump finally sat down for an on-the-record meeting with its reporters and editors.
Trump’s record on the campaign trail gives ample evidence that he and his advisers plan a full-scale attack on press freedoms once they enjoy the powers that come with his office. He has personally threatened reporters on the campaign trail, and promised to sue media companies over unfavourable coverage. At one point, he mused that the country needed to “open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money”.
Trump has issued threats to the owner of the Washington Post and barred its reporters from covering his rallies. A journalist from Vice was arrested for trying to cover one without permission. His former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, later fired (and then hired by CNN), manhandled a female reporter for Breitbart News for the crime of trying to question him.
And then there are the threats – literally thousands of them – made by Trump supporters on the internet to reporters with Jewish-sounding last names who have sought to hold Trump, his family and his cronies accountable during the campaign. One such reporter, Julia Ioffe, who profiled Melania Trump for GQ, felt it necessary to contact the local police as a result of the threats she received. Neither Trump nor anyone connected to him has done anything to discourage these threats. Melania Trump even accused Ioffe of “provoking” them with her reporting.
It’s all but impossible to predict where President Trump’s animosity to the press, coupled with the violent hatred he has provoked during his campaign, will lead. He often lies, but he should probably be taken at his word when he says (as he did last June), “I am going to continue to attack the press.”
Unfortunately, such attacks would occur at a moment when the US media are especially vulnerable. One reason is the rapid decline in the financial health of the newspaper industry, where most reliable news reporting originates. A related phenomenon is the explosion online, especially on Google and Facebook, of purposely propagandistic “fake news” sites that, as with Gresham’s Law, drives out “good” or truthful news, frequently with nonsense supporting Trump’s white nationalist agenda.
Coupled with the challenges the media face regarding public trust, barriers to truthful reporting and economic survival, the result of the 2016 election has left journalists less confident about the future freedom to report than at any time since the founding of the republic. Sadly, confronted with the unprecedented threats posed by a Trump presidency, confidence – perhaps more than any other quality – is what is needed.