At War with the Media
I hate that I am writing this much about Donald Trump. But the relationship the 45th president of the United States has with the media is something that I find unsettling to say the least. On only his second day of office, in front of the CIA Memorial Wall, he declared himself to be at war with the media. The president of the home of the brave and the land of the free, at war with the free press? That certainly does not bode well for the next four years.
Currently, Reporters without Borders (RSF) rates the US as number 41 in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index, lamenting that “freedom ends where national security begins” and criticising the “war on whistleblowers” as well as the lack of a federal “shield law” guaranteeing their right to protect their sources.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution states that
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Since the American Constitution is generally treated with almost religious reverence by the American people, I do hope that the freedom of the press is not in grave legal danger.
However, don’t forget that the candidate Donald Trump vowed to “open up those libel laws”. The 1964 Supreme Court decision of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan currently requires public persons (e.g. politicians) to provide proof that a “publication published information with actual malice, knowing it to be wholly incorrect” to have the chance to win a suit against a media organisation. With 20 executive orders in 10 days, I’m actually a little surprised there was none concerning the press.
But there are other ways to make life hard for the press that don’t even require legal action. The government is responsible for all kinds of data: lists of popular baby names, annual collection of crime statistics, you name it. J.M. Berger, a fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague has pointed out on his twitter account how much the public actually relies on the government for reliable information and that “[t]he government has, until now, been the gold standard for basic information”.
How reliable can the information of a government continue to be, when we live in an age of “alternative facts”? Filling in gaps and fact checking information by the government will definitely make the jobs of journalists more difficult and laboursome. While this may not be threatening the free press on an existential level, it is definitely worrying. “But that’s all rather hypothetical” one might say. Yes. And no. The Trump administration did send a memo to EPA staff last week about external communication: no press releases, no social media, no blog messages, no new content on any website for the time being. And they are not alone; staff of other federal agencies have received similar memos about the restriction of external communication.
When I first read about this, things went from worrying to scary. No wonder, 1984 is on the bestseller lists again.
Additionally, Trump’s White House demonstrated yesterday how it will deal with specific media networks and made an example of CNN. Refusing to send spokespeople to CNN shows, it is effectively shutting out the network from on-air administration commentary, because, according to Sean Spicer, they “have no desire to actually get something right”. That is, to a certain degree, understandable. For the sake of the argument: If you know, someone is just going to take your words and turn them around so they bite you in the behind, well, you will most probably try to avoid them. As far as I know, the Obama administration didn’t send spokespeople to Breitbart for interviews. However, comparing CNN with Breitbart is wrong on so many levels, especially regarding credibility. But whatever. Not sending spokespeople to a respected and established news channel for interviews because the commander in chief has a personal vendetta with them, instead of trying to prove them wrong, convince them, stand up to the supposed bullying, seems a little shady to me.
But how is the media responding to this? Surprisingly relaxed, if this Washington Post article by Paul Farhi is to be taken as any indication. Farhi explains that while Trump has made multiple angry statements about the “lying press”, the media has in fact not declared war back and that this was therefore a rather one-sided war. While journalists are revaluating how to best cover Trump, the consensus for how to answer to this declaration seems to be simply with good journalism. And apparently, people are quite fond of good journalism: following Trumps statement, donations for non-profit news organisations, subscriptions for Vanity Fair and The New York Times, and viewer numbers for cable networks, including CNN, have gone up.
