The Fourth Estate — Weapon of Choice in Trump’s America
The first few days after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration have been interesting. Donald Trump set to work straight away and barely let the world take a breath after his short, but poignant inauguration speech. While the news media and governments across the globe still tried to interpret, or come to terms with his speech, Trump began signing his first executive orders. A lot of things worth talking and writing about happened on the day of his inauguration. Yet surprisingly, the biggest controversy was actually sparked by the seemingly trivial comparison of the crowd size of Trump’s inauguration and Barack Obama’s in 2009.
In his first media briefing Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer slammed the media for their coverage of the inauguration ceremony, claiming that the attending crowd was ‘the largest audience ever’. The claims made by Spicer in his rather unprofessional and mostly angry address were quickly revealed as false. Rather peculiar in this regard is what Sean Spicer said in a panel discussion at the Chicago University Institute of Politics on January 4th:
I have never lied … because if you lose the respect and trust of the press corps, you’ve got nothing. …To go out and tell an all-out lie is something that’s just not acceptable.
On the following day on NBC’s Meet the Press, Kellyann Conway, advisor to Donald Trump, tried to downplay the accusations and stated that Spicer only presented ‘alternative facts’. This caused only more uproar and bewilderment among the press and sparked debates across social media. People made comparisons to authoritarian regimes and even George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was cited, Ministry of Truth, Newspeak were mentioned, as well as my favorite: Trumpspeak.
Conway’s statement about ‘alternative facts’ and further attacks on the interviewer were absolutely baffling and shocking. Shocking especially since she actually portrays the government as the victim of the whole ordeal. The victim of the press that has been working against Trump from the beginning, trying to prevent Trump from becoming president. Now the worst thing about her statement is that it actually makes sense. Not in a way that suggests that the facts presented by Spicer were true, but in a way that this was all just a misunderstanding.
During his next press briefing Spicer explained that he made his statement regarding the crowd size using numbers “provided by an outside agency” and thus providing information to the best of their knowledge. If you take this statement and consider that Conway’s ‘alternative facts’ could have been a slip of the tongue and even further, couple that with Trump’s insecurities regarding his image, it actually makes sense that this was actually a large scale misunderstanding, caused by people that haven’t had time to warm up for the game.
Well, in that case this whole thing wasn’t really that bad, right? Just a bad start. It will surely get better, right?
I think from now on it will get worse. It’s time to get to the heart of the problem. In the first three days in office the people speaking on behalf of Donald Trump have proven themselves as unreliable. It also doesn’t help when Sean Spicer says:
I believe that we have to be honest with the American people, I think sometimes we can disagree with the facts. There are certain things that we may not fully understand when we come out, but our intention is never to lie to you.
They have lost credibility in a short time and on a scale that is just astonishing. Now is the time for the news media, more than ever, to step up and do their job as the fourth estate. The press should not let the government use them to influence the people, the press should use reporting and public dialogue to influence the government. Every news organisation that claims to be reliable and trustworthy, must increase their efforts to check if the government is actually telling the truth and hold them accountable if they tell falsehoods. Breitbart’s former executive chair Stephen Bannon, Chief Strategist of Donald Trump, made a statement that should serve as a wake up call for the media.
The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while. The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.
We live in a time of information warfare. Misinformation is a danger to liberty and democracy and it is the duty of the press to fight false reporting and inform the public in an accessible manner, as well as to encourage critical thinking. Only an educated and critical society is able to challenge the actions of their government.
