“Trump and the Press hate each other - yet they feed each other off”
It’s a never ending story: Donald Trump, the new President of the United States (Yes, this one is on the people) makes an inappropriate statement about women or people of different colour and suddenly he is all over the Internet and the news. There is no such thing as bad press, and in this case this sentence might actually be true. As 45th President of the U.S, however, people might have expected some respectabillity, especially during his first press conference for months.
They should be proved wrong. In contrast to Obama’s moving farewell speech just a few days earlier, Trump one more time, showed us his qualities: screaming, finger pointing and some concerning news. Guardian journalists kept counting: In just the first three minutes of the press conference, Trump already talked about six different topics. Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer of Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” commented on Trump’s behavior during the conference, saying that he appears to have the attention-span of a nine-year-old, suffering from ADHS. The day before the conference, the online website BuzzFeed published information on Russia, having collected some compromising footage on Trump’s time in Russia. These information had not been verified, although the suspicion itself was not completely new. During the press conference the attending jounalists renounced the right to ask Trump about these claims, due to them not being verified. When being asked a question by CNN Journalist Jim Acosta, however, Trump got angry. The new President shouted down the question trying to silence the journalist by calling him and the CNN-network “Fake News”. CNN, not having published the news about Russia’s blackmailing, was certainly attacked by him, for more or less openly supporting the Democrats.
Is it a shot against democracy and more over the right of the free press itself? Calling journalists a “Failing pile of garbage” or simply refusing to even get asked questions seems very much like an authoritarian regime to me. On Seth Meyer’s Late Night Show, the showhost made fun of the hot-tempered appearance of Trump, raising some serious questions about whether people need to fear a “War on Press”. I think that we live in a society where fake news and sensationalism are everywhere, which makes it so important to sharply distinguish between them and serious journalism. For me, Trump once again showed, that he cannot deal with sudden pressure and that he simply behaves like a child. Donald Trump acts like a four-year-old who secretely ate the last cookie, altough told not to. When being confronted with it, he would simply scream and finger point and his friend and say “No mum, you’re fake news, I didn’t do it”, while some chocolate is hanging from his mouth. Enjoy Mr. President.
