US Rep. Ryan lambastes Trump for attacks on media

YOUNGSTOWN

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, issued a statement Wednesday condemining President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media during a rally in Phoenix Tuesday night.

“A free press gives voice to a free people. If we can’t fiercely and articulately defend our positions and policies publicly then those ideas won’t, and shouldn’t, become the law of the land. That is why President Trump feels the need to lash out at the press every chance he gets. They are constantly shedding light on his hyperbole, his hypocrisies, his misrepresentations and his ever more increasing falsehoods,” Ryan said in the statement.

Though Ryan did not totally exonerate media entities from criticism — he said social media has made political discourse “a lot noisier” and that he’s been critical of some published stories — he warned that the “alternative is the secretive, government controlled media system that we see in Russia, China, and developing countries around the world where power brokers are able to operate in the shadows and against the interests of their own people.”