Wednesday, October 31, 2018
By Cokie Roberts and Steven V. ROBERTS
Andrews McMeel Syndication
“Mr. President, stop attacking the press.”
As he was dying earlier this year, John McCain wrote an op-ed essay for the Washington Post with that headline. In it, he warned that President Trump’s “unrelenting attacks on the integrity of American journalists and news outlets” were having a deeply damaging effect – not only in this country, but around the world.
“This has provided cover for repressive regimes to follow suit,” McCain wrote. “The phrase ‘fake news’ – granted legitimacy by an American president – is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny and mislead citizens.”
McCain’s warning echoes loudly from his grave after the brutal murder in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist. Trump, of course, cannot be blamed directly for his death. But it’s undeniably true that the president’s attacks on the media have “provided cover” for an autocratic Saudi regime determined to silence journalists and undermine opponents.
Trump’s ultimate goal
Shielding and supporting foreign tyrants is only one of Trump’s many goals. He’s really bent on destroying the credibility of a free and independent press, designed by the Founders and defined by the Constitution to hold powerful leaders accountable for their actions.
Start with his embrace of “alternative facts,” another way of saying dishonesty and deception, which is only getting worse. The Post has documented more than 5,000 “false and misleading” claims since Trump took office, but his rate of fabrication has jumped from 4.9 errors a day during his first year in office to 7.6 daily distortions.
On the campaign trail, he keeps repeating the blatant untruth that the caravan of Central Americans seeking asylum in the U.S. is laced with “hardened criminals” and “unknown Middle Easterners.”
Donald Dale of the Toronto Star, one of the most determined Trump fact-checkers, wrote, “This is one of his most dishonest weeks in political life. He’s lying about so many things at once, and in big ways – not exaggerating or stretching, completely making stuff up.” Even Shepard Smith of Fox News said the network “knows of no evidence to suggest he’s accurate.”
Impugning journalists
Yet Trump never corrects, never apologizes, never backs down. Instead, he impugns the journalists who point out his falsehoods. As he told a crowd recently in Kansas City, Mo.: “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
This is not just a casual comment made at a rally. It’s part of a much larger and deliberate campaign to weaken any institution that can contradict the president’s unhinged and untrue view of the world.
“He wants to disqualify the press as an independent arbiter of fact,” Washington Post Editor Marty Baron said on CNN. “He does not want there to be an independent arbiter of fact. He certainly doesn’t want the press to be that arbiter, he doesn’t want scientists to be that arbiter, he doesn’t want the courts to be that arbiter, he doesn’t want the intelligence agencies to be that arbiter – he wants himself, and his White House, to be the arbiter of fact.”
The president’s campaign to disqualify and intimidate the press has a darker side: the threat of physical violence. Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana pleaded guilty last year to assaulting a journalist who asked him a tough question, and yet when Trump campaigned for the congressman this fall, the president cracked, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of guy.”
No wonder news organizations have posted armed guards outside their offices, installed bulletproof glass in their doors and windows, and hired security for reporters covering Trump rallies.
Punishment
Another element of Trump’s anti-media crusade: an aggressive attempt to punish officials who leak information to the press. Recently, a Treasury whistleblower, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, was arrested and charged with sharing secret financial documents with reporters. A former Hill staffer, James Wolfe, pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI after investigators seized a year’s worth of telephone records belonging to New York Times reporter Ali Watkins.
Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, wrote, “All leak investigations – whether they directly target reporters or not – are a grave threat to press freedom. Whistleblowers are the lifeblood of reporting, and the Trump administration is directly attacking journalists’ rights by bringing these cases.”
Trump’s war against the media continues on many fronts. The press response must be the one formulated by Marty Baron: “We’re not at war with the administration. We’re at work.”
Husband and wife Steve and Cokie Roberts are veteran hournalists who have covered national politics for decades.