Back in 2017, The New York Times ran an infamous headline: “Trump Calls the News Media the ‘Enemy of the American People,'”
The story continued, “President Trump, in an extraordinary rebuke of the nation’s press organizations, wrote on Twitter on Friday that the nation’s news media ‘is the enemy of the American people.”
But there’s just one problem. Despite this story going past the desk of multiple editors, President Donald J. Trump never said that. The actual quote from Twitter (below) was, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
President Trump wasn’t talking about the news media, he was talking about “fake news media”… Especially in terms of papers printing lies and half-truths. The story couldn’t have been more ironic.
Buy simply omitting a few words from the Tweet, they ended up proving Trump’s complaints of bias to be correct. That New York Times piece is what “fake news” looks like.
Today, 300 newspapers across America worked with The Boston Globe to run anti-Trump editorials. The Globe’s original piece sets the tone for what was said by the papers involved: “Replacing a free media with a state-run media has always been a first order of business for any corrupt regime taking over a country. Today in the United States we have a president who has created a mantra that members of the media who do not blatantly support the policies of the current U.S. administration are the ‘enemy of the people.’ This is one of the many lies that have been thrown out by this president much like an old-time charlatan threw out ‘magic’ dust or water on a hopeful crowd.”
So much for fair and balanced journalism! The piece also attacks Trump supporters for “following him into undemocratic territory” and compared Trump to modern authorization leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin. They believe they are doing the work of the Founding Fathers by supporting reporters in their quest to destroy Trump and his administration.
The Globe compares Trump’s supposed truth-obscuring tactics as something out of books from George Orwell: “Indeed, it is not just that the president is stoking domestic division for political and personal gain, he’s asking his audiences to follow him into Fantasia. ‘Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,’ he told an audience in Kansas last month. ‘Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.’ George Orwell put it more gracefully in his novel ‘1984.’ ‘The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.'”
Today, Trump fired back at The Boston Globe’s effort, noting their serious financial problems and pointing out that this hit job is the definition of “collusion.”
The Boston Globe, which was sold to the the Failing New York Times for 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (plus 800 million dollars in losses & investment), or 2.1 BILLION DOLLARS, was then sold by the Times for 1 DOLLAR. Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2018
There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2018
President Trump is right! The press has freedom, and they abuse it by using their large platform to attack the President from a partisan point of view. CNN runs anti-Trump stories all day not because they are telling the truth, but because they – as an institution – wanted to see Hillary Clinton win the Presidency in 2016.
Why would anyone trust the media to be fair, when a recent report by the Media Research Center showed that 92% of stories about Trump’s immigration policies are negative. The media isn’t reporting news, they are participating in activism:
During the 18 months of the Trump presidency, immigration has received more airtime on the three broadcast evening news shows than any other policy topic. The networks’ coverage has been relentlessly hostile to the administration (92% negative, just 8% positive), largely because these newscasts have framed nearly all of their coverage around the plight of those adversely affected by the administration’s enforcement agenda, and have virtually ignored law enforcement or anyone harmed by illegal immigration.
Trump may ask for this sort of fight with his aggressive words against the media. But he’s doing what needs to be done while exposing corporate news outlets for what they are. In the Trump-era, these newspapers no longer pretend to be objective. But thanks to the many alternative outlets on the internet, the media establishment no longer has a monopoly on the news.
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