Trump’s anti-media hate speech hampers the free press
By: Steve Hill
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In his two years in office, President Donald Trump has used anti-media rhetoric to attack his critics in the press. His description of media as “fake news” and journalists as the “enemy of the people” has created difficult working conditions for journalists.
“He has shown hostility to anyone who has criticized his statements or actions, and that’s the role of the press, to be a watchdog of the government,” said Marcy Burstiner, Journalism Professor at Humboldt State University.”
In an article on pressfreedomtracker.com, a database of press freedom incidents in the U.S., reporter Stephanie Sugars writes that since 2016 Trump has sent over 1,300 tweets about the media that were “critical, insinuating, condemning or threatening.”
Trump has more than 67.6 million followers on Twitter.
Trump has also singled out individual journalists like MSNBCs Katy Tur at his rallies and via Twitter in front of crowds of hostile Trump supporters.
In a CNN interview, Tur said she and two of her colleagues have received emailed messages that read, “I hope you get raped and killed.” She said the message ended with “Maga.”
Journalism under Obama
But bad behavior toward media didn’t start with Trump. Former president Barack Obama had one of the least transparent presidencies in recent times and prosecuted more whistleblowers and national security leakers than all of his predecessors.
Obama used the 1917 Espionage Act not to prosecute spies, but to prosecute whistleblowers accused of communicating with members of the press. The Act makes no distinction.
Referring to the Obama administration, Washington Post journalist Margaret Sullivan wrote in a May 2016 article, “It’s (the Obama administration) also been one of the most punitive toward whistleblowers and leakers who want to bring light to wrongdoing they have observed from inside powerful institutions.”
Whistleblowers & leakers prosecuted under Obama
- Stephen Kim, sentenced to 13 months in prison for leaking information to Fox News.
- Chelsea Manning, sentenced to 35 years in military custody, pardoned in seven years by President Obama. Leaked military and diplomatic documents.
- John Kiriakou, He was sentenced to 30 months in prison for disclosing information to a journalist.
- Reality Winner, sentence to five years and three months for leaking NSA documents to media.
- Thomas Andrews Drake, whistleblower who the government alleged mishandled. documents. On June 9, 2011, all 10 original charges against him were dropped.
- Shamai K. Leibowitz, sentenced to 20 months in prison for providing FBI documents to media.
- Edward Snowden, exiled after providing NSA documents that revealed aglobal surveillance programs.
Edward Snowden
In an interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden said the Espionage Act rules out any kind of fair trial because it forbids the jury from considering if the leak was something that did more good for the public to know than it did harm to the government.
“Now under the Trump administration, we’ve taken one more step and we’ve gone from a U.S. war on whistleblowers to now a war on journalism with the indictment of Julian Assange,” Snowden said in the Goodman Interview.
Burstiner said Obama did not have a great record in accessibility for information, Trump is taking it to an art form.
“Previous administrations did not want to be seen as hostile to the press. They wanted to be seen as being able to work with the press,” Burstiner said. “Trump has made being hostile to the press a part of his image. That’s his PR strategy.”
Julian Assange
However, while media is calling out Trump for attacks on the free press, they remain virtually silent on the fate of some journalists like Assange.
“That’s a completely different story,” Burstiner said. “You can make the argument that Julian Assange is a journalist or Julian Assange is not a journalist.”
She said that journalists usually vet their information. He made classified information available to the general public without vetting it to determine what harm or good the information would do.
”On one level, you want to call him a journalist because you don’t want the government going after people for publishing information,” Burstiner said. “So the united press has to be against the government prosecution of Julian Assange.”
But at a conference with United in Solidarity for Julian Assange (unity4J.com), political activist and MIT Emeritus professor Noam Chomsky described Assange as a person doing his civic responsibility.
“The efforts to silence a journalist who was producing materials that people in power didn’t want the rascal multitude to know about, that’s basically what happened,” Chomsky said.
Chomsky went on to say that Wikileaks, the organization that Assange founded, was producing things that people ought to know about.
Additionally, the Committee to Protect Journalists does not list Julian Assange in its database as an imprisoned journalist. He is currently held in Belmarsh Prison in the U.K. with no charges pending.
The CPJ did not respond to requests for clarification.
However, in a December 11, 2019, blog post, CPJ Executive Director Robert Mahoney wrote:
“After extensive research and consideration, CPJ chose not to list Assange as a journalist, in part because his role has just as often been as a source and because WikiLeaks does not generally perform as a news outlet with an editorial process.
Despite CPJs claim that Assange is not a journalist, he has received multiple journalism awards, most recently the Galizia prize and the Gavin MacFadyen Award.
In May 2019, Trump charged Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 and is currently attempting to have him extradited from the U.K.
With Trump’s war on journalists, what can be done about this current anti-media climate?
“Get him (Trump) out of office. That’s what we can do,” Burstiner said. “If you look at every dictatorship since Napoleon, the first thing they do is they take control of the press,” Burstiner said. “You can’t have a democracy without a free press, period.”
Links to additional information
List of Trump Tweets compiled by Committee to Protect Journalists:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LcRxPEUyJi3BaIb_WD0GDXxt4YoHi1LRUaB6ftDtDRc/edit#gid=0
List of journalists attacked:
https://pressfreedomtracker.us/physical-attack/
Additional data on attacks on journalists:
https://pressfreedomtracker.us/data/
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