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Dana Milbank: The Fight Against Trump is a Fight for Freedom

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2018 //
63

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is one of my favorite columnists. My only disagreement with this column is that he thinks we are not threatened by fascism. I have concluded that Trump’s racist, corporatist ideology, meshed with his demogogic rhetoric, looks, sounds, and feels like fascism.

He wrote this great column.

In case it is behind a paywall:

Every 75 years or so in our history, Americans have renewed their commitment to freedom.


Divide our history into thirds, and you can see, at regular intervals, a rededication to our founding doctrine. In 1789, the framers drafted the Bill of Rights. Seventy-four years later, at the turning point in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called for “a new birth of freedom” to honor those who died.
Seventy-eight years after that, on the eve of U.S. entry into world war in 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the “four freedoms.”


That was 77 years ago, and we are due for another renewal. Neither fascism nor civil war threatens us, but Americans are united in fear. Much of the country fears the loss of basic freedoms under President Trump: free speech, press and religion, due process and control over their bodies. Trump, meanwhile, foments fears among his followers of crime, gangs, immigrants and civil servants. And Americans of all beliefs fear they are losing the American Dream and its promise of economic mobility.


Trump’s opponents are seemingly confused about how to respond in this election year. Do they appeal to whites or nonwhites, progressives or moderates, move to the left to rally the “base” or hew to the center to capture the swing voters? Should they make an economic argument or a social argument, target those concerned about jobs or those angry about the president?


These are false choices, though, because our salvation will be what it always has been. On this 242nd birthday of the United States, let’s rededicate ourselves to freedom:


Freedom from Trump’s constant attacks on women, immigrants, people of color, gay people and Muslims.


Freedom to work and live without discrimination, harassment and violence because of your gender, race or religion.


Freedom to get medical care when you or your children are sick.


Freedom to earn a living wage, to attend college or get job training, and to retire in security.


Freedom from a rigged economy in which the top 1 percent own more than the bottom 90 percent combined.

Freedom to marry whom you choose.


Freedom to make decisions about your own body.


Freedom to send your kids to school without fear for their safety.


Freedom to breathe clean air, to drink clean water, to live on a habitable planet.


Freedom to elect your leaders without the rich, or foreign governments, choosing them for you.


And freedom to speak, to protest and to publish without the threat of violence.


Not only do such ideas unify the left (far more than quibbling about, say, which form of universal health care is best or what exactly should be done with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but freedom appeals broadly to Americans regardless of politics. Ask us what it means to be American, and you will get one answer above all others: “to be free.”


Conservatives long claimed ownership of it. (Remember Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and freedom fries?) But Trump has essentially ceded the freedom agenda to his opponents. One measure, using a database of his speeches, tweets and ­Q&As, finds that he has used the word “freedom” 72 times this year (often dismissively, as in “we need freedom of the press, but . . .”). That’s far less than he has used, say, “respect” (252), “strong” (502), “win” (306), “border” (617), “taxes” (158), “Democrat” (560), “kill” (159), “country” (1,288), “illegal” (127), “crime” (250) and “great” (2,826).


IThis isn’t just a linguistic de-emphasis of freedom; Trump has made common cause with dictators and played down human rights abroad while starting a trade war with democratic allies. At home he has questioned due process for refugees, taken immigrant children from their parents, imposed a travel ban on several Muslim-majority nations and declared the media the enemy of the American people. He is now poised to shift the balance on the Supreme Court away from abortion rights and gay rights.


In a very real sense, the fight against Trump is a battle for freedom.


He hopes to make the midterm elections about sanctuary cities, MS-13, a socialist takeover, the “deep state,” a corrupt justice system and immigrants “invading and infesting’’ America. Rather than join him in the fear chamber, progressives and Democrats ought to respond with a variation of what FDR proposed for the world in a very different context in 1941, “freedom of speech and expression,” “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way,” “freedom from want” and — of new significance now — “freedom from fear.”


“This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women,” Roosevelt said, “and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God.”
This faith sustained America through those dark times. It will not fail us in our 243rd year.
“

Categories Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press

Journalists at the Denver Post Denounce Hedge Owners in New York City for Deep Budget Cuts

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2018 //
10

 

After the latest round of budget cuts, the editorial staff at the Denver Post took the unusual step of denouncing the newspaper’s owners, a hedge fund in New York City.

The owners are “vulture capitalists,” said the front-page editorial. It was a plea for new ownership.

This is a remarkable story of journalists fighting back about the slow death of a major newspaper, at the risk of their jobs.

Hedge fund managers are cold-blooded about extracting profit. Tradition, loyalty, years of service, significance to the community: none of this matters.

The Washington Post has adopted a new slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.”

A free press is vital to our democracy, but media consolidation is threatening the number of free voices, of people who don’t read from a script dictated by management.

Open the link if you can, to see the front page. What a remarkable show of integrity:

“The Denver Post is in open revolt against its owner.

Angry and frustrated journalists at the 125-year-old newspaper took the extraordinary step this weekend of publicly blasting its New York-based hedge-fund owner and making the case for its own survival in several articles that went online Friday and are scheduled to run in The Post’s Sunday opinion section.

“News matters,” the main headline reads. “Colo. should demand the newspaper it deserves.”

The bold tactic was born out of a dissatisfaction not uncommon in newsrooms across the country as newspapers grapple with the loss of revenue that has followed the decline of print.

The move at The Post followed a prolonged, slow-burning rebellion at The Los Angeles Times, where journalists agitated against the paper’s owner, the media company Tronc. Newsroom complaints about Tronc’s leadership helped lead to the sale of the newspaper to a billionaire medical entrepreneur, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who had been a major shareholder in Tronc.

For many publications that do not attract a patron-like owner, however, the difficult times are likely to continue, and midsize newspapers have been hit especially hard. Hoping to avoid the slow trudge to irrelevance or bankruptcy, the Denver paper took the stuff of newsroom conversation and made it public in dramatic fashion.
The lead editorial pulled no punches, describing executives at Alden Global Capital, the paper’s hedge-fund owner, as “vulture capitalists.”

“We call for action,” the editorial continued. It went on to make the case that “Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom. If Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell The Post to owners who will.”

The Post, which serves a city of some 700,000 residents, has a weekday circulation of an estimated 170,000 and 8.6 million unique monthly visitors to its website. It has won nine Pulitzer Prizes, including in 2013 for its coverage of the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. Alden Global Capital took control of the paper in 2010 after acquiring its bankrupt parent company, MediaNews Group, and runs it through a subsidiary, Digital First Media.

Chuck Plunkett, The Post’s editorial page editor, masterminded the package of articles that, in part, rebuked the ownership of the publication where he has worked since 2003. Before posting it, Mr. Plunkett said, he did not warn executives at Digital First Media. The Post’s news and opinion sections are separate fiefs, and he also did not inform the paper’s chief editor, Lee Ann Colacioppo, of his plans.

Shortly after the articles were posted online, Guy Gilmore, the chief operating officer of Digital First Media, called Ms. Colacioppo. He said he wanted to discuss the editorial and the “appropriate response” from the company, Ms. Colacioppo said. The two ultimately decided, she said, that the stories would remain online and that the Sunday print section would proceed as planned. In addition, Mr. Plunkett would stay on as editorial page editor, she said.

Digital First Media did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Readers inside and outside the newsroom met the articles with an outpouring of support…

The package also had a fan in City Hall.

“Denver is so proud of our flagship newspaper for speaking out,” Mayor Michael B. Hancock said in a statement. “The Denver Post said it best — they are necessary to this ‘grand democratic experiment,’ especially at a time when the press and facts are under constant attack by the White House. For a New York hedge fund to treat our paper like any old business and not a critical member of our community is offensive. We urge the owners to rethink their business strategy or get out of the news business. Denver stands with our paper and stands ready to be part of the solution that supports local journalism and saves the 125-year-old Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire.”

Mr. Plunkett said he was aware that he was putting his livelihood at risk by taking on the paper’s owner.
“I had to do it because it was the right thing to do,” he said. “If that means that I lose my job trying to stand up for my readers, then that means I’m not working for the right people anyway.”

Sunday’s print opinion section will hit newsstands and land in driveways one day before more than two dozen employees at The Post say farewell to the newsroom.

Already devastated by staff reductions made since Alden Global Capital took over in 2010, The Post was ordered last month to slash another 30 jobs from a newsroom whose count was already below 100.

“These job losses are painful, and we know meaningful work will not get done because talented journalists have left the organization,” Ms. Colacioppo told the staff after a meeting during which she delivered news of the layoffs. “I’m sure some commenters will cheer what they believe is the eventual demise of the mainstream media, but there is nothing to celebrate when a city has fewer journalists working in it.”

Before she was ordered to carry out the latest reduction in staff — a process that is scheduled to be completed by July — the editor said she believed that things were looking up for The Post.

“Aside from the last three weeks or so, I would have described the last year as a turning point for us,” Ms. Colacioppo said in an interview on Saturday. “Then this came.”

Earlier this year, in another cost-cutting effort, the newspaper left its longtime headquarters in the heart of downtown Denver, steps from the Capitol and City Hall, to an office in Adams County located in the same building as its printing press.

The moves have left the remaining Post staffers demoralized. “Every single staffing reduction has been really difficult,” Jesse Paul, a politics reporter who joined the paper in 2014, said on Saturday. “This last one in particular I described it as cutting off a leg. This was literally like taking off a limb of the newspaper.”

The announcement of the latest layoffs pitted Post employees against an ownership team that seems to have little regard for quality journalism. But as newspapers across the country continue to suffer — and as more of them come under the ownership of public companies like Gannett or investment firms looking to wring profits from a troubled business — The Post has also become a flash point in the newspaper industry’s battle for survival.

Digital First Media is among the biggest newspaper chains in the country, with more than 90 newspapers including The Pioneer Press of St. Paul, Minn.; The Mercury News of San Jose, Calif.; The Orange County Register; and The Boston Herald. The company has aggressively cut resources in its quest for profit, with recent staff reductions at several of its papers, including The Mercury News and The Herald.

 

Categories Democracy, Freedom of the Press

Andrew Tobias Rephrases Trump’s State of the Union Speech

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2018 //
11

 

Andrew Tobias writes about money, investing, and politics. We have engaged in a civil offline discussion about his favorite NYC charter chain, but I find his political insights valuable. I subscribe to his blog at AndrewTobias.com. Here is his rephrasing of the SOTU last night, if it represented the real world:

 

“The state of the Union is precarious.

“In my first year I have:

“1. Told more than 2000 public lies or falsehoods.

“2. Ended the American Century and abdicated our leadership of the world.

“3. Plunged the nation into economic peril through what is — according to Reagan budget director David Stockman — a massively irresponsible tax cut at exactly the wrong time in the business cycle. (We will be running a $1.2 trillion deficit in the tenth year of a recovery!)

“4. Prioritized those lower taxes on the rich — including real estate developers like me — over borrowing that same money to employ millions of Americans at good jobs revitalizing our infrastructure.

“5. Denied and ignored the massive and ongoing attack on our democracy ordered by a former KGB operative with whom I enjoy a warm relationship and against whose country I have refused to impose the sanctions mandated by Congress.

“6. Ceded economic leadership in the Pacific to China.

“7. Taken credit for the low unemployment and steadily improving economy I inherited (slightly more jobs were added in Obama’s last year than my first).

“8. Decimated the State Department, hobbled the Environmental Protection Agency, neutered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and put agencies like HUD and the Departments of Education and of Energy in the hands of people with no expertise.

“9. Destabilized the health insurance market in ways that will lead to higher premiums and more uninsured (despite my promise of “great health care for everybody at a tiny fraction of the cost”).

“10. Demonized the free press, the FBI, and our intelligence community.

“11. Widened inequality, praised as “very fine people” torch-bearing white supremacists, set an example of incivility for your children.

“12. Solicited contributions to my campaign with the promise of running your name over the leave stream of this State of the Union address. No president in history has thought to cheapen and politicize the presidency that way, but then neither has a president embarrassed America on the world stage as I have. And if the —-holes of the world don’t like it, —- ’em.

“There’s more, but that’s enough for now.

“God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”

Categories Economy, Freedom of the Press

The Very Puzzling Senator Jeff Flake

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2018 //
47

 

No member of the Republican majority in the Senate has been as eloquent in denouncing Trump’s stupidity and arrogance and authoritarianism as Senator Jeff Flake.

He excoriated Trump for his campaign to libel journalists and twist facts and truth. 

“2017 was a year which saw the truth — objective, empirical, evidence-based truth — more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine “alternative facts” into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods. It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. “The enemy of the people,” was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

“Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader…

”Now, we are told via Twitter that today the president intends to announce his choice for the “most corrupt and dishonest” media awards. It beggars belief that an American president would engage in such a spectacle. But here we are.

“And so, 2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power that would weaken it. In this effort, the choice is quite simple. And in this effort, the truth needs as many allies as possible. Together, my colleagues, we are powerful. Together, we have it within us to turn back these attacks, right these wrongs, repair this damage, restore reverence for our institutions, and prevent further moral vandalism.

“Together, united in the purpose to do our jobs under the Constitution, without regard to party or party loyalty, let us resolve to be allies of the truth — and not partners in its destruction.

“It is not my purpose here to inventory all of the official untruths of the past year. But a brief survey is in order. Some untruths are trivial – such as the bizarre contention regarding the crowd size at last year’s inaugural.

“But many untruths are not at all trivial – such as the seminal untruth of the president’s political career – the oft-repeated conspiracy about the birthplace of President Obama. Also not trivial are the equally pernicious fantasies about rigged elections and massive voter fraud, which are as destructive as they are inaccurate – to the effort to undermine confidence in the federal courts, federal law enforcement, the intelligence community and the free press, to perhaps the most vexing untruth of all – the supposed “hoax” at the heart of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“To be very clear, to call the Russia matter a “hoax” – as the president has many times – is a falsehood. We know that the attacks orchestrated by the Russian government during the election were real and constitute a grave threat to both American sovereignty and to our national security. It is in the interest of every American to get to the bottom of this matter, wherever the investigation leads.”

And yet the eloquent Senator Flake votes for every stupid bill proposed by his colleagues.

It is a puzzle.

Senator Flake is leaving the Senate. Three awful candidates are vying to replace him.

Why is his spine strong when it comes to talking but weak when it comes to voting?

Categories Courage, Freedom of the Press

The Onion: A Message from Donald Trump: I Will Infect Every Hour of Your Day

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2017 //
26

Recently I have been tweeting The Onion, not posting it, even when I thought it was funny.

But this post is so real, so not-funny, and so representative of what is happening that I wanted to share it with you.

It is about Trump’s insistence on intruding into our lives every day, dominating our thoughts with concern about what crazy thing he will do next, what crackpot nonsense he will tweet, which institution he will destroy next, which person he will insult today. It is exhausting and fascinating, like watching a violent car crash and wondering if you too will crash into the wreckage.

It begins like this:

“Good morning, everyone! What a week we’ve got coming up. A tremendous week. The fall season is here, we’re working on huge tax cuts, and there’s a lot of optimism having to do with business in our economy. Also, we’re ending Obamacare. And I’m going to get the wall. But beyond all that, what I’m looking forward to the most is another seven days of infecting every little aspect of your daily lives.

“Oh, you thought you might be able to block me out for even a moment? Good luck with that one. There will be no rest from having to think about me, or my administration, or the latest controversy I’ve thrown myself into. I am inescapable. My name, my face, my voice, my words, and those of my legions of surrogates—no matter how much you try to go about your normal life, I will find a way force myself in. MAGA!

“I will poison every second of quiet reflection that you previously enjoyed.

“I’m like a disease without a cure. There’s not a single thing I haven’t contaminated. News, entertainment, medicine, sports; if there’s a part of culture I haven’t ruined for you yet, just wait. This could be the week. I’ll either claw my way into your waking consciousness or just linger in the back of your mind, ready to pop out at any moment and remind you that I’m the president of the United States and will be for at least the next three years. You know that sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach—the one that’s been there since last November? Well, it’s not going away this week, I’ll tell you that.

“I will poison every second of quiet reflection that you previously enjoyed. No more sitting calmly with a coffee on a park bench. No more carefree drives with the windows down and the radio up. No more tranquil moments reveling in the splendor of a sunset. Just me festering in your brain, befouling all you hold dear.

“The mind is funny like that sometimes. The second you’ve freed yourself from the burden of having to ponder my ironclad stranglehold on absolutely every facet of American life, there I’ll be again, ready to resume the endless cycle of fear, regret, anger, and shame. Go ahead, try and tune me out right now.

“Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump.”

Read the rest.

The Washington Post reports that his daily attacks on the free press are undermining public confidence in the media.

“THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump celebrated Sunday that his campaign to delegitimize the free press is working.

“The president touted a Politico-Morning Consult poll published last week that found 46 percent of registered voters believe major news organizations fabricate stories about him. Just 37 percent of Americans think the mainstream media does not invent stories, while the rest are undecided. More than 3 in 4 Republicans believe reporters make up stories about Trump.

“It is finally sinking through,” the president tweeted.

“The first rule of propaganda is that if you repeat something enough times people will start to believe it, no matter how false. Trump uses the bully pulpit of the presidency to dismiss any journalism he doesn’t like as “fake news.” This daily drumbeat has clearly taken a toll on the Fourth Estate.”

The first rule of a would-be dictator is to destroy confidence in the free press.

Trump swore on the Bible at his inauguration to uphold the Constitution. That includes the First Amendment. His daily attacks on freedom of the press, which he called “the Enemy of the People,” violates the oath he took. The term “Ennemy of the People” was borrowed from Josef Stalin.

He also daily violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by accepting payments from foreign governments in Trump properties and brands around the world and refusing to divest his business interests.

Two grounds for impeachment even without the Russia investigation.

Categories Freedom of the Press

Trump and the First Amendment: Why Did Founders Let Press Say Whatever They Wanted?

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2017 //
54

Read the First Amendment. Then read it again.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

It was adopted in 1791.

The freedom of the press and of speech has been challenged again an$ Again, starting as early as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

Currently, we have a president who complains that the press is “the enemy of the people,” because he is criticized so much. It is questionable whether he is subject to more criticism than Franklin D. Roosevelt or Richard Nixon.

The phrase “enemy of the people” emanated from the Soviet Union, where people or groups were denounced for their deviance using this phrase.

Here is a cartoon about Trump’s dislike for the press.

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a Republican, has criticized Trump for violating his oath of office by criticizing freedom of the press. Maybe Steve Bannon will find an extremist to unseat Sasse when he runs again.

Categories Freedom of the Press

A Sign Once Sold in Gift Shop of the Holocaust Musem

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2017 //
17

museum

Sound familiar?

Read it again.

Think about it.

Which side are you on?

Snopes says the poster was once available in the gift shop of the Holocaust Museum.

Snopes says:

The list was originally created by Laurence Britt in 2003, for an article published by Free Inquiry magazine (a publication for secular humanist commentary and analysis). While subsequent postings of the list often attribute it to “Dr. Laurence Britt,” the author said that he was not actually a doctor (nor did he claim to be). Britt himself said that he could be more accurately described as an amateur historian

It quotes this note about the poster:

Laurence W. Britt wrote about the common signs of fascism in April 2003, after researching seven fascists regimes. Those were Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Benito Mussolini’s Italy, Francisco Franco’s Spain, Antontio de Oliveira Salazar’s Portual, George Papadopoulos’s Greece, August Pinochet’s Chile, Mohamed Suharto’s Indonesia. These signs resonate with the political and economic direction of the United states under Bush/Cheney. Get involved in reversing this anti-democratic direction while you still can!

Categories Democracy, Evil, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Religion, Separation of church and state

Kansas: Student Journalists Investigate New Principal with Dubious Diplomas, She Resigns

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2017 //
20

The students are our future. And the students give me hope.

When I hear “reformers” like DeVos and Gates and Klein and Rhee claim that our schools are “failure factories,” that they are “obsolete,” that they are a “deadend,” and that our students are woefully undereducated, I will think of the students at this typical high school in Kansas. They unmasked a fraud. They engaged in critical thinking. No one paid them to do it. They demonstrated initiative, intelligence, and persistence. They are far smarter than the “reformers” who run them and their generation down.

In Kansas, student journalists checked out the credentials of their newly hired principal. The “university” that she cited as the source of her MA and doctorate didn’t exist. They investigated further and broke the story. The new principal resigned without ever taking office.

Connor Balthazor, 17, was in the middle of study hall when he was called into a meeting with his high school newspaper adviser.

A group of reporters and editors from the student newspaper, the Booster Redux at Pittsburg High School in southeastern Kansas, had gathered to talk about Amy Robertson, who was hired as the high school’s head principal on March 6.

The student journalists had begun researching Robertson, and quickly found some discrepancies in her education credentials. For one, when they researched Corllins University, the private university where Robertson said she got her master’s and doctorate degrees years ago, the website didn’t work. They found no evidence that it was an accredited university.

“There were some things that just didn’t quite add up,” Balthazor told The Washington Post.

The students began digging into a weeks-long investigation that would result in an article published Friday questioning the legitimacy of the principal’s degrees and of her work as an education consultant.

On Tuesday night, Robertson resigned.

This is a reminder why freedom of the press is so important to our democracy.

Categories Fraud, Freedom of the Press, Kansas, Students

Los Angeles Times: Trump’s War on Journalism

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2017 //
15

This is the fourth and last editorial published by the Los Angeles Times about Trump. It contains links to the preceding three. These are strange times we live in. We have a president who lies and doubles-down on his lies and is incapable of apologizing; a president who refuses to divest or even disclose his worldwide financial holdings, which may be affected by decisions he makes; a man who trusts his immediate family members more than his cabinet to carry out government functions; a man without honor or integrity or knowledge or decency or even a sense of irony (after declaring April to be Sexual Assault Awareness Month, he defended Fox News host Bill O’Reilly who has settled multiple sexual harassment complaints; Trump said O’Reilly had “done nothing wrong.”)

Here is the editorial:

PART VI
Friday
By THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

APRIL 5, 2017

In Donald Trump’s America, the mere act of reporting news unflattering to the president is held up as evidence of bias. Journalists are slandered as “enemies of the people.”

Facts that contradict Trump’s version of reality are dismissed as “fake news.” Reporters and their news organizations are “pathetic,” “very dishonest,” “failing,” and even, in one memorable turn of phrase, “a pile of garbage.”

Trump is, of course, not the first American president to whine about the news media or try to influence coverage. President George W. Bush saw the press as elitist and “slick.” President Obama’s press operation tried to exclude Fox News reporters from interviews, blocked many officials from talking to journalists and, most troubling, prosecuted more national security whistle-blowers and leakers than all previous presidents combined.

But Trump being Trump, he has escalated the traditionally adversarial relationship in demagogic and potentially dangerous ways.

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Most presidents, irritated as they may have been, have continued to acknowledge — at least publicly — that an independent press plays an essential role in American democracy. They’ve recognized that while no news organization is perfect, honest reporting holds leaders and institutions accountable; that’s why a free press was singled out for protection in the 1st Amendment and why outspoken, unfettered journalism is considered a hallmark of a free country.

Trump doesn’t seem to buy it. On his very first day in office, he called journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth.”

Since then he has regularly condemned legitimate reporting as “fake news.” His administration has blocked mainstream news organizations, including The Times, from briefings and his secretary of State chose to travel to Asia without taking the press corps, breaking a longtime tradition.

He apparently hopes to discredit, disrupt or bully into silence anyone who challenges his version of reality.

This may seem like bizarre behavior from a man who consumes the news in print and on television so voraciously and who is in many ways a product of the media. He comes from reality TV, from talk radio with Howard Stern, from the gossip pages of the New York City tabloids, for whose columnists he was both a regular subject and a regular source.

But Trump’s strategy is pretty clear: By branding reporters as liars, he apparently hopes to discredit, disrupt or bully into silence anyone who challenges his version of reality. By undermining trust in news organizations and delegitimizing journalism and muddling the facts so that Americans no longer know who to believe, he can deny and distract and help push his administration’s far-fetched storyline.

It’s a cynical strategy, with some creepy overtones. For instance, when he calls journalists “enemies of the people,” Trump (whether he knows it or not) echoes Josef Stalin and other despots.

But it’s an effective strategy. Such attacks are politically expedient at a moment when trust in the news media is as low as it’s ever been, according to Gallup. And they’re especially resonant with Trump’s supporters, many of whom see journalists as part of the swamp that needs to be drained.

Of course, we’re not perfect. Some readers find news organizations too cynical; others say we’re too elitist. Some say we downplay important stories, or miss them altogether. Conservatives often perceive an unshakable liberal bias in the media (while critics on the left see big, corporate-owned media institutions like The Times as hopelessly centrist).

The news media remain an essential component in the democratic process and should not be undermined by the president.

To do the best possible job, and to hold the confidence of the public in turbulent times, requires constant self-examination and evolution. Soul-searching moments — such as those that occurred after the New York Times was criticized for its coverage of the Bush administration and the Iraq war or, more recently, when the media failed to take Trump’s candidacy seriously enough in the early days of his campaign — can help us do a better job for readers. Even if we are not faultless, the news media remain an essential component in the democratic process and should not be undermined by the president.

Some critics have argued that if Trump is going to treat the news media like the “opposition party” (a phrase his senior aide Steve Bannon has used), then journalists should start acting like opponents too. But that would be a mistake. The role of an institution like the Los Angeles Times (or the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or CNN) is to be independent and aggressive in pursuit of the truth — not to take sides. The editorial pages are the exception: Here we can and should express our opinions about Trump. But the news pages, which operate separately, should report intensively without prejudice, partiality or partisanship.

Given the very real dangers posed by this administration, we should be indefatigable in covering Trump, but shouldn’t let his bullying attitude persuade us to be anything other than objective, fair, open-minded and dogged.

The fundamentals of journalism are more important than ever. With the president of the United States launching a direct assault on the integrity of the mainstream media, news organizations, including The Times, must be courageous in our reporting and resolute in our pursuit of the truth.

Categories Freedom of the Press, Lies, Trump

Los Angeles Editorial: “Our Dishonest President,” Part 1

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2017 //
29

The Los Angeles Times is publishing a series of editorials about Donald Trump. This is the first. It was published yesterday.


It was no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a “catastrophe.”

Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office.

Instead, seventy-some days in — and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed — it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

It is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation.

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.

In the days ahead, The Times editorial board will look more closely at the new president, with a special attention to three troubling traits:

1. Trump’s shocking lack of respect for those fundamental rules and institutions on which our government is based. Since Jan. 20, he has repeatedly disparaged and challenged those entities that have threatened his agenda, stoking public distrust of essential institutions in a way that undermines faith in American democracy. He has questioned the qualifications of judges and the integrity of their decisions, rather than acknowledging that even the president must submit to the rule of law. He has clashed with his own intelligence agencies, demeaned government workers and questioned the credibility of the electoral system and the Federal Reserve. He has lashed out at journalists, declaring them “enemies of the people,” rather than defending the importance of a critical, independent free press. His contempt for the rule of law and the norms of government are palpable.

2. His utter lack of regard for truth. Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know whether he actually can’t distinguish the real from the unreal — or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media — and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible.

3. His scary willingness to repeat alt-right conspiracy theories, racist memes and crackpot, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he believes them or merely uses them. But to cling to disproven “alternative” facts; to retweet racists; to make unverifiable or false statements about rigged elections and fraudulent voters; to buy into discredited conspiracy theories first floated on fringe websites and in supermarket tabloids — these are all of a piece with the Barack Obama birther claptrap that Trump was peddling years ago and which brought him to political prominence. It is deeply alarming that a president would lend the credibility of his office to ideas that have been rightly rejected by politicians from both major political parties.

Where will this end? Will Trump moderate his crazier campaign positions as time passes? Or will he provoke confrontation with Iran, North Korea or China, or disobey a judge’s order or order a soldier to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately, will the system itself — the Constitution, the courts, the permanent bureaucracy, the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers in the streets — protect us from him as he alienates more and more allies at home and abroad, steps on his own message and creates chaos at the expense of his ability to accomplish his goals? Already, Trump’s job approval rating has been hovering in the mid-30s, according to Gallup, a shockingly low level of support for a new president. And that was before his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last week with congressional investigators looking into the connection between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

Those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard.

On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for blanket “non-cooperation” with the Trump administration. Despite plenty of dispiriting signals, that is still our view. The role of the rational opposition is to stand up for the rule of law, the electoral process, the peaceful transfer of power and the role of institutions; we should not underestimate the resiliency of a system in which laws are greater than individuals and voters are as powerful as presidents. This nation survived Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most likely, it will survive again.

But if it is to do so, those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. Protesters must raise their banners. Voters must turn out for elections. Members of Congress — including and especially Republicans — must find the political courage to stand up to Trump. Courts must safeguard the Constitution. State legislators must pass laws to protect their citizens and their policies from federal meddling. All of us who are in the business of holding leaders accountable must redouble our efforts to defend the truth from his cynical assaults.

The United States is not a perfect country, and it has a great distance to go before it fully achieves its goals of liberty and equality. But preserving what works and defending the rules and values on which democracy depends are a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in this drama.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Equity, Freedom, Freedom of the Press, Ignorance, Injustice, Lies, Trump
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