On Nov. 9, 2016, like many Americans — a majority, in fact — I woke up with a throbbing headache and the realization that Donald Trump had hijacked the Republican party and been elected president. After briefly considering a move to Canada, I was forced to accept the results of our flawed electoral-college system. I felt like we just had to suck it up for four years, and hope Trump didn’t start a war or do irreversible harm to our reputation as the world’s greatest democracy.
No war yet, but too late for our reputation. His daily barrage of tweet-lies — “California wildfires are being magnified & made worse” by enviros diverting water “into the Pacific Ocean” (“Trump’s Fire Tweets Decried as Congressional Delegation Urges Disaster Declaration,” Aug. 7) — and vicious, personal attacks on individuals and institutions (Don Lemon, John McCain, the FBI, the intelligence community) are corrosive to our democracy.
Today, Aug. 16, 2018, the North Coast Journal and the Times-Standard, are joining more than 200 newspapers across the U.S. to strongly condemn this president’s nonstop attack on one of his favorite targets — the press. Trump hugs the flag and says he loves the Constitution, but that part in the First Amendment about a free press? Not so much.
In his first month in office, Trump started calling the news media “the enemy of the people.” He calls reporters “scum” and “slime” at his rallies. Last week Trump pointed to the back of the room at a rally in Pennsylvania and told the audience the media was “fake, fake, disgusting news.”
Enough.
These attacks, this vicious rhetoric, have created two very real dangers: Short-term, it increases the dangers inherent in doing our job. Long-term and far more important, it undermines the very basis of our democracy.
Being a reporter in the United States is certainly less dangerous than many professions, like being a firefighter, but not without peril. Reporters cover fires, show up at crime scenes, and sit at the press table at city council and supervisor meetings. We also cover violent criminals, political controversies, protests and potentially volatile political rallies. In late June a mass shooter left five people dead and three injured in a newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland (“Know Your Enemies,” July 5).
What damage is this doing to a free press in a democracy?
This is from an editorial by Judy Patrick, vice president of editorial development for the New York Press Association: “When the leader of the free world works to erode the public’s trust in the media, the potential for damage is enormous, both here and abroad. We once set an example of free and open government for the world to follow. Now those who seek to suppress the free flow of information are doing so with impunity.
“The time has come for us to stand up to the bullying. The role journalism plays in our free society is too crucial to allow this degradation to continue.”
Finally, a footnote to my Republican friends: We need you to stand up to this president and for the core values of the Republican Party. You were for free trade, for standing up to brutal regimes abroad, against growing the deficit, for respecting our justice system and law enforcement. Trump is not who we are and not who you are.
Judy Hodgson is the publisher of the North Coast Journal.
This article appears in Creatures of the Shallows.
as one of Japanese,
Objection from Many US Media against their “Leader” look enviable movement.
Also Japan is under similar situation but Japanese mainstream Media cannot do same thing.
For example,
Chairman or executives of Japanese Major Media often enjoy to dine with Prime Minister Abe.
One of them,TV Asahi has weakened Criticism of Plural News Shows by self-censorship or hesitation to Abe Government and its Supporters.
and,Government’s vindicater who justify even Anti-LGBT politicians become anchor of noon time weekday news show.
Criticism against Abe Government has decreased from Japanese Major Media year by year.
Note: California has enacted the National POpular Vote bill.
The bill is 64% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It simply requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
Oh, come on, Judy. Move to Canada? Right. To proclaim a belief that the dog-and-pony show that is the Trump presidency would have any real effect on the ground would be specious at best, for a supposedly educated, world-wise old veteran like you. His tweets are designed for one thing and one thing only: to keep those foolish enough to follow them absorbed in their inanity, thus missing out on the real shenanigans of government.
And our flawed electoral system? it’s funny how we never hear about it when Democrats are its beneficiaries. And start a war? What president hasn’t started, or continued a war somewhere?
As far as our reputation as a bastion of Democracy – our “efforts” towards the spreading of “Democracy” world-wide have done more than anything else to harm our reputation, making it clear to all but us that we’re willing to kill native peoples anywhere for American corporate control long before we’re willing to kill them into accepting “democracy”.
But let’s get to the heart of the matter: the total bullshit being fed to us as news. You cannot turn on the television, read a paper or open a magazine without getting such a terribly skewed, one sided version of events as to render it all useless for anything other than propaganda. Stories that should just contain the facts (remember, “Who, what, when, where, and how”?)instead try to tell us why, with little concern for the accuracy of the information used to form the opinion, and act as if we must be addle-minded to even consider looking at anything from a different perspective.
I’m not picking sides here (something our news agencies do with glee) – Fox is as bad as CNN or MSNBC – but what Trump says is true: the major news agencies will not give the full story, or the important news about events that will really have an effect on our lives; they will fill our heads with a different calamity or fabricated crisis every week, and never tell us that our government just signed over our sovereignty, unless it’s couched in some bullshit story about how the treaty will provide protection to some obscure critter somewhere by tightening environmental laws. Never mind that it just made our laws on the matter null and void, and gave the authority for policing our own lands over to some international tribune, somewhere.
So yeah – you all have dropped the ball, and now you’re reaping the rewards. If you’re tired of the criticism, suck it up and start doing your jobs. We’d all come out ahead.
Dear publisher of the NCJ Judy Hodgson,
Your opinion, or should I say tripe, you’ve spewed for your readers to enjoy here is garbage. At best, you believe your own emotionally misguided drivel that lacks any sense of rational thought, and at worst you’re being intellectually dishonest.
Trump, “hijacked the Republican Party.” Really?! Stop yourself.
The USA is the “world’s greatest democracy.” What?! The USA is not a democracy. It is a democratic republic. Stop calling our system of government a democracy. That is patently false and no small sticking point.
A free press is indeed important to a free nation. Maybe you need to go look through the Wikileaks releases showing the emails proving NYT editors in league with Hillary and her cronies. Actually, there is no “maybe.” Go do it. You’ll be appalled (I hope). And this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Go on you tube and listen to the clip from Mika Brzezinski telling her viewers that it is their (media’s) job to be the only ones to tell us anything, and only what they say is truth news. Next, go read David Rockefeller’s autobiography where he flat out thanks the big news media for their being complicit in his and his co-conspirators’ plans for his idea of the future of this country (doesn’t sound democratic to me). These are just 3 of countless incidents of the media not being truthful. Point being, Judy, 95% of media is now owned by just 6 mega corporations and those groups are largely responsible for what the public see as “news,” and it is not all real and unbiased, in fact it is often made up, bold faced lies with a nefarious purpose. You come across as a human that truly would be offended by fake news regardless which side of the proverbial aisle it came from. I hope that’s true.
Your guru that you quote here says: “leader of the free world,” What even is that? What does this mean? We’ve all heard that the POTUS (not matter who is playing the role) is this label, but really? As a free thinking person this is bull mud. Don’t repeat it. Moving past that, Guru goes on, that POTUS, though, is the one eroding the public’s trust in media?! Seriously? You don’t wanna address any culpability the media may have in this issue? No; you clearly wanna join your 200 mind warped cronies and point the finger at POTUS. Shame on you. The only real, and truly terrorizing bullying comes from fake news outlets gaslighting the public. Don’t be part of that crew, Judy. It’s an ugly crew.
Finally, a footnote: You and people in your role as a gatekeeper of news for the public, we need you to worry less about “standing up to this (duly elected) president,” and stand up to your role as a publisher, as someone that doesn’t give into group-think, who joins a list of 200 other media corporations to “#resist” or some nonsense. What you need to do is highlight what we all know by now – that we have been lied to for decades by the media (Operation Mockingbird, ring a bell?) and implement change by respecting to the public by shining the true light on the world around us. If y’all don’t, the current POTUS is gonna be POTUS for 8 years, not the 4 you’re hoping to get. Respect for our justice system starts with bringing the darkness perpetrated against us, that is to say We the People of the very Republic you seem to care very much about, by those at the very top of that system: Comey, Yates, Strzok, Brennan, McCabe, etc, exposing their crimes and meting out justice. To start with…