Reason magazine article: Newspapers Team Up to Tell Trump They Aren't Colluding Against Him Plus: Mormons versus medical marijuana, bureaucrats are bad at protecting data, and cops tase 87-year-old woman for cutting flowers. "Journalists are not the enemy." Hot off of calling for more social-media censorship and supporting destructive speech regulations like FOSTA, newspaper editors would like you to know that Donald Trump's dissing of the news media makes them sad. More than 300 U.S. newspapers ran Thursday editorials that "call for an end to President Trump's sustained assault" on the press. Hundreds Of Newspapers Are Challenging Trump's Attacks: 'We Are Not The ... Publications across the U.S. -- from the large to the tiny, conservative and liberal -- are banding together to ... "Our role is to serve as a check on government," the Chicago Tribunedeclares. "The president ought to get used to it." "Our democracy is endangered when citizens are persuaded to reject or ignore the professionals who provide news and information," warns The Athens News in Ohio. In attacking journalists, Trump damages all Americans Editor’s note: The Athens NEWS is participating in a national campaign spearheaded by The Boston Globe to respon... And so on. The editorials were organized by The Boston Globe and, as HuffPostdescribes them, "have each been constructed with different words but bear a shared message: Mr. President, 'journalists are not the enemy.'" As a journalist (as well as general enthusiast for classical liberal principles and a person capable of making basic historical analogies), I too find the president's description of journalists as enemies of the people unsettling. But whipping up contempt toward the press has been a staple of right-wing talking points in this country for at least two decades. The president's preening anti-media tirades are not so much stirring new hatred within his base as stoking a longstanding sentiment. So far, however, Trump's anti-press antics have mostly stayed in the realm of rhetoric. Meanwhile, the good folks in Congress, state government, and federal agencies are doing things all the time that actually infringe on freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and an open internet, while the vast majority of news outlets remain silent at best. Then, in places where we could use real reporting, popular journalists fall all over themselves to create petty drama and praise John McCain for his contributions to warmongering and spending. While the ideals espoused in these editorials may be righteous, they ring a little hollow... ...and a little self-serving. Too many in media seem to have confused their own diminishing role as gatekeepers of all info and narratives with an existential threat to democracy. Yes, let's fight back against Trump and anyone else in government who seeks to suppress dissent. But maybe people wouldn't hate us so much if we fought as hard for everyone's dignity and right to speak as we do for our own tribe's. Jack Shafer shares some of these concerns. "It goes without saying that press bashing, Trump-style, is alarming," Shafer writes in Politico. "But this Globe-sponsored coordinated editorial response is sure to backfire: It will provide Trump with circumstantial evidence of the existence of a national press cabal that has been convened solely to oppose him....The Globe's anti-Trump project is also an exercise in redundancy, not to mention self-stroking. Most newspapers have already published a multitude of editorials and columns rebuking the president for his trash-talking of the press." America’s Newspapers Just Played Right Into Trump’s Hands Nothing flatters an independent journalist less than the sight of him forming a line to drink from the same foun...
