There is no way to have a functioning democracy without a thriving press.
One of the great missions of the press is to hold power accountable by revealing what those in power would rather hide. Corruption depends on concealment. Accountability hinges on disclosure.
The founders of this country knew that. I also think Donald Trump knows that and that he is purposely attempting to prune that function.
A free and fearless press is the greatest ally to a free and prosperous people. And, the kind of dogged, unrelenting pressure that reporting requires demands a professional press. People who can make a living and feed a family as they labor away ferreting out the truth. And, I speak here liberally about the profession, from cable news to YouTube, from a big city daily to a blog.
No one loves a catchphrase more than Trump. He loves labeling. He loves to yoke his enemies with silly, derisive monikers, to reduce perceived weakness to bumper sticker legibility.
This would be a trifle, a quirk, coming from others. But Trump is president.
The presidential bully pulpit is as powerful, or possibly more powerful, than any media outlet, in part because it is often propagated by those same outlets.
As such, his repeated attacks on the press — including on individual journalists — amounts to a maximum breach of protocols, and I would say constitutional responsibility, as it represents one of the many measurable casualties of this presidency.
A Quinnipiac University poll last week found that Republicans say 49% to 36% “that the news media is the enemy of the people. Every other listed party, gender, education, age and racial group says the media is an important part of democracy.”
Trump is weaponizing an existing weariness about the press to further erode it.
Part of Trump’s disdain for the media is that he has personally seen how its thirst and weaknesses can be exploited, because he has a long history of orchestrating the exploitation, from planting false stories to inflating his wealth. Trump genuinely believes in the concept of “fake news” because he was a dealer of fake news. There is a part of him who believes that some anonymous sources don’t exist, because he was a source, pretending to be someone else, so he as a source didn’t really exist.
He uses that general suspicion and mistrust to cast doubts on legitimate news he knows to be true.
And, he not only defames the press, he threatens it. He has renewed his calls to take a “strong look” at the country’s libel laws. He has a long history of threatening to sue media outlets, including this newspaper. He has threatened Facebook, Google and Twitter, saying they’re “treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful,” whatever that means. He has even threatened a federal investigation of “Saturday Night Live” for mocking him.
For Trump this may all be bluster and political posturing — he hasn’t sued these media outlets, yet — but the threats themselves perform a destructive function, poisoning perception about the press, particularly among people who support Trump.
According to an Axios/Survey Monkey poll released in June:
“Nearly all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (92%) say that traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories at least sometimes.”
This is by no means an exclusively Trump-related phenomenon. As a Knight Foundation/Gallup report pointed out in September, “Between 2003 and 2016, the percentage of Americans who said they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media fell from 54% to 32% before recovering somewhat to 41% in 2017 as trust among Democrats rebounded.”
But perhaps more ominously, an August Ipsos poll found that a plurality of Republicans, 43%, agree that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”
The weaker the media, the stronger the demagogue. The road to authoritarianism winds its way through darkness.
And, Trump’s tactic here is to both overwhelm and degrade. He wants to so blur the line between truth and lies that he’s exhausted our stamina for discernment.
To Trump, the press is a tool and a weapon, to be used and deployed in the promotion of brand, and therefore the acquisition of money and power.
I understand all the issues people have with media.
I understand how damaging it is to the public faith and to the institutional — and professional — reputation when a media outlet or even multiple outlets in concert get it wrong. I understand the issues around the appearance and presence of bias. I understand how disconcerting it is that mainstream media is a public trust, but mainstream media companies are also corporate entities.
I understand all of that, but I also know that we will cease to be truly free if ever the day comes when the free press is cowed.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.