Trump and the Press

The feud between Trump and his people and members of the traditional media is amusing to watch, at least for people who both have strong stomachs and enjoy a good farce.  There is certainly something comical in watching people  for whose attitude and  behavior  toward Obama the terms “cheerleader” and  “lickspittle”  were often too mild suddenly discovering  the sacred duty of the press in this  great republic to take an adversarial and skeptical approach to those in power.  It is fine low humor when they disclaim any political or ideological motives or biases and profess, usually with fairly straight faces, a disinterested commitment  to give us just the facts ma’am.  It gets lower and broader when they whine about being picked on and misunderstood and not getting their due respect as arbiters of what is good and true.  Then  we have Trump tweeting and blustering  in ways beneath the dignity of the presidency of either the United States or the Delta house at Faber College.   (This does not mean Trump is wrong about the malice, dishonesty, and bias. He’s not, but he surely could deal with the situation in less strange ways.) There is entertainment there too. 

Many  people take this dust up  seriously, but I see no reason  to do so.  Some of Trump’s supporters  worry that this is a slow moving coup d’etat, and that the Democrats and their servants in the press will be able to depose Trump as they  brought down Nixon.  This seems unlikely for several reasons. Nixon handled  the business over Watergate in ways which gave his enemies something  to work with.  Despite months of effort  Trump’s enemies have found nothing comparable to attach to him.  The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress  and had almost  all the important media organizations with them when they went after Nixon.  This time the Democrats are in the minority in both houses, and there are important nontraditional media people and organizations who are not working with them and often opposing them. So it seems very unlikely  that Trump will be run out of office or even be harmed much at all.

Some of Trump’s opponents  fret that the spats between Trump and  his enemies in the traditional media are a threat to freedom of the press or even a danger to constitutional government.  This seems almost paranoid if sincere.  There is no evidence of Trump or his people attempting to harm, threaten, or silence anyone in the media.  (They have not, for example,  put a reporter from a network they didn’t like under criminal investigation as Obama’s  people did.)  They are just criticizing their critics, often rudely, and pointing out their bias.  Criticism in response  is what one should expect when one makes continual public attacks on a president not named Bush.  Obama and his people  had no reluctance about  saying what they thought of Limbaugh and various others on TV or radio, and few if any in the traditional media complained that that might be a threat to the First Amendment.  Unless things change there seems to be no reason in this stuff to be concerned about freedom of the press.

The questions and issues  of policies in the government and  honesty and trustworthiness in the media are important.  The feud  is a sideshow, and at times a fairly funny one.