Last week, in protest against CNN’s “false” reporting, President Trump took to Twitter to propose a “worldwide network” that could broadcast a message of American greatness. He argued that a government-run network is needed to counteract CNN’s unfair portrayal of America to international viewers. It’s an interesting proposal and deeply revealing about the president.
State-run networks created to teach others about their “greatness” typically do so because they aren’t great at all. Take Russia, for example. It’s a nation without the rule of law or freedom that exists in America. So it has invested millions in creating a state-run propaganda network to undermine freedoms abroad, in order to mask its own abuses. The network is called RT—it used to be called “Russia Today”—and Donald Trump knows all about it. He’s even appeared on it.
Here’s all you need to know about how such networks function: RT has been widely discredited for acting as Vladimir Putin’s personal propaganda station, and for—among other mistakes—reading out fake tweets as part of its live broadcasts. But producers there went out of their way to craft a segment on the threat to free speech on college campuses in the West. For this segment they invited on Jack Emsley, the former vice-president of the King’s College London Conservative Association, who appreciated the irony. Emsley said of his speaking invitation: “I don’t think the vast majority of the public would now have a hard time seeing the hypocrisy in this when compared to the line RT takes on Russian dissidents, journalists and the state crackdown on opposition politicians.”
Traditionally in America, the idea of a state-run news network was meant not as a counter to the independent press—which is explicitly Trump’s idea—but to counter the state-run propaganda networks of autocracies. During the Cold War for example, Voice of America countered Communist propaganda by broadcasting to those living under Soviet rule and its effects were powerful enough to measure.
For instance, one study from the Hoover Institution looked at the difference in attitudes about the KAL 007 incident (in which a Soviet fighter jet shot down a Korean civilian airliner) among people who had listened to VOA broadcasts and those who had only listened to Soviet state-run media. People who heard the VOA were almost four times as likely to disapprove of Russia’s action.
Or take the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The USSR’s state-run media tried to cover up the incident and most Soviet citizens learned about it through the VOA and other Western media, which broadcast vital information on what had happened and how to best avoid radiation poisoning.
American state-run networks promoted freedom abroad during the Cold War, acting as indispensable sources of information for citizens who would otherwise be at the mercy of their government’s propaganda. These uncensored criticisms helped to create a shift in domestic Soviet attitudes in the 1980s, which eventually contributed to the toppling of Communist rule.
And the U.S. government continues to fund Radio Free Europe, which broadcasts news to countries where citizens still don’t have free access to impartial information.
On the other hand, Trump’s suggestion of a “worldwide network” doesn’t seem to aim at improving the freedoms of others, but, rather, promoting the perceptions of himself. Though his tweet was articulated as a response to CNN’s poor portrayal of America, Trump’s complaints about the network often focus on its coverage of his presidency. When details emerged in October of the 16 explosive devices mailed to Trump critics—including CNN itself—the president lashed out at the network’s coverage of him. He said it was “funny” that CNN was able to criticize him “at will” about the attempted bombings. In 2016, during the presidential race, Trump tweeted that CNN’s news on him was “fiction,” asserting that the network was an arm of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The president has a right to dislike CNN’s reporting of him, just as much as CNN has a right to continue it. But the American president is not the embodiment of America herself. The United States is a constitutional republic, and the Founders didn’t create Trump’s office to resemble that of a king. Negative reporting about his presidency doesn’t always mean that America is being misrepresented.
The president would do well to remember that.
