President Trump talks a lot of trash, and he is particularly fond of trash talking the press.
He singles out members of the news media by name. He criticizes entire newsrooms, including CNN, NBC News, and the New York Times. Trump is inflammatory, callous, and nasty.
He is also not even close to being the worst threat ever to face American journalism. Not by a long shot. The American press’ ability to operate freely has seen far graver challenges, many of which have occurred in just the last 20 years.
Yet, many in wider media keep talking about recommitting themselves to the basics of good journalism in the Trump era, as if there were no reason to do this long before he became president.
“This is a challenging time to be a journalist given that the president targets and sharply criticizes the media,” NBC News’ Kristen Welker told the Everygirl. “It is important for journalists to get back to the basics, to triple and quadruple check their facts because there is no room for error. NBC News has a robust system of checks and balances to make sure our sourcing is triple checked and cross-referenced and to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.”
NBC issued a major correction this week after it reported Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had been “wiretapped” by the Justice Department. No such thing had happened.
“There is no doubt that in the era of a president who has coined the term ‘fake news,’ journalists feel an immense pressure to get every word right,” Welker adds. “We need to stay focused on reporting, which includes holding the president — and all elected officials — accountable for their words and actions. There is no doubt there can be adversarial exchanges between the press and any administration. The best way to deal with this is to be armed with the facts, whether preparing for the daily briefing with Sarah Huckabee Sanders or a news conference with President Trump.”
Infuriatingly enough, she isn’t alone in seemingly lamenting that Trump’s many media-related criticisms, as well as his many falsehoods, have encouraged reporters to do what they should have been doing all along.
“The one thing about this ‘fake news’ environment: I think one of the ways you protect yourself is by doing your job and being extra bulletproof,” the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker told Variety. “So if under Obama or under George W. Bush you would triple-check your work, now maybe you quadruple-check it because you don’t want to give them any excuse to call you ‘fake news.’”
As absurd as it is to suggest that the importance of accuracy and skepticism became clear only after a boorish president came along, the worst post-2016 example of the press bragging about doing its job comes from the New York Times, which launched a bizarre ad campaign last year explaining that, yes, the truth is important.
“The truth is hard,” claimed the paper’s television ad, which debuted during the 2017 Academy Awards. “The truth is hard to know.”
It ends with this line: “The truth is more important than ever.”
The truth has always been important. Trump didn’t change that. The truth was important in 2005, when one of the New York Times’ own reporters was jailed for refusing to reveal her source’s name. The truth was important in 2010 when a reporter who also refused to give up his source was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917. The truth was important in 2013 when it was revealed federal agents had secretly obtained the Associated Press’ phone records. The truth was important in 2013 when Obama’s Department of Justice labeled yet another reporter a “criminal co-conspirator” under the Espionage Act.
The truth never stopped being important. Reporters ought to be double-checking their work regardless of who is in office. Every White House should be treated with extreme skepticism.
It shouldn’t take a Republican winning office for members of the press to see this.
