“The public doesn’t believe you people anymore,” President Trump said at his Thursday press conference after CNN’s Jake Acosta asked whether his claims of “fake news” are undermining confidence in the news media. “Now maybe I had something to do with that. I don’t know. But they don’t believe you.”
Whether one applauds Trump or views him as a presidential pariah, his assessment of the media is not something the press can explain away with “alternative facts.” Frankly, it’s something that should strike fear in the heart of every journalist.
In 2015, six out of every 10 Americans did not trust the national news media. In 2016 only 32 percent trusted the news media. Among Trump’s supporters, only 15 percent trust the media. A week before his presser, an Emerson poll found that Americans view the Trump administration as more trustworthy than the media.
If the numbers are to be believed, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be, the media has a crisis that is much bigger than Trump. If the trend continues, it appears the Fourth Estate is heading towards foreclosure.
How does a club that was home to Walter Cronkite find itself in such disrepair? How did a profession once respected as admirable find itself with approval ratings that rival Congress? The media got too big for its own britches and confused integrity with infallibility.
“This not a laughing matter,” NBC’s Chuck Todd tweeted. “I’m sorry, delegitimizing the press is un-American.”
Todd is partially correct in that this is not a laughing matter. The media has lost its way and that is a dangerous derailment. The press has long served as an objective fail-safe to protect the public from the powers-that-be. That objectivity is now absent and the media’s role in our democratic society is in jeopardy. Rather than self-reflect as to how they got off course, the press have opted to label the man who exposed this derailment as un-American.
What’s un-American is the belief that the press should be unaccountable for its actions. What’s un-American is the belief that any attempt to criticize the press should be viewed as heresy. What’s un-American is the belief that the press is akin to a golden calf that compels Americans, presidents included, to worship the press.
Trump has a moral responsibility to challenge a national press that is actively undermining his mandate. He was elected by an American public that wanted to see a wall on the southern border, supported a moratorium on immigration from nations posing a terror risk, and applauded the termination of failed trade deals. It is his job to fulfill that mandate.
But the press has not stopped with challenging Trump on policy. The press is engaged in a campaign to scalp the Trump administration one person at a time. Whether it is a Russian dossier or intelligence leaks, the media is assailing Trump with a mentality that appears to operate under the rule that you print first, verify second.
If the press challenges him on these policies, he has the duty to fight back. If the press smears members of his administration, Trump is well within his right to present his case to the American people. Just like a court of law, the court of public opinion requires two sides to work.
But the press is not mad that Trump is litigating his case in the court of public opinion, it is mad that he is winning over the jurors. People see that the press is still stuck in the anger stage of the five stages of grief and are rejecting the case against Trump on grounds of bias.
Rather than blindly treat the words of the press as the Gospel truth, the American people are telling the press if they don’t do their job the people will do it for them. In essence, the John Q. Public is becoming a Fifth Estate, one that holds the Fourth Accountable.
While such accountability might be bad news for folks in the media such as Chuck Todd, it is good news for the rest of us.
Joseph Murray (@realJoeMurray) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. Previously, he was a campaign official for Pat Buchanan. He is the author of “Odd Man Out” and is administrator of the LGBTrump Facebook page.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
