It’s clear that a great many in the news media would benefit enormously from a little perspective. At the very least, they might benefit from quick brush up on the history of the U.S. presidents.
MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt, for example, would do well to learn from the obvious errors of her June 25 tweet, which read, “The last person to rule America who didn’t believe in the First Amendment was King George III.”
The last person to rule America who didn’t believe in the First Amendment was King George III. https://t.co/V17NPtM6OW
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) June 26, 2018
Hunt’s declaration, which is ridiculous, came in response specifically to President Trump calling the press Monday “the enemy of the people.” Her abjectly absurd reaction is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that this particular slice of ignorance has been shared so far by more than 8,000 social media users.
First, Trump “rules” nothing. He may have upended American political norms, but the other two branches of the federal government are still intact, and he only shares power with them.
Second, her suggestion that Trump is the greatest threat to the U.S. press since George III isn’t even close to being historically accurate.
If we want to talk about American presidents with poor track records of respecting First Amendment rights, might I suggest Abraham Lincoln, who shuttered entire newsrooms and had editors arrested? Or maybe we can talk about Woodrow Wilson, who signed a bill making it a crime to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the federal government — a law that actually did result in the prosecution and conviction of socialist politician Eugene V. Debs, who received a 10-year sentence.
For all Trump’s anti-media talk, he’s no Lincoln or Wilson.
You needn’t reach that far back for an example of chief executives who did things much worse than Trump’s offhand remarks. Former President Barack Obama’s Justice Department monitored an entire newsroom’s office and private phone activity, “labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case,” and “issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.”
You’ll find no defense here of the president’s constant attacks on reporters. But please, keep some perspective.
For all his bluster, the closest that his administration has come to impeding the First Amendment has been his Justice Department’s decision to seize electronic communications between a New York Times reporter and the former Senate Intelligence Committee official with whom she was engaged in an extramarital affair. This is definitely a sensitive issue, but it is not even clear yet whether the action was unjustified.
Vigilance over Trump’s attacks on newsrooms is prudent — as is pushing back against him.
Overselling the story and pretending Trump is the first and worst of his kind, however, won’t do you any good.
