While Donald Trump postponed plans to hand out “Fake News Awards” on Monday (we’re kind of hoping one of the grownups in the White House caught wind of the scheme and is working to shut it down completely), that did not stop the Committee to Protect Journalists from its own silly contest, as the press-freedom organization named its top “Press Oppressors” for the year.
You’ll never guess who won.
Kidding! Trump won. Of course Trump won. And just as the president’s fake-news trophies would have told us more about him than the recipients, the CPJ list of oppressors gives us a pretty good insight into their warped worldview.
The list of nominees put out by the group includes a handful of the usual suspects—Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, Xi Jinping of China, and Vladimir Putin of Russia. Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and Andrzej Duda of Poland received nods for being the “biggest backsliders.” But the overall winner was Trump, for paving the way for other leaders to grouse about “fake news” and, interestingly, because “under Trump’s administration, the Department of Justice has failed to commit to guidelines intended to protect journalists’ sources.” More on that in a moment.
First, let’s look at some people who didn’t make the cut. Kim Jong-un’s North Korea placed last on Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index, because—just as a for-instance—merely “listening to a foreign radio broadcast can lead to a spell in a concentration camp.” Kim earns no mention from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In Syria, where by CPJ’s own count, eight journalists died last year, for some reason Bashar Assad is missing, too. The leaders of Iran? Saudi Arabia? Oh no. You have to focus on the real bad guy: Trump.
It’s undeniable that the United States’ place in the world gives our president’s treatment of the media more weight than that of some backwater despot. And Trump’s rhetoric about “fake news” is concerning. But it’s also largely bluster.
Consider for a moment that a couple of weeks ago, Trump gave a freewheeling and off-the-cuff interview to the New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt. The interview was widely seen as damaging to Trump and yet the only repercussions Schmidt faced came from his media colleagues, for not being even tougher on the president. And after that, Schmidt, a national security reporter, published an article full of damaging claims about the president’s handling of the Robert Mueller investigation. Yet Schmidt’s still walking around, a free man.
Also consider that the CPJ’s denouncement of Trump might have made a bigger dent in the news cycle on Monday if we weren’t all debating the merits of Fire and Fury, a book written by a journalist who had unfettered access to the White House for the first months of the Trump administration.
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Now, about the CPJ’s complaint that the Department of Justice hasn’t committed to guidelines designed to protect journalists’ sources: The CPJ’s citation is a reference to comments from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, both in his confirmation hearing and in other testimony before Congress, in which he would not promise not to put reporters in jail. And it would indeed be troubling if the Trump administration were threatening to jail reporters—as it was when the Obama administration threatened the New York Times’ James Risen in 2015 over his use of confidential sources. And, before that, investigated Fox News’ James Rosen and named him a criminal co-conspirator in a probe of leaks of classified information.
As a journalist, it’s dispiriting to spend any amount of time on social media and see your profession dragged through the mud by the president and his riled-up base. But it’s just as heartening to read the incredible journalism being done today from investigative reports about government at all levels and around the world. And it should not be forgotten that outlets such as the Times and the Washington Post have seen a surge in subscribers from readers committed to quality journalism in today’s political climate.
They deserve it. During the spring and summer, Donald Trump fired James Comey. He told a Russian official that he found Comey to be a “nut job.” Rod Rosenstein named Robert Mueller special counsel to investigate Russian meddling. Trump shook up the White House staff. And for every one of these stories, a responsible press was covering the story and getting it out to the public.
That’s the sign of a healthy press, not one cowed by an authoritarian despot.
