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President Donald Trump’s appetite for flattery and his intolerance for criticism are among his least appealing characteristics. Trump likes journalists who defend or pay homage to him. Those who oppose him can count on a steady stream of over-the-top abuse in which he doesn’t hesitate to distort the truth or call names. But while Trump’s thin skin and readiness to be baited by opponents into unpresidential behavior is deplorable, after 15 months of being fed a steady diet of mainstream-media Trump-bashing, Americans can be sure of one thing: Freedom of the press is alive and well.But not according to the Reporters Without Borders watchdog group. RWB downgraded the United States in its World Press Freedom Index. In the latest ratings, the U.S. was dropped to 45th (down from 41st in 2016 and 43rd in 2017), where it now sits behind such well-known bastions of journalistic liberty as Surinam, Namibia, Cabo Verde, Andorra, Trinidad and Tobago, and Burkina Faso.What accounts for this judgment? According to RWB, Trump’s rants about some members of the press being “enemies of the people†and his claims that his critics are peddling “fake news†has endangered the First Amendment . . .. . . RWB and many in the liberal media seem to believe that not only should the press enjoy the freedom to criticize those in power, but they ought not to be subjected to the same sort of scrutiny by the government or members of the public. In tyrannies, the government seeks to shut down its press critics. In Trump’s America, it is the free press that seeks to silence its critics . . .. . . Rather than seeking fairness, the press is heading in the other direction. Trump’s accusations of “fake news†are themselves often misleading or false. But many in the press seem to take the position that any questioning of the accuracy of their reporting or the fairness of their analyses and opinion segments is tantamount to repression . . . . . . Trump’s attacks on the press may be unseemly, and his charges of “fake news†often have more to do with news that accurately portrays him in an unflattering light than with the publication of falsehoods. But that doesn’t mean that liberal media bias is a myth or that much of the press hasn’t shed all pretense of objectivity with its open contempt for Trump. Nothing in the Constitution guarantees journalists freedom from criticism, whether it is fair or unfair, harsh or gentle. To the contrary, as is true of Trump, they should be just as willing to take criticism as they are to dish it out.
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Topic: No Freedom from Criticism (Read 307 times)
