GET set for the heavyweight clash of the century when Donald Trump is challenged by more than 70 news and media organisations across the USA.
It will be The Press v The Prez on Thursday and, given the state of American public life, no-one is sure who will win an encounter that is bound to be bruising.
Fed up with the president’s attacks on the printed press and broadcasting media as “the enemy of the people” more than 70 newspaper companies and individual papers have agreed to “a coordinated editorial response” to Trump.
“We are not the enemy of the people,” said Marjorie Pritchard, a deputy managing editor of one of the world’s most respected newspapers The Boston Globe, which is driving the project.
Trump has frequently maintained that he has largely been covered unfairly by the press, using the term “fake news” whenever the media presents something unflattering about him or his family and policies – and let’s face it he has given them plenty excuses.
Associated Press reported that The Globe “has reached out to editorial boards nationwide to write and publish editorials on August 16 denouncing what the newspaper called a “dirty war against the free press.”
The publications ranged from large metropolitan dailies, such as the Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Miami Herald and Denver Post, to small weekly papers with circulations as low as 4,000.
This immediate cause of the press protest was the political rally held in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, earlier this month when Trump told his audience that the media was “fake, fake disgusting news.”
The president continued“What ever happened to the free press? What ever happened to honest reporting?”
He then pointed to journalists covering the event: “They don’t report it. They only make up stories.”
Pritchard said she hoped the editorials would make an impression on Americans.
“I hope it would educate readers to realize that an attack on the First Amendment is unacceptable,” she said. “We are a free and independent press, it is one of the most sacred principles enshrined in the Constitution.”
Trump supporters probably won’t be convinced by the press protest, but it’s worth a try.
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