ONE of the first tweets from within the Trump team after his historic/disastrous (take your pick) election victory was enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone who believes in a free press and the value of good journalism.
“You are the media,’’ Elon Musk posted as a preamble to an onslaught of praise for citizen journalism and a plea for content from anyone unfortunate enough to receive regular updates of his thoughts on X.
Let’s cast aside for a moment any cynicism about a hugely wealthy, high-profile advocate taking advantage of his personal closeness to a powerful politician to promote his own business.
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That’s bad enough but even more disturbing is the worrying insight it provides into the relationship between the soon-to-be-president (and the weird gaggle of oddities he has collected to serve as his advisers) and the media.
In separate posts Musk made it perfectly clear he believes the “legacy media” serves no useful purpose in helping the public understand the world and its ways. That in itself should come as no surprise given the benefits to his business which would be attracted if the press went out of business.
The darker side of his tweet is the context in which it was posted. A few days earlier Donald Trump himself had seemed to suggest he would be perfectly relaxed if a crazed gunman decided to “shoot through” the press corps to reach him. He didn’t call them the press corps of course.
His preferred nickname for them is “fake news”. This has two benefits for him. First, it signals his deep disdain for the men and women whose job it is to report his every move to the waiting world.
Secondly, it gives him plausible deniability. His mangled sentences and random choice of words regularly defy understanding and therefore allows him to deny any malevolent interpretation.
The shooting reference was included in a rambling, unfocused and incoherent sentence which allowed his team to deny suggestions that he was implying that shooting reporters wouldn’t be anything to get upset about. Perish the thought.
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They insisted that Trump was actually offering to protect the press from a crazy shooter, despite the fact there was absolutely no way that interpretation made any sense.
The ironic thing about Trump’s diatribe about fake news is that there is no source of fake news more prolific than him. He regularly seeks to befuddle the public with a blizzard of lies. It is part of a deliberate strategy to leave the public no way of distinguishing truth from fiction and ultimately caring which is which.
Musk’s much-lauded citizen journalism certainly has its place in the modern media landscape. It can provide authentic eyewitness accounts of the news providing you can find corroborating sources that you can trust.
What you can’t rely on citizen journalism to do is untangle fact from fiction in any information coming from the new president.
Trump is not a good man. His election victory pushes us all into a dark place.
He is most certainly not a trustworthy guardian of the American constitution, especially since he does not seem to believe in it. Now the scale of his success will allow to claim a mandate for any crazy scheme he comes up with.
Not only did he win the White House by a considerable margin, but he also won the popular vote and every one of the seven key swing states. The Republican party won control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Trump’s political dominance is terrifying. We know he is out for revenge against those he believes are out to get him. We know because he has told us.
One of his main targets is Jack Smith, the special counsel determined to put Trump in jail by pursuing two cases: Conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in which he was beaten by Joe Biden and another for obstructing justice.
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That’s going to be tricky now, given that Justice Department policy rules out prosecuting a sitting president. Trump has promised to fire Smith “within two seconds” of taking office. That leaves the prosecutor in a particularly vulnerable position given the new president-elect’s reputation for vindictiveness.
Asked if he would adopt an uncharacteristic conciliatory approach and an outlook which puts the good of the country above his own personal vendettas, Trump he suggested he might do so “but not on day one”.
We also know that Trump’s attacks on his political opponents are rarely limited to matters of policy, or indeed matters of fact. Kamala Harris was derided as being stupid, as being a “low IQ individual”, grossly incompetent and as being deeply unfit for public office. When Trump has you in his sights there is nothing he will not do to destroy you. There is no mud he deems too dirty to throw.
During a TV debate with Harris, he repeatedly claimed that immigrants were eating domestic pets, despite official insistence that such claims had no bearing in fact. His television ads blamed his opponent for a string of ills, including taking the world to the “brink of World War Three”.
Look at the people around Trump who are at the time of writing on the verge of being appointed to key posts. There’s Musk himself, who seems to be ruled out of a cabinet position, but Trump has suggested could become secretary of state for cost cutting.
Then there’s Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic who wants to remove fluoride from public water and says he has been offered responsibility for health.
The big question is: can we trust Trump and his team to behave in a responsible way. Many, including Republican Trump opponent Liz Cheney, think not.
After the election result Cheney said: “Citizens across this country, our courts, members of the press and those serving in our federal, state and local governments must now be the guardrails of democracy.”
Strong and vigorous journalism can stand up for truth and reveal the lies. It is an essential pillar of democracy. If you don’t believe in democracy, it serves your own ends to undermine it.
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If your aim is to bewilder the public with so many lies that they are unable to be sure of what is true it serves that purpose to destroy public trust in journalism.
One big reason for defending the press is that Trump and Musk seem so determined to do it down. That alone should convince those of us with reservations about the media to rally to its cause.
Of course, there will be times when we will be disappointed in it. Times when we feel that the BBC, for example, prioritises anti-SNP stories over negative stories about other political parties.
And it’s entirely legitimate to challenge the BBC if you believe it has fallen short of the high standards it has set itself.
I often feel it should be required to publicly answer such challenges if enough specific complaints are received.
But those challenges should not deny the fact that properly practising the trade of journalism is integral to a functioning democracy. Citizen journalism is all very well but journalism takes skill.
I teach journalism these days and students spend four years learning the necessary skills. After that they are just about ready to learn journalism on the job.
If the leader of the world’s strongest superpower and those closest to him seek to persuade you that those skills are superfluous and that those with no training and no experience of the job can perform the task as well as, or better than, journalists who have dedicated their lives to learning the craft, you would be wise to be very suspicious about their motives.
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