Commentary: Whenever a candidate begins their campaign ad with the declarative statement, “I am not a witch,” as Christine O’Donnell was compelled to do during her run for the U.S. Senate in 2010, you know they’ve pretty much lost the race.
I feel a little bit the same about the concerted effort by newspapers throughout the country, including the Sun-News, last week to push back against the slurs of President Donald Trump. Several of the editorials I read opened with the declarative statement, “We are not your enemy.” If we have to explain that, I kind of feel like we’ve already lost the battle.
The idea behind the coordinated effort, which was spearheaded by the Boston Globe, was to have hundreds of newspapers throughout the country all speak to the issue in their own voice. For our contribution, I tried to focus more of the big picture of press freedom, and less on the assaults of the daily tweets.
I don’t worry about the president taking active steps to shut down the press. To be clear, I do think he would if he could. But, as is often the case, the president seems to lash out on Twitter in frustration for not being able to take more direct, unilateral action.
I do worry about the impact of the president’s campaign to label all negative reporting as “fake news.” In the past, presidents or their surrogates would push back against negative reporting by debating the issues, explaining the wisdom of their decisions and finding flaws in the arguments of their critics.
Simply dismissing all criticism as “fake” stifles any debate and prevents collaboration. How will we ever come to consensus on the big, vexing issues of our day if we don’t have a set of basic agreements on which to start the discussion?
I also worry about the personal attacks against individual reporters. I would not expect those reporters to yield to the intimidation by our nation’s leader, but I am concerned about their safety.
While more than 300 newspapers participated in last week’s effort, a number made the decision not to. It’s not that their editors have less reverence for the First Amendment than we do. They reasoned, understandably, that any coordinated effort to criticize the president would be seen by his supporters as evidence of a nationwide media conspiracy.
And so, how should we respond to the daily slurs and slanders? I honestly don’t know.
It is clear that the president needs enemies like a flame needs oxygen or a noxious weed needs rain. And so, he wakes up every morning, jumps on Twitter and starts picking fights.
If we respond, are we only feeding his need? If we don’t respond, are we allowing untrue slurs to go uncontested, thereby giving them credence?
It’s a dilemma.
But ultimately, we will all be judged on our work. It doesn’t really matter what insults the president lobs our way, or what we decide to do, or not do, about them. What matters is the work.
If we give our readers news that is accurate, informative, interesting, relevant and fair, we will do just fine. If we fall short of those standards, we will be held to account by our readers. Nothing the president says or tweets will change that.