The Boston Globe is organizing a “war of words” against President Donald Trump with “about 70” publications to combat what it describes as the president’s “dirty war against the free press.”
We are not the enemy of the people,’’ said Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor of the Boston Globe editorial page.
Trump previously derided news media outlets such as the New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN — all of which present themselves as politically objective and non-partisan — as “fake news media” and “the enemy of the American people”:
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
The Boston Globe‘s effort calls on participating editorial boards to coordinate criticisms of Trump’s critiques of news media outlets. Approximately 70 publications have committed to the effort so far.
Pritchard described the president’s criticisms of various news media outlets and figures as an undermining of the First Amendment.
“I hope it would educate readers to realize that an attack on the First Amendment is unacceptable,’’ said Pritchard. “We are a free and independent press, it is one of the most sacred principles enshrined in the Constitution.’’
In April 2017, CNN’s Jim Acosta similarly framed Trump’s criticisms of his employer as a subversion of the First Amendment:
As much as people wanna beat up on CNN and go after CNN and “CNN sucks” and that sort of thing, what [Breitbart News] does, I was with Steve Bannon the other day where he referred to us as the opposition party, once again. We’re not the opposition party. We are just trying to get at the truth.
He went on to say that “the president has to understand that he is doing real damage to what we do. He is doing real damage to the First Amendment in this country when he refers to the news media as the enemies of the people,” Acosta said, adding, “We need people to trust us. And I believe that [CNN and the broader news media have] been acting in a way that garners that trust.”
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
Comments are closed.