‘Journalists are not the enemy:’ US media counter Trump attacks

Washington (dpa) - More than 350 US media outlets published editorials on Thursday to counter US President Donald Trump’s attacks on the free press, following a call for a nationwide campaign by the Boston Globe.   

Trump frequently describes articles that are critical of him or publish damaging information as “fake news,” and has labelled media as the “enemy of the people.”   

“Replacing a free media with a state-run media has always been a first order of business for any corrupt regime taking over a country,” the Globe wrote in an op-ed entitled “Journalists are not the enemy.”   

The New York Times, which, like many outlets, published its editorial on Wednesday, said “... calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people’ is dangerous, period,” it added.   

Trump doubled down after Thursday’s editorials by bashing the media on Twitter.   

“THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY,” he wrote. 

“It is very bad for our Great Country....BUT WE ARE WINNING!”   

Joining the Boston Globe’s #freepress initiative, the editorial board of the Kansas City Star described Trump’s labelling of the press as “strategic.”   

“That is what Nazis called Jews. It’s how Joseph Stalin’s critics were marked for execution,” the paper said.   

Citing an Ipsos poll, the Globe pointed out that nearly half - 48 per cent - of supporters of Trump’s Republican Party endorse the statement, 
“The news media is the enemy of the American people.”   

Amid concerns that the increasingly hostile environment could lead to violence, in June a lone gunman shot dead four journalists and a sales assistant at the Capital Gazette newspaper office in Annapolis, Maryland.