President Trump struck back against the 300+ papers that followed The Boston Globe’s lead on Thursday to print editorials slamming the president for his supposed war on the free press.
“The Boston Globe, which was sold to the Failing New York Times for 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (plus 800 million dollars in losses & investment), or 2.1 BILLION DOLLARS, was then sold by the Times for 1 DOLLAR,” Trump noted on Twitter. “Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!”
Trump also used one of Stephen Bannon’s favorite insults to bash the media earlier in the day.
“THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY,” he tweeted. “It is very bad for our Great Country…BUT WE ARE WINNING!”
Trump said that he had no problem with the First Amendment; rather, he was sick of newspapers claiming to print objective news while, in reality, pursuing an agenda that was aimed at destroying his administration.
“There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS,” he wrote. “The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!”
While more than 350 newspapers participated in Thursday’s stunt, a few major markets declined to join the protest. That included the Los Angeles Times, which explained that while their editors were on the same page when it came to defending the free press, they would not jump on the pile because “we values our independence.”
“The idea of joining together to protest him seems almost to encourage that kind of conspiracy thinking by the president and his loyalists,” wrote L.A. Times editor Nicholas Goldberg. “Why give them ammunition to scream about ‘collusion.’”
We doubt there are many occasions when we would find ourselves agreeing with Goldberg or the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board, but damn, he seems to be the only editor in the country who actually sees what’s going on! How did no other major newspaper editor see this logic? How does the owner of the New York Times fail to understand that the harder the media digs its heels in against Trump, the more they lose the faith and trust of the American people?
The fate of the free press is NOT in the hands of Donald Trump. It is in the hands of the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and every other newspaper that participated in this nonsense. If they want to save journalism, they can start by PRACTICING journalism. If they want the golden age of objective, investigative reporting to die out…well, all they have to do is keep doing what they’ve been doing for the last two years.
