Abstract
A friend of mine runs the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York and once gave me a T-shirt he'd picked up in the Philippines. Printed by the local media, it reads: “Stop Killing Journalists.” When I was in the deadly dangerous Mexican border city of Juarez, the same friend, Joel Simon, put me in touch with a local newspaper reporter whose life was so much at risk that he had to live in El Paso, Texas, and commute across the border to the newsroom each morning. As with the Philippine journalists, this reporter's working life seemed utterly remote from my own in New York. It may be trying, but is not exactly lethal.
However, some worry that Donald Trump's threats against the media have reached such a level that journalists in the US must also fear for their physical safety. Having repeatedly referred to the media as the “enemy of the people”, Trump has taken his attacks up a notch or two. At a rally in Pennsylvania in August, Trump derided the “fake, fake, disgusting news”. Jabbing his finger at the journalists in the media pen, he called them “horrible, horrendous people”. Some in his audience laughed and others booed in a good-humoured pantomime way. Given the ever-increasing ugliness of America's political divide and the fact that it doesn't take much to drive some Americans to gun violence, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that a few people in the crowd might have taken his words at face value and emerged from the rally seething with resentment at members of the Fourth Estate.
Some Trump opponents are less bothered by the possible consequences of Trump's escalation in name-calling than by what it might reveal about his political future. Is he, as some dearly hope, trying to provoke or discredit the media because he knows Bob Mueller's official investigation into his campaign's links with Russia will produce some damaging stuff on him – trying to nobble the messenger before it delivers the news? Or was he genuinely miffed – as he suggested he was – that the “fake news” brigade didn't report his dealings with NATO, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin for the glittering diplomatic successes that he believes they were?
Personally, I think the “Mullering by Mueller” theory is more convincing but accept it's dangerous to try to work out what he's thinking. What seems undeniable is that by using even more vitriolic language to describe the media than he uses to describe his Democrat opponents, Trump hopes supporters will realise that journalists are part of the problem and not of the solution.
But is it really enough to prompt physical attacks? Trump's biggest critics do their best to ramp up the gravity of the threat – The Guardian, for instance, insisted Trump's “war with the media” has “deadly implications” and that journalists are “in real danger”. Its commentator suggested Trump's anti-press diatribes had “lethal implications” when five staff at the Capital Gazette in Maryland “paid with their lives” in June. In fact, there's no evidence it had anything to do with Trump: the gunman bore a grudge over the reporting of his sexual harassment conviction. American journalists have been murdered by their heavily armed, disgruntled readers and audiences since long before the current presidency.
For AG Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times (a newspaper which, Manhattanite that he is, Trump cannot wean himself off caring about), the matter is so serious that he asked to meet the president to complain that his rhetoric is leading to a rise in threats against journalists. Trump, needless to say, put his own spin on the confab, telling Twitter he gave Sulzberger an earful about the vast amounts of “fake news” being put out by the media. So it's probably safe to assume he doesn't intend to rein in the rhetoric.
Bret Stephens, a New York Times columnist, helped reinforce his boss's point by recounting in print how he gets occasional threatening messages on his answerphone from a reader who he guesses from his voice to be a white American male from the South. He also guesses the reader has taken exception to his criticism of Trump supporters.
“I don't carry an AR [automatic rifle] but once we start shooting you f⋆⋆⋆ers, you aren't going to pop off like you do now,” said the caller in his latest message in May. “You're worthless, the press is the enemy of the United States people and, you know what, rather than me shoot you, I hope a Mexican and, even better yet, I hope a n⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆ shoots you in the head, dead.”
Stephens strongly suspects some Trump supporters “didn't get the memo about taking Trump seriously but not literally” and that “we are approaching a day when blood on the newsroom floor will be blood on the president's hands”. Given the mindbogglingly pathetic reasons for so many US mass shootings, one would be foolish to bet against him.
Joel Simon at the Committee to Protect Journalists says Trump has a perfect right to criticise the media but believes he's “playing a dangerous game”. Journalists covering his rallies say the atmosphere “is very charged, and there's always a risk things could get out of hand”. His more immediate concern is the effect of Trump's media hate campaign beyond the US. Across the world, autocrats are adopting the term “fake news” to justify repressive policies and journalists are being jailed on “fake news” charges. There were 21 behind bars at the end of last year, up from nine the year before. (According to a review by Politico, prominent leaders or state media in 15 countries are using Trump's “fake news” line to denounce their critics).
Simon also believes Trump's attacks have eroded the ability of the US to defend the rights of threatened journalists around the world. He admits the US record on press freedom is far from perfect – noting the Obama administration's ferocious investigations into leaks – but insists that the tradition of past presidents tolerating relentless media criticism “gave them legitimacy” when they demanded protection for critical voices in repressive countries. Trump, then, has lost any credibility in this area.
Whether or not it leads to attacks, Trump's anti-media onslaught isn't going to make any journalist's job any easier in the US. British journalists love to mock their American counterparts (especially the Washington corps) for taking themselves so seriously. But this pomposity has, I believe, had the knock-on effect of making ordinary Americans treat journalists with far more respect than they get in, say, Britain. We may never be treated quite as the “enemy”, but if Trump manages to rebrand journalists as the “irritant of the people”, it will be bad enough.