ZU Magazine is a publication of ZU Media. Below is an article from Issue 3: Freedom.
Staff Writer | Chloe’ Bagley
In the year since Donald Trump became president, the media have become the subject of their own headlines.
In throwing around the term “fake news” and using his Twitter account to criticize specific networks, President Trump has caused an uproar in the conversation about press freedom. Media outlets are responding to the accusations with attacks of their own, and both parties are relentless in their defenses.
President Trump’s first tweet using the term “fake news” was in December of 2016; since then, he has used it in his tweets a total of 139 times. The president often calls out individual media outlets on his Twitter account, posting things like, “Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election.”
CNN has issued countless responses to these comments from the president. One of the most memorable was their response to a video he tweeted of himself wrestling a CNN logo to the ground.
The network responded by saying, “Instead of preparing for his overseas trip, his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, dealing with North Korea and working on his health care bill, he is instead involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office. We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”
The network also accused President Trump of encouraging violence against reporters with the posting of the video. This is a position shared by United Nations Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.
At a news conference in Geneva in August, al-Hussein said, “It’s really quite amazing when you think that freedom of the press, not only a cornerstone of the Constitution but very much something the United States defended over the years, is now itself under attack from the president himself.”
Al-Hussein went on to explain why the president’s comments could influence other world leaders to take the same stance against press in their countries.
When asked for a response, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The New York Times, “We believe in free press and think it is an important part of our democracy, but the press also has a big responsibility to the American people to be truthful. Their job is to report the news, not create it.”
According to Sanders, the media’s attacks on President Trump are just as dangerous and hurtful to the American people as they claim the president’s to be. The White House press secretary pointed out many of the president’s priorities such as the economy, jobs and border security. This was in an attempt to urge the media to make covering these topics their priority as well, and some network commentators and other politicians agree with her.
Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity often criticizes the media for their “hypocrisy” in how they cover President Trump in the news. On his show, the host spoke about the media’s coverage of President Trump during his response to Hurricane Harvey, calling it a “massive double-standard.”
Several news outlets had accused Trump of trying to draw attention away from the hurricane by releasing the verdict of a federal case. Hannity, in turn, said that the media was doing exactly what they thought the President was guilty of.
“The media in this country, that will never give the president a fair shot, went ballistic,” Hannity said, “and politicized the president’s decision when we were just two hours away from a hurricane.”
Rep. Scott Taylor (R-Va.) also spoke about his desire for the media to focus on the news when he appeared on CNN’s “New Day,” a show hosted by Alisyn Camerota. When asked about the video of President Trump tackling the CNN logo, he said, “I think you guys are getting played … every time he does this you guys overreact — and by you guys, I mean the media in general — and you play right into his hands.”
Camerota said that 94 of the president’s tweets since his inauguration have been attacks on the media, which is in contrast to his 68 about jobs and only 29 about the military and veterans.
In a Harvard study published in May, researchers analyzed news coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office. The report used data to support its claims that journalists make presidents their target because the reputations and success of journalists depend on their focusing on what politicians are doing wrong.
“Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days set a new standard for negativity. Of news reports with a clear tone, negative reports outpaced positive ones by 80 percent to 20 percent …” the report said. “… CNN and NBC’s coverage was the most unrelenting — negative stories about Trump outpaced positive ones by 13-to-1 on the two networks.”
And, although this study shows the weighty amount of negative news in the media, it does not explore the issue of “fake news,” which is an altogether different matter.
Rep. Taylor is a self-proclaimed critic of President Trump’s tweeting habits, but he is equally critical of the media’s coverage of these habits.
“There’s tons of news out there. Let’s talk about real issues,” he told Camerota. “You’ve got to start reporting the news; this is not really news.”
Although the White House press secretary says quite the opposite, many news outlets believe that the president’s attack on the media’s coverage of him is an attack on America’s press freedoms.
In an interview with Vox’s Sean Illing, Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, commented, “What Trump is doing is alarming, to be sure, but for now this remains highly unusual. A lot more will have to happen before we declare this the end of a free and independent press.”