More than 300 newspapers published editorials on Thursday, promoting press freedom in order to counter President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media. Trump has often attacked various media reports as “fake news,” referring to journalists as “enemy of the people,” CNBC writes.
The latest initiative came from The Boston Globe, in order to denounce “the war against the free press,” suggesting that editorial boards should take a stand against Trump’s words regardless of their politics.
Trump responded in typical fashion, as he tweeted out “THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY. It is very bad for our Great Country….BUT WE ARE WINNING!”
In its own editorial, published Wednesday, the Globe’s editorial board wrote under the headline “Journalists are not the enemy.” It published the results of a poll that showed 48 percent of Republican voters agreed with the statement: “The news media is the enemy of the American people,” with 28 percent disagreeing.
The Globe quoted its local founding father John Adams, who was born and died in Massachusetts and became America’s second president and said: “The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom.”
“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. Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!” Trump said in another tweet.
However, in his next tweet, he claimed to be a supporter of freedom of the press, The Guardian adds. “There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. 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!” he tweeted.
Some of the most respected and widely circulated newspapers in the country have committed to taking a stand in their editorial pages, including The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Chicago Sun-Times. The list ranges from large metropolitan dailies to small weekly papers with circulations as low as 4,000, The Globe noted.
CNN, which has been labeled as “fake news” by Trump on multiple occasions, including last month when he refused to take a question from journalist Jim Acosta at a press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May, wrote in a news story: “The campaign is significant because it moves the conversation about Trump’s attacks out of Washington and New York and into communities across the country.”
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