The wounds the press has suffered lately in the United States — trust has fallen significantly since Donald Trump first took office — are at least partly self-inflicted. The President and his gaggle of sycophantic aides have found an easy target in the press. They regularly denigrate the press, most often with scant evidence to support their claims.
“Fake news!” is the most common refrain. Mostly, the charges are unfounded, but the press typically lets the accusations stand without responding.
No journalist, no public figure, no eminent thinker comes forward to rebut the claims and defend the press, standing up for the societal value of aggressive, fact-based journalism.
Every time the President complains about “fake news,” the press must answer. Equally as important, individual reporters whom he dismisses as “third-raters” must fight back. If not rebutted, the charges acquire an aura of truth.
The press in the US is surely an embattled institution, but it also performs far better than Trump gives it credit for. In his hyperbolic bluster, Trump is far from a sophisticated analyst, criticising by insult, not by cool-headed acumen.
As awkward as it might be, the press, as an institution, and reporters, as individuals, must respond and ensure the President does not get away with his false, often mean-spirited assertions.
Earlier this month, in what seems like his favoured setting for impromptu news conferences — the cramped aisle of Air Force One behind an ajar door — Trump denigrated a Bloomberg News reporter by telling her, “Quiet, piggy”.
Days later, he callously explained the death and grotesque dismemberment of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to an ABC reporter: “Things happen”. Sitting next to Trump was Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had been implicated, but not charged in the 2018 murder.
The reporter asked the Crown Prince about the violent death, which occurred at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. It was a logical, almost obligatory question for a reporter to ask in the circumstances.
Then Trump lit into the reporter for being “a terrible person” and “a terrible reporter”.
As if he were a school teacher grading a student’s performance, he scolded the reporter: “You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that”. Since when did it become a reporter’s job not to ask embarrassing questions?
Skilled journalists view themselves as adversaries of authority, not as objects to be loved. Newsmakers and sources need to be reminded of this dynamic again and again, and journalists need to educate those whom they interview.
Journalists, adhering to obsolete conventions of objectivity, feel they must not be part of the story they report on. But when attacked by the President, they are the story, and they must talk back.
Speaking of rudeness, earlier this year, Trump told another highly regarded reporter, Jonathan Karl, the Washington bureau chief correspondent of ABC: “You are a third-rate reporter…You will never make it.” Separately, in an attempt at juvenile humour in a post on Truth Social, Trump referred to Brian Roberts, chairman of “Concast” (Comcast), as “lowlife.” Neither Karl nor Roberts had any reported response.
Karl did not say, “I am not a third-rate reporter, Mr President,” and Roberts did not say, “I am not a lowlife, sir.” That is surely not easy for a journalist to do, but it is essential.
It is a basic journalism maxim that a person who is attacked deserves the chance to respond. In his bullying, Trump makes such a response difficult — but not impossible. Journalists must become much more vocal if they wish to maintain their credibility.
The writer, the founding dean of the O P Jindal University School of Journalism in Sonipat, was also dean of the graduate journalism schools at Columbia and Berkeley
