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These tweets show Donald Trump’s contempt for media has not waned

Trump, who is known for his wish-washy and flippant stance on several issues has constantly berated the media.

Written by Radhika Iyengar |
Updated: January 9, 2017 7:31:23 pm

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President-elect Donald Trump (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Donald Trump’s penchant for berating the media was on full display during the US presidential election campaign. He, however, used the media as his springboard to catapult himself to the forefront of all conversations by introducing his subversive, self-designed, jaw-dropping trumpisms. Trump, who will be sworn in as the President of the United States of America on January 20, has been divisive and controversial, known for hurling outrageous, inflammatory lies in every direction – which have notoriously worked as dangling carrots for media houses. At the same time, the President-elect has consciously slammed the media – the very apparatus that has been able to give him more clout than he’d ever imagine.

Trump, who is known for his wish-washy, flippant stance on several issues has constantly derided the media, and has consciously taken upon himself to meld adjectives and verbs (“failing”, “dishonest”, “crooked” and “inaccurate”) with the image of the media. While Fox News has been ostensibly favorable of Trump, the President-elect has carpet-bombed tweet-missiles against the media as a collective.

To be so critical of the media by a man who will soon hold the most powerful office in the world is disconcerting. It has led some of the world’s most respected journalists to raise an alarm and highlight the importance of protecting the country’s First Amendment rights. The New Yorker’s editor David Remnick acknowledged that at the Committee to Protect Journalists event. “This year the threats to press freedom are quite close to home. It’s right here,” he said. Veteran reporter Christiane Amanpour echoed similar sentiments, “I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home.”

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At the recent Golden Globes, actress Meryl Streep too, threw the spotlight on importance of keeping the rights of free press intact. “We need the principal press to hold power to account to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedom in our Constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists because we are going to need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth,” she said.