President Donald Trump Has Attacked Turn out Well
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St. Louis Journalism ReviewReview Presents:Presents: OURNALISMOURNALISM REVIEWREVIEW 6 Trump attacks checks on his power by William H. Freivogel 4 The Gray, Grey Lady mucks up by William A. Babcock 10 Separating the forest from the trees in the age of Trump by Aaron Veenstra 13 The truth about fake news by Jin Lee & Lu Fan - PAGE 1 - 2017 • Volume 46 • Number 344 • $8 Trump attacks checks on his power by William H. Freivogel In the past half century the most reliable checks on presiden- attacked the media or so rapidly created a credibility gap through tial power have been a watchdog press and independent judiciary. false public statements. The closest historical analogy is President Richard M. Nixon with his enemies list, vice presidential attack dog the legitimacy of both institutions with a fusillade of insults, and illegal taps of Washington reporters. Nixon’s presidency didn’t In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump has attacked turn out well. days and counting, according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the branch of government the Founding Fathers misstatementsTrump labeled and lies judges - 133 who lies blockedand misstatements his immigration in the travel first 34 envisioned as the main check on the president -- Congress -- is ban a “so-called judge,” “ridiculous,” “disgraceful” and deserving behaving like a lapdog. The Republican-controlled Congress has “blame…if something happens.” White House policy adviser Ste- - phen Miller went so far as to say “the powers of the president to ment can accomplish major parts of the GOP legislative agenda. protect our country…will not be questioned.” done littleWith to a compliantpush back, Congress, excited that the a Trump unified attacks Republican on the govern two Meanwhile, in a remarkable feat of jujutsu, Trump captured remaining checks on his power make sense: Target the two the term “fake news” and wielded it as a sword against legitimate institutions that can limit your power. But what is the end game envisioned by Trump and the architect of this strategy, Stephen fake news in the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump turned the newstables organizations. and expropriated After the having slogan been to attack accused news of hebenefiting doesn’t fromlike. press? And it’s becoming a popular propaganda technique world- Bannon, the Breitbart editor who speaks of a “fight a day” with the wide. Vladimir Putin has claimed reports of Russian hacking in the judiciary have failed. 2016 U.S. election are fake news, even though they are substanti- In modern history, presidents fighting with the press and ated by Western intelligence. And Syria’s President Bashar Assad The judiciary and press gain power has claimed Amnesty International’s reports of mass hangings are After World War II, both the federal courts and the press also “fake news.” asserted new power. Chief Justice Earl Warren’s Supreme Court Even as Trump branded legitimate news as fake, his White took the lead in recognizing broader civil rights and civil liberties House issued press credentials to the likes of Gateway Pundit Jim protections. At the same time, the Golden Age of investigative jour- Host, a St. Louisan who regularly reports false news and conspira- cy theories. government abuse. nalismThe fortified pinnacle the ofmedia’s this Golden role as Age watchdogs was Watergate guarding when against Bob media the “enemies of the people” -- by which he means his ene- Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post reported on mies. Trump ended his first month in office calling the mainstream the use of Nixon campaign money to fund illegal acts, such as the The Supreme Court viewed the press’ role in the opposite burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at fashion in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case when it laid out the the Watergate hotel. importance of the press as a check on presidential power in the Those stories, like most of the journalistic challenges to pres- nuclear age. In siding with the New York Times’ publication of the idential power, were based on unnamed sources. Deep Throat, the secret history of the Vietnam War, the court said an enlightened citizenry is a important check on presidential power in foreign af- Bernstein bring down Nixon. fairs and there couldn’t be an enlightened citizenry without a press most famous confidential source in history, helped Woodward and- that is “alert, aware and free.” quential disclosures about Trump as well. No president before Trump has so personally and quickly ViceConfidential President sources Mike Pence have been reportedly essential learned to the that most National conse - PAGE 6 - Security Advisor Michael Flynn had lied to him about contacts with The answer is tricky. Almost all leakers have mixed motives. Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak by reading about the contacts Woodward and Bernstein claimed for years that Deep Throat did in a Washington Post story. Trump had known about the contacts not have an ax to grind, but Deputy Director Mark Felt was mad at for days but apparently hadn’t told his vice president before the Nixon for passing him over to head the FBI. And if news organi- Post’s story based on unnamed sources. zations had refused to print the hacked DNC-Clinton foundation Similarly, the Washington Post’s sourced account about emails, they would have looked as though they were protecting Attorney General Jeff Sessions meeting with Kislyak, despite Ses- Hillary Clinton. sions’ contrary testimony, led less than 24 hours later to Sessions’ recusal from the investigation of the Russian meddling in the election. …an unenlightened Trump complains about the leak of secret information by citizenry can enable bad information is a crime. government“ just as surely as unnamedBut thesources, publication and with of somethe leaks justification. is not a crime. Leaking And top it took secret the Washington Post stories with their unnamed sources to force an enlightened citizenry is Flynn’s resignation and Sessions’ recusal. Media ethics codes advise journalists to minimize the use of essential to good to believe a nameless, faceless leakers. But the reality of Washing- government. confidentialton is that big sources. stories checkingThe reader presidential has no way power of knowing almost whether always News organizations should remember, however, that The New York Times’ demand for a leak investigation of the Plame rely on confidential sources. People leaking top secret information outing boomeranged into Times reporter Judith Miller spending 85 Goodwould get source fired and stories jailed ifand identified. bad ones serve the public good; some do not. Lessonsdays in jail for protecting journalists her source in the vice president’s office. NotThe allleaks confidential of the top-secret source storiesPentagon are Papers created and equal. of Water- Some The past half century provides lessons for journalists per- gate investigative information revealed serious abuses of presiden- forming the press’s constitutional duty to check President Trump’s tial power. Edward Snowden’s disclosure that the NSA was collect- power: ing the metadata from all Americans’ phone calls got him charged -- When the press does not check presidential abuses of pow- with Espionage, but also led to reforms protecting privacy. er, a president with a Congress of his own party will be unimpeded By contrast, the 2003 leak by Vice President Dick Cheney’s in his exercise of power. The beginning of the Vietnam War and the Iraq war are examples. to punish Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson. Wilson officehad blown of Valerie the whistle Plame’s on identity President as a Bush’s CIA agent false seemed claim about intended weap- every major case where the press has checked presidential power ons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush claimed in the 2003 State of -- Pentagon-- The Papers,press’ use Watergate, of confidential CIA black sources prisons, was NSA essential wiretaps to the Union speech that Saddam had bought yellow cake uranium for during the Bush administration and NSA data collection during the a bomb from Niger, even though Wilson himself had investigated Obama administration. for the CIA and disproved the claim. It was an upside-down leak with the people in power leaking to support the presidential power to wage war as with Judith Mill- top-secret information to punish the whistleblower -- Ambassador er, or to-- Thepunish use a of whistleblower confidential sources as with canValerie be abused Plame orwhen to harm used Wilson. Usually, however, it’s the other way around, with whis- the United States as with the weaponization of WikiLeaks as an tleblowers leaking information about the abuse of power by top instrument of Russian intelligence. -- Old-fashioned investigative reporting – such as Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the black CIA prisons and the NSA wiretap- officials. ping -- is essential to the press’ check on presidential power. Sto- Not all confidential reporting. ries moored to facts are more persuasive than flights of advocacy source stories are possible to the truth is fundamental to the functioning of democ- “ created equal. Some racy because-- The press’s an unenlightened role of finding citizenry the facts can and enable getting bad as govern- close as ment just as surely as an enlightened citizenry is essential to good serve the public good; government. some do not. Today’s press is built on the Enlightenment assumption that needs to arrive at governing truths. That still is possible in these freedays speech of the Trump and a free administration press can find when the propagandafacts that a democracy spreads Julian Assange and WikiLeaks also performed a disservice to across the political spectrum and across media platforms. But it American democracy by serving as the apparent delivery system requires hard work by journalists and sophistication from citizens.