Anti-democratic rulers always
try to prevent a free press from reporting what they are doing. Authoritarian governments
past and present have developed a model for eliminating independent news
reporting. Donald Trump and his allies are creating a different model, with
disastrous long-term effects for American democracy.
The common model has been to
shut down unsupportive newspapers and to create their own “news” outlets
spouting official “truth”. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in October
1917, they
were uncertain about how much press freedom they would allow. During the
New Economic Policy period from 1921 to 1928, limited freedom to publish was
given to sympathetic non-Communists. After Stalin took power, however, every
word published in the Soviet Union had to conform to strict government
guidelines.
When the Nazis came to power
in 1933, there were 4700 newspapers in Germany, but the Nazis took control over
the published word much more
quickly than the Soviets had. Leftist parties were outlawed and their
newspapers seized. Two Jewish publishing empires owned by the Ullstein and
Mosse families were destroyed within a year. Critical journalists fled the
country. Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry issued detailed daily guidelines
about what could be printed, with the threat of arrest and concentration camp
for those who disobeyed. By the end of the Nazi regime, there were only about
1000 newspapers, and those owned by the Nazi Party outsold independent organs 5
to 1.
Violent repression,
censorship and news written by the government were the hallmarks of the Nazi
and Soviet destruction of press freedom. This model has been followed by many
repressive regimes since then, and extended to news media on radio and TV.
The connection between
control of journalism and development of authoritarian government is
demonstrated most clearly today in Recep Erdogan’s Turkey. As Erdogan jailed
political opponents and reconstituted the government to consolidate personal
power, he initiated a wide crackdown on the press. Turkey has jailed
more journalists in the past two years than any other country.
Donald Trump’s war against
the free press is often compared
to the methods of Hitler, Mussolini, and other dictatorial rulers. But I think
these comparisons are misleading. The Republican Party in no way resembles the
monolithic parties which violently suppressed opponents. Trump’s administration
does not have the broad powers to deploy force against the press. Closing
newspapers or arresting journalists would cause a constitutional crisis in the
US.
Instead Trump has used
another model for reducing the ability of our free press to describe and
criticize his government. First, he has spread distrust of the mainstream
media, so that their reporting about his words and his administrative actions
is not believed by his supporters. He
goads those who attend his rallies to shout “CNN sucks”, calls journalists “horrendous
people”, and lately uses the phrase “enemy of the people” to describe the
mainstream media in general. Attacks on the major national news outlets are
part of nearly every speech he gives.
Trump did not initiate
conservative attacks on mainstream news reporting. The objective reporting of
news was Sarah
Palin’s primary political target in the 2008 campaign and afterwards, but
she was following an already conventional conservative complaint about media
bias against the right. In 2014, before Trump began his campaign, Pew
surveys showed that “consistent conservatives” distrusted the major
national newspapers, NYTimes, Washington Post and USA Today, and the national
TV news organizations, except FOX.
Second, Trump supplements
attacks on responsible media with unprecedented support for the irresponsible reporting
of pretend journalists. Again, the far right media establishment predates
Trump. Already in 1995, FAIR reported on a “right-wing
media machine” based on personal attacks, fabricated stories, and thinly
disguised white supremacy. But Trump gives respectability to what used to be a
lunatic media fringe. His anti-free-press model uses existing right-wing media
organizations to circulate the “news” he likes.
Alex Jones disseminates made-up
conspiracies on his website Infowars, designed to create distrust of our
government: that the mass murders at Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon, and
Oklahoma City were government hoaxes perpetrated. Trump appeared on his program
as a presidential candidate, praised him as “amazing”, and repeated many of his
wild and untrue ideas. The White House granted Infowars official
press credentials in 2017.
Trump’s promotion of Steve
Bannon, the director of Breitbart News, to be his campaign director and then
special advisor in the White House, put the leading voice of alt-right
disinformation at the center
of his administration.
Recent polling shows that
more than two-thirds of Republicans think traditional major news sources make “fake,
false, or purposely misleading” reports “a
lot”. That is true for only 42% of independents and 22% of Democrats. Most
Republicans think the NYTimes (74%) and the Washington Post (65%) are
biased, but only 19% distrust Breitbart.
Trump’s model is designed to
subvert democracy from within without violence. Responsible news sources will
continue to report Trump’s constant lying and his political failures, while
Trump will continue to call these reports “fake news”. Unless FOX decides to
start reporting in a “fair and balanced” manner, conservative voters will
continue to prefer the fantasyland of right-wing media to the real world of
factual journalism.
Steve Hochstadt
Springbrook WI
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, August 7, 2018
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