Under Fire by April Ryan

Author:April Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538113370
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

• 5 • Enemy of the People

Ineed to offer a disclaimer before you start reading this chapter. Just to make this proclamation sounds like I’m on the attack. I’m not looking for a fight even as harsh words and numerous death threats are directed against me. I have respect for the highest office in the land. But this past year, the president of the United States called the mainstream media the “enemy of the American people.” I have a right, and it is my profession, to question any U.S. president. It’s part of the accountability our Founding Fathers included in the Constitution. I’m a proud reporter, like most, searching for answers and truth. That’s all.

The power of the news media is not to be taken lightly. Our questions have helped right wrongs and shape policy. We also expose lies. And yes, sometimes we get it wrong. But unlike some politicians, who get it wrong and don’t want to apologize or correct their mistakes, we do. We point out updates, changes, and retractions.

A friend, a wise woman, offered the following to me in an email conversation early in 2018. I was pondering our political landscape, and at the time, Oprah Winfrey was thought to be considering a run for president in 2020. This friend, who knows Oprah and did not want her to run, said, “They love you until you’re a threat to the status quo!” In this current political climate, the administration tries to annihilate anyone not considered “with them,” and this includes the press. The mainstream press has been painted as a threat for exposing the truth, cracking the facade of the status quo.

For this administration, the winning image must always be fought for and preserved at all cost. If it’s questioned or challenged, the administration wages a fierce war against any quest for truth and information. In America, reporting is an honorable profession that dates to colonial times. Back then, like today, people needed information, particularly about what was going on in Britain, in the colonies, as well as on the next farm. They got that information through the earliest newspapers.

However, in America 2018, the process of keeping press freedom intact has devolved. There are glimpses of a Third World or Communist attitude toward our free and independent press. This new era of unconstitutional attack is now led by the very person sworn to uphold the Constitution, the president, along with his willing administration.

Make no mistake, there is never a White House that likes everything reported by journalists. Former Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry talked about this. A “friendly adversarial” kind of relationship was initially the norm for the mainstream press corps and the Clinton White House. But little by little, there’s been an erosion of that type of relationship. It faded with the “art of the deal” being used to promote “alternate facts” in the Trump administration’s smoke-and-mirrors game of deflection.

The Trump White House has escalated the “friendly adversarial” relationship into a fight. Repercussions are certain as the goal posts on press interactions are shifted.

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