Playing the ‘Stalin’ card against Trump while ignoring pervasive media bias does nothing to defend the First Amendment.
Following the November 2016 election, many of those deeply shocked by Donald Trump’s victory engaged in hysterical commentary about the imminent end of American freedom. This theme was frequently repeated prior to his taking office and helped generate a massive turnout at the women’s march that served as a counter-inaugural event. But even as Trump managed to fuel outrage from the “resistance” with controversial remarks and tweets in the months that followed, the talk about the collapse of democracy or parallels to Weimar Germany that had been so prevalent soon faded. While many Americans were angered by Trump, and his favorability ratings sunk to record lows for a first-year president, not even the most rabid Trump hater on the left or diehard Never Trump advocate on the right could really pretend that their liberties were in danger from an administration that — the presidential Twitter account notwithstanding — was governing in the same manner one would have expected from any conservative Republican.
Yet despite the clear gap between the post-election hysteria and reality, this week the totalitarian analogies for Trump are making a comeback. In a much-discussed Senate speech by Senator Jeff Flake and a Washington Post op-ed by Senator John McCain, the theme of Trump as a threat to the free press was given new life. In particular, Flake took a page out of the resistance playbook by directly comparing the president’s attacks on his media critics to the rhetoric used by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
While both are right that press freedom is under attack around the world, they’re wrong to link that dangerous trend to Trump, let alone to use his name in the same sentence with that of a mass murderer. While Trump’s comments about the media are often wrongheaded, no one has been silenced, let alone been jailed for speaking or writing ill of the president. To the contrary, the last twelve months have illustrated the robust nature of press freedom in the United States, as much of the media has spent his first year engaging in non-stop attacks on all things Trump and has been rewarded with higher ratings and applause from its audience.
The president’s attempts to push back at his critics may sometimes be ill-considered, unfair, or not factual. But to interpret his anger as a threat to the First Amendment is to deliberately misunderstand not only his intent but also why his remarks resonate with so many Americans. If, as polls continue to show, most Americans don’t trust much of what they read, hear, or view in the media, it’s not because Donald Trump is demonizing the press; it’s because news consumers across the political spectrum have come to distrust journalists and see virtually everything that is published or broadcast as biased to one extent or another. To conflate, as do Flake, McCain, and many of those journalists who are enthusiastically applauding their comments, distrust of the media and anger about perceived bias with a desire to squelch the free press represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the media are viewed. It also does little to promote concern about genuine threats to press freedom elsewhere.
The context of the attacks on Trump by Flake and McCain was the aftermath of the firestorm provoked by Trump’s reported comments referring to immigrants from “sh**hole” countries. But it was part of an ongoing debate about Trump’s willingness to attack the press and to label coverage he didn’t like as “fake news.”
As both senators pointed out, Trump’s analysis of the media was rooted in his own bias. Trump’s extremely thin skin — even by presidential standards — when it comes to criticism is no secret. Nor is his well-known appetite for flattery, no matter where it might be coming from. But while his eagerness to attack media critics via his Twitter account is as unprecedented as many other aspects of this administration, the notion that bitter antagonism between the White House and journalists who don’t applaud the president’s every move is unique to Trump is absurd. Virtually all of Trump’s predecessors have been furious about the press, even if he is the first one to use social media to express that anger.
President Obama, whose cool temperament is often cited as a laudable example of presidential behavior that contrasts with that of Trump, was just as livid about his critics as his successor. Though his handlers wisely didn’t allow him to express himself on social media, Obama took every possible opportunity to excoriate news outlets that harped on his shortcomings or reported on his administration’s scandals. He didn’t use the term “fake news,” but he did his best to demonize Fox News’s coverage and to treat its viewers as victims of its bias, though most of what he seemed to be complaining about was not so much the opinions expressed by hosts like Sean Hannity but the channel’s reporting on topics such as administration spying on journalists and the IRS scandal. Indeed, he has continued to do so even after leaving the presidency, as he once again attacked Fox in a recent interview with David Letterman. Though Obama’s many fans, including those journalists who were reliable members of the “echo chamber” whom his staff relied on to promote favorable coverage of his policies, think he is a model of presidential behavior, the difference between those attacks and Trump’s tweets is merely one of tone, not substance. Both men treated hostile media as inherently illegitimate.
While unfortunate, their attitudes actually reflect those of most Americans.
As the latest Gallup poll indicates, most Americans simply don’t trust most of the media. Two-thirds say that journalists don’t separate facts from opinions and that coverage is tainted by ideological bias. Nor is this view limited to conservatives, who have complained about the liberal tilt of the mainstream media for decades. A clear majority of respondents to the poll said they could not name a single objective news source. This view is particularly prevalent among those under 50, whose memory of the media doesn’t necessarily stretch back to the pre–cable news and pre-Internet era, when mainstream icons such as Walter Cronkite were, fairly or unfairly, viewed as above politics.
As the latest Gallup poll indicates, most Americans simply don’t trust most of the media.
Democrats, as opposed to Republicans and independents, are slightly more likely to think there are objective news sources. Yet that may reflect the conceit of some liberal outlets such as CNN that take the position that their blatant and consistent bias doesn’t matter, while the open tilt of a conservative network such as Fox News is disqualifying.
While Trump articulates his anger about the press in words that are often outrageous, what he is doing is merely an expression of the same sentiment of skepticism about the press that most voters, liberal or conservative, share. Far from being outrageous partisanship, recent examples of bias — such as the refusal of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, or MSNBC to devote any coverage to the revelations in Politico’s recent report about the Obama administration’s shelving attempts to stop Hezbollah drug-running in order to appease Iran — illustrate why the attitudes expressed by Trump are mainstream rather than confined to the margins.
Flake is right that Trump shouldn’t use phrases such as “enemy of the people” about journalists. But to compare his self-interested complaints to Stalin’s use of the phrase is every bit as irresponsible as anything the president does.
Trump may ruminate publicly on his desire to put the press in its place and even to alter libel laws, which, in contrast to those in many other democracies, give journalists protection against lawsuits from those they attack. But he has not put those views into action, and there is no sign, nor any likelihood, that he will or even could, especially with respect to a change in the law that is not within his power. To make any analogy between that and the repression of freedom by Stalin or other foreign despots is the sort of hyperbole we expect from Trump, not someone like Flake, posing as a sober defender of freedom and moderation.
Nor is it fair to link Trump’s pushback against his critics to actions taken by contemporary despots. While Trump should be more careful about his rhetoric, dictators around the world need no instruction from him about how to suppress dissent.
It is particularly tone-deaf of Flake and McCain to use language that treats all attacks on journalists as opposition to the First Amendment. Journalists have a duty to hold politicians accountable. But in a democracy, they, too, must be called to account when they demonstrate bias, which, as most Americans rightly insist, is the rule rather than the exception.
The worst thing those who care about press freedom can do is ignore the public’s justified concerns about polarized and politicized media that are either singing the president’s praises or demonizing him. To interpret complaints about bias as an indicator that the First Amendment is in danger is the sort of hysteria that discredits Trump’s critics. Threats to press freedom abroad are no joke, but the notion that Trump’s tweets are in any way analogous to that problem tells us more about the hyper-partisan spirit of our times than it does about the president’s character flaws.
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