The New York Times
Joins Effort to
Combat Trump’s Anti-Press Rhetoric
Newspapers from New York to North Dakota have
agreed to publish editorials on Thursday in response to the president’s
anti-press rhetoric.CreditEvan
Vucci/Associated Press
By Jaclyn Peiser
· Aug. 14, 2018
The call to arms came in the form of a memo.
Marjorie Pritchard, the deputy managing editor
of The Boston Globe, reached out to editorial boards at other newspapers last
week.
“We propose to publish an editorial on August
16 on the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press and ask others
to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,” the memo said.
As of Tuesday, more than 200 newspapers,
including The New York Times, had signed on.
The Globe’s effort to rally editorial writers
across the country came in reaction to the president’s stepped-up attacks on
the media.
At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump pointed to the
group of journalists covering the event, saying they “only make up stories” and
called them “fake, fake disgusting news.” On Twitter, he has revived an old
phrase — “the enemy of
the people” — to describe “much of the media” and “the Fake
News Media.”
Last month, at a news conference in Britain,
he refused to call on the CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta, saying,
“CNN is fake news. I don’t take questions from CNN.” A week later, the White
House barred another CNN reporter, Kaitlan Collins, from attending a public
appearance by President Trump in the White House Rose Garden, after she had
called out questions during a photo opportunity earlier in the day.
“We’re not the enemy of the people,” Ms.
Pritchard, who oversees The Globe’s opinion section, said in an interview. “We
thought that a coordinated effort across the country would make a powerful
statement about the importance of a free press.”
The newspapers participating in the effort
include large-circulation dailies like The Houston Chronicle and The Miami
Herald, as well as smaller publications like The Oakridger in Oak Ridge, Tenn.,
and The Griggs County Courier and Steele County Press in North Dakota.
Each newspaper will prepare its own editorial
to be published Thursday.
James Bennet, the editorial page editor of The
Times, cited the public stance of the newspaper’s publisher, A. G. Sulzberger,
in laying out the reason for the newspaper’s participation in the initiative.
“Our publisher has put a stake in the ground on this issue, and at a time when
newspapers around the country are under real commercial and political pressure,
we think it’s important to show solidarity,” Mr. Bennet said.
Last month, Mr. Trump and Mr. Sulzberger met for an
off-the-record discussion at the White House on July 20. The
president made the meeting public in a Twitter post more than a week later,
saying they had discussed “the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the
media.” Mr. Sulzberger responded in a statement, saying that he found Mr.
Trump’s language “not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.”
The Radio Television Digital News Association
has joined The Globe in promoting the effort, encouraging TV and radio stations
to release editorials on their websites or on the air.
“I hope that what we’re doing with broadcast
and digital journalists will be able to amplify their efforts and to call
attention to the fact that we’re not fake news, we’re not the enemy of the
people and here are the things we do every day by covering the news,” said Dan
Shelley, the association’s executive director.
Ms. Pritchard said she hoped that the
editorials would bring attention to how the president’s rhetoric has affected
the body politic.
“We’re being portrayed as a domestic enemy rather than a loyal
fellow countryman whose profession is to hold the powerful accountable,” she
said. “This whole project is not anti-Trump. It’s really pro-press.”
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