The Dangers of Attacking the Press
I have recently found an interesting and engaging topic to be the reason why the press is so important to the general public and how Trump’s attack on the press is a dangerous game to play as it will mislead people and cause the large spread of misinformation, and disinformation.
It’s strange to me to see how the press has changed from a trusted reliable source to one that supplies fake news or in truth critiques of the president. Trump’s constant attack on the press poses a real threat to two demographics, the educated middle and upper class and those of a low socioeconomic status. The reason being that the middle and upper class will not be able to get the information needed as to what is happening in the government because of no reliable source of information, and the people with little education become oblivious and believe every source of information since they were never informed to know what to believe. Trump's comments on the press and telling people they can not believe what they hear or see becomes more and more influential as time goes on. This is not the only threat that calling the press fake poses.
Another issue that comes with attacking the press is that it influences other unstable countries which are prone to propaganda and misleading the people. Countries like Russia, China, Guatemala, Turkey, Israel, and North Korea will start to look to America in order to support legislation to silence the press. Some countries are already going through with this and we see the dangers of working as a journalist rise nationwide. We are supposed to be the vision of democracy and instead, we are essentially supporting the increase of censorship in countries.
The dangers of silencing the press are not only visible in our previous history but in other countries currently. We hear about Russia and how the only source of news that is written there is all controlled by the government, and even though the iron curtain is not existent any more people are still oddly isolated and we can see this from the article in which one of the boys from Russia didn't even know about the Russian meddling in the elections. The controlled press has such an influence that they believe a near dictator is a good man because of the press he receives. Not only that but there is a rise on the attacks of journalists because of their ability to find sources and report on things, this has always been visible in Russia but has recently risen in popularity in America with the shooting at the Capitol Gazette and Katy Tur being attacked at a rally. We are heading in a propaganda like direction as we see companies that celebrate the presidents seeming successes like Fox News, the White House Instagram, The Hill, and even Alex Jones though he is a conspiracy theorist. Press cannot be silenced or controlled this has been attempted a few times in American history and every time it has not ended well, we see this in the Espionage Act to silence counter protests to unfair drafting, the Comstock Law that controlled the shipping of mail, and Nixon’s attempt to attack the press to prevent the release of government information. The fear is that we will head in that direction as well.
I do not completely think that the president is at fault often times faulty reporting and the rise of unreliable sources naturally steer people away from trusting both local and national news. We learned about this too and I think the way to amend this is to report on things more accurately by double checking sources, not over exaggerating headlines and reporting correct information on groups and places. The first step is to fix relationships in the press by removing the assumption of bias and then if ever an attempt happens to attack the press, we are able to rally support against this. Press is important to inform people of what is happening in the world and we can not risk that loss in trust.
Overall we must be prepared to face a world in which news is not a popular source of information and we must protect its rights to publish or else we face not knowing what is happening in the white house. Calling something fake news is dangerous and not a correct way to face the person because it causes people to not know what to trust more, the president that enjoys lying 60% of the time or the press that may or may not be fake.