Newsday is one of more than 350 newspapers publishing editorials Thursday on the Trump administration’s attacks on the press.
The campaign was initiated by the Boston Globe, which wrote, “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.”
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, including President Trump’s references to the media as “the enemy of the people.”
Newsday’s editorial was headlined, “America’s urgent need for the truth” and was accompanied by editorial cartoons by Matt Davies and Jimmy Margulies. The editorial read in part, “Trump’s repeated “enemy of the people” rants can’t be dismissed as part of his brash-and-confrontational style; his lies and disregard for facts are not just political spin. He cynically seeks to divide the nation by undermining its values and its institutions for personal gain.”
Editorials from several papers around the country went online Wednesday night.
The Boston Globe posted, “A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but rather “The enemy of the people.” This relentless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences. We asked editorial boards from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and small – to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words.”
The New York Times’s editorial, all-caps headline was “A Free Press Needs You,” and read in part, “Criticizing the news media — for underplaying or overplaying stories, for getting something wrong — is entirely right. News reporters and editors are human, and make mistakes. Correcting them is core to our job. But insisting that truths you don’t like are “fake news” is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people’ is dangerous, period.”
The Des Moines Register wrote, “The true enemies of the people — and democracy — are those who try to suffocate truth by vilifying and demonizing the messenger. The response to that cannot be silence.”
President Trump responded on Twitter by writing, “The Boston Globe, which was sold to the the Failing New York Times for 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (plus 800 million dollars in losses & investment), or 2.1 BILLION DOLLARS, was then sold by the Times for 1 DOLLAR. Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!”
and 10 minutes later, “There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!”