It’s difficult to choose a single highlight of President Donald Trump’s bad treatment of the press in 2019 there being so many. Journalists have been shut out of key events, denied daily White House briefings and garnered 21 tweets from the president calling them “the enemy of the people.” Trump has succeeded in maiming public trust in the press while bashing the concept of verifiable facts, a vital part of the foundation of any democracy. Trump has shown the way to foreign autocrats who have taken up his wail against “fake news.” (The New York Times, December 30, 2019, by Michael M. Grynbaum)
A poll by the Pew Research Center found that Trump’s “fake news” wail is yielding results with his core followers. Forty percent of Republicans who strongly approve of Trump agree that reporters have very low ethical standards with another 45 percent agreeing that they have low standards. And of these same core followers only 9 percent have a lot of trust in national news organizations. (ABC News, December 12, 2019, by David Bauder of The Associated Press)