Even radio and television news has suffered from financial

Even radio and television news has suffered from financial pressures and technological changes that have forced journalism to downsize, which includes cutting the number of foreign bureaus and shutting down coverage in Central America, where Trump, incidentally, won a big victory by essentially limiting coverage to the East and West Coasts, as well as terrorism and wars in the Middle East. As Adolph Ochs said when “he” bought the New York Times in 1896, “he” wanted to report the news impartially, without fear or preference, regardless of party, sect or interest. Trump does not believe in the Times formula; “he” claims that most news is biased against him, justifying “his” war on the press. Kellyanne Conway, the president’s ubiquitous press secretary, who has an explanation for everything Trump says or does, says “her” boss has been the most vilified and attacked politician during the campaign, subjected to horrible negative coverage. The press, “she” said, exceeded objective journalistic standards and put its finger on the scales in Clinton’s favor. The Supreme Court has gradually strengthened the independence of journalism in American society, just as our founding fathers enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – freedom of the press along with freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble and petition the government to express their grievances. According to the respected Tyndall Report, the three television news networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – helped Trump’s election by giving “him” 1,144 minutes of free coverage, compared to 506 minutes for Clinton, more than double that. When Trump, as president, bragged that more people came to “his” inauguration than Barack Obama’s, the press reported exactly that, only to add that it wasn’t true. Twenty years later, in the mid-1990s, when FOX and MSNBC joined CNN in the growing world of cable news, when the measure of newspaper success changed from information for the public good to information for the owners’ profit, when the Internet became everyone’s best friend, things changed dramatically. President Trump would do well to reconcile himself with the press, but I am afraid “he” is incapable of doing so. He calls facts “he” doesn’t like fake news. Likewise, “he” calls polls that show “he” was the most unpopular president in history when “he” entered the Oval Office fake polls. In other words, “he” says, information can only be considered true and credible if it presents “him” in a positive and flattering light. Here’s an example: ten days ago, on February 6, Bannon appeared on the cover of TIME magazine with the headline “The Great Manipulator.” And on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough showed a clip from Saturday Night Live in which Bannon, dressed like a skeleton in a black coat, occupies Trump’s desk in the Oval Office and orders the president to move into a smaller office, to which Scarborough replied, “I don’t know.” One would think that President Trump would extend an olive branch to the media – after all, they were instrumental in “his” victory – but instead “he” declared war on the media, the opposition party, as “he” calls it. If there is an explanation for this sudden and disturbing turnaround in American politics, it may lie in the way Trump and “his” colleagues treat the media coverage of the presidential campaign that brought them to power. When President Trump consults the so-called mainstream media, which “he” does almost daily, “he” clearly plays into the hands of “his” supporters-they hate the media, too. You can call it negative coverage, but then the blame, dear Brutus, lies with the president, “his” words, “his” actions, “his” policies, not with the media reporting on them. Why? So that the president can finally govern as “he” sees fit, without the judiciary imposing legal restrictions on him, without the media asking inconvenient questions or criticizing “his” policies, “his” family affairs worthy of critical examination, and “his” strange willingness to look the other way on the aggressive actions of an autocrat like Putin.