The move coordinated by the Boston Globe in which up to 350 newspapers across the nation published anti-Trump editorials on August 16 is a cause for grave concern.
The action was reportedly in response to the President’s statements condemning the media for their bias. The White House criticism was essentially just that. There was no threat of censorship, and no move to attack individual reporters or organizations.
That is in direct contrast to the actions of the Obama White House. Patrick Maines, writing in The Hill during the prior Administration noted: “No administration in memory has more thoroughly undermined freedom of speech and of the press than that of President Obama. From the White House itself, as well as the independent and executive branch agencies, have come a steady stream of policies, initiatives, and pronunciamentos that have threatened or compromised both of these constitutional rights.”
Examples are numerous. The transformation of the IRS into a partisan attack dog against the Tea Party—for which no one has seen the inside of a jail cell– may be the most prominent, but it is just one of many. Consider also Loretta Lynch’s “referral to the FBI” of the concept of criminally prosecuting those who simply disagreed with Obama on climate change.
Media voices not subservient to the Obama White House had their hands full contending with the Federal Communications Commission’s moves to control the internet, and its attempt to place federal monitors in newsrooms across the nation. As Real Clear Politics reported, “Obama and his senior staff singled out for condemnation Fox News, the lone television network that did not serve up the fawning coverage the president and his team had come to expect.”
Despite all of those affronts to the First Amendment, the media was comparatively silent.
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The existence of an uncontrolled and objective press is a vital, indeed indispensable, element of a free nation. Tyrants instinctively understand this, and take every step to control media within, and if possible beyond, their borders.
It is, therefore, a direct threat to freedom when the press unabashedly allies itself with one political party or philosophy, and tailors its reporting to suit their preferences, rather than engage in objective reporting. That is happening in the U.S. today. This exercise has become more blatant and substantial, and there are few signs of it receding. That reality is made even more worrisome when, in addition to replacing the truth with partisanship, press leaders move to censor opposing views.
The Boston Globe’s actions cannot be viewed in isolation. This was not a “one-off” effort. Combined with the direct acts of censorship on the part of many social media sites, and, even more troublesome, the provision of numerous biased search results by a major internet search engine before providing objective responses, it furthers the growing metamorphosis of media from journalism into leftist advocacy.
This coordinated effort on behalf of the left-wing establishment is a direct threat to the essential role of the free press, and should be universally condemned.
Photo: Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who considered criminally prosecuting those who disagreed with Barack Obama. (Wikipedia Commons)