Enshrined in the United States Constitution, freedom of the press is integral to the success of democracy. The press serves as the people’s watchdog, a voice for the voiceless, and a check on the power of the government. When authoritarian figures come to power, one of their first offensives is often waged against the media for those very reasons. Why would a leader who is primarily concerned with obtaining and maintaining power, regardless of free and fair opposition, allow dissent to spread?
In Turkey, journalists are thrown in jail, put on trial, or exiled from the country. In Saudi Arabia, where there is no constitution, journalists are forced to self-censor their work, or risk having the censorship done for them on an Internet that is heavily monitored. In North Korea, under the rule of Kim Jong Un, a combination of media monopoly, harassment, spying, and travel restrictions are imposed on journalists to keep the media repressed. And, in the United States, President Donald Trump has created a narrative to turn the public against the media. Though what journalists might identify as a massive smear campaign against them may not appear to be as intense or dangerous as risking jail time, exile, or even execution for simply doing their job, a president turning the people against the very institution that works to bring them fair and accurate news and information is perhaps the most dangerous move a leader could make of all.
The key characteristics of a democracy are defined by the continuing responsiveness of the government to the needs of its citizens, who are and should be considered political equals. Specifically, democracy requires that its people be free to form and join organizations, express themselves, access alternative sources of information, and have institutions for making government policies depend on voters and their preferences. Though meeting each single criterion is not necessary in order for a country to be a democracy, functioning democracies typically rank rather high in possession of many of these characteristics [1]. Though the press and the government often have a precarious relationship, there are government officials and politicians, such as the late Senator John McCain, who still recognize the press to be a vital component of democracy.
One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian leader, then, is a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of their opponents, especially the media [2]. These leaders put restrictions on the media’s operation because they believe it to be contrary to the so-called popular will of the people. Trump has dubbed the press “the enemy of the people” on more than one occasion, heavily shaping the way the American public views the very institution created to work by and for them.
At the core of every modern definition of democracy is the idea that “institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” Recognizing the important role of leadership and how issues are translated avoids the problem of conflating the will of the majority with the will of the people, which arguably are concepts that do not neatly translate to the real world and are not real outcomes of the democratic process. Political decisions produced under the guise of the “will of the people” do not actually represent the people at all [3].
As democracies erode, a “new generation of authoritarians cloak repressive measures under the mask of law, imbue them with the veneer of legitimacy, and render authoritarian practices much more difficult to detect and eliminate,” [4].
Back in 2016, Trump was elected president. He did not stage a coup, nor did he attempt to seize power through other nontraditional means. Democracy, however, is endangered when mainstream political elites and their parties attempt to co-opt a populist outsider. The Republican Party has rallied around Trump time and time again; their loyalty epitomized by the recent impeachment trial. What political elites do when an authoritarian leader comes to power, stealth or not, determines whether democracy survives or fails [2]. Only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, voted to convict the president on one count of abuse of power. Following his acquittal, Trump singled out Romney in a Twitter rant and accused the “Fake News” of not covering his rallies fairly.
What Trump calls the “impeachment hoax” has also continued to highlight his treatment of the media. Withholding or distorting information for public debate is one of many pathways leading to constitutional retrogression [5]. Thanks to the platform Twitter provides, Trump has had nearly unchecked ability to reach masses of people with his messages. In this tweet, Trump claims that the witnesses in his impeachment trial were up to the House rather than the Senate, which is simply not true. However, not all of 72.3 million people who follow Trump on Twitter are going to be familiar enough with the nuances of government to know that factoid, and Trump is therefore able to get away with making false claims and spreading misinformation.
Two weeks ago, the GOP Twitter account tweeted a video clip of Trump speaking at one of his rallies, and quoted him saying, “Under just 3 years, my administration has now added 12,000 new factories and many more are being built.” NBC News Correspondent and MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle quoted the tweet in response, saying, “Dear – @GOP and @WhiteHouse – Who can I contact to verify this claim? Where are the locations? What are the companies? Who are the workers?” In a Fox News interview, Trump called the organization Ruhle works for “dishonest media” and has singled out NBC news “especially” for being “fake media” and “fake news.”
The duty of journalists not only in the United States, but around the world, is to hold those in power accountable for their actions as well as their words, just as Ruhle did. To try and turn the public against a vital institution such as the press is indicative of the beginnings of authoritarianism no matter the country, for the people require and deserve an independent and free conduit to help them comprehend the world around them.
[1] Dahl, Robert. (1972). Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. [2] Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. (2018). How Democracies Die. New York: Crown. [3] Schumpeter, Joseph. (1943). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers. [4] Varol, Ozan. (2015). Stealth Authoritarianism. Iowa Law Review 100(4). [5] Huq, Aziz & Tom Ginsburg. (2017). How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy. Working paper.
This is a great article!! And yes the problem of how Trump treats the news and media as an enemy is interesting to me. However, he has not tried to censor or control the media in a way that is propagandist and I think it is due to the fact that our government’s system has a high protection over the freedom of speech which I believe is good.
The invention of the internet and the more recent increase in social media use has provided many people the opportunity to express their opinions, respond to others, or share ideas and information. All of this can be done in a matter of seconds, creating quick and efficient communication between distant and isolated places. The majority of contestation between political groups and parties, which Robert Dahl claims is a key part of polyarchy (an ideal form of democracy) in his book Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, can be traced through interactions on the internet. In the modern world, most people get current news events and new information from reading articles or following posts and actions reported and covered by the press.
Your article examines the importance of the role of the press in keeping the people informed and educated on the current actions of their national leaders, as well as the danger of a president lashing back against the media. The large role that social media and journalists have in political campaigns can be seen in the 2016 election. According to Nathaniel Persily’s article “The 2016 US Presidential Election: Can Democracy Survive the Internet?”, Trump’s team spent about half of their budget on digital media. He understood that he had to appeal to his audience and the younger generations who spend the majority of their time online. Unfortunately, these younger generations also make up a large percentage of the people who would support an alternative form of government because they have lost faith in our democracy.
This loss of faith in democracy is likely a result of the internet accelerating the erosion of democracy in a more visible way. As Persily’s articles examines, social media has become an outlet for “fake news” and increased interaction and contestation. Your article points out that government officials, like late Senator John McCain, consider the press to be an important element of democracy. Considering that, this makes the internet another aspect of democracy that requires guardrails and gatekeeping to prevent erosion. Levitsky argues in his book How Democracies Die that guardrails help to keep democracy and its branches within the parameters of the Rule of Law. Journalists and the press can be considered the gatekeepers in this scenario because of the role that you point out, where they are responsible for reporting on the truth and keeping people educated and aware of the actions of those in power. They exercise their right to freedom of speech to keep our leaders honest and accountable for both their actions and their online and social presence. The things people in power share are public and available to anyone with internet access, which is potentially dangerous. On the internet, everything can be a message to your followers. Digitalization enables the spread of disinformation, and according to Persily, the internet saw an increase in fake news on Facebook and hate tweets on Twitter after the 2016 election.
The increase in the spread of false information on social media platforms has also resulted in increased polarization. This is likely due to the point you make about Trump’s use of Twitter to delegitimize and his tendency to attack political opponents through revenge tweets. For example, Trump calls the media the “enemy of the people,” accusing those who oppose him of promoting “fake news”. This begs the question of whether the news is actually fake or if it is just an outlook that the other party dislikes or disagrees with. According to the article, “Fake News Study Finds Truth Has ‘Very Little Influence’ On What We Believe”, written about a study by a professor at UT Austin, about three quarters of the participants could not differentiate between fake and real news. Professor Moravec, who headed the study, explains that people are more likely to accept something to be true when it aligns with their ideology. Conversely, when we see or read something that does not align with our beliefs, we are more likely to perceive it as false or fake news. This lack of discipline in the media allows people to only follow channels that promote and cater to their preference, which leads to toxic polarization. In addition, when “fake news” accusations are flying everywhere, America begins to lose tolerance towards other preferences. Mutual tolerance is an essential cornerstone for a successful democracy. Therefore, when Trump uses Twitter to lash out against news outlets that report on something he dislikes, he further polarizes his millions of followers. Uneducated people on the platform that align themselves with Trump are more likely to take what he says as truth, rather than the press, whose purpose is to report and spread the truth.
The largest offense that stems from Trump’s war against the press is its role in giving his followers a more tangible enemy. I agree with your analysis of Trump’s influence on America’s public opinion of the media. He quite literally expresses in his tweets that the press is the “enemy of the people.” Portraying the media in such negative light separates the press from the rest of the population, which is harmful because the press exists to protect, expose, and promote the truth. Discrediting and delegitimizing media as a political institution does more than just enforce Trump’s messages and actions to his followers. It also puts freedom of the press and freedom of speech at risk, which are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The power of our own Bill of Rights could be at stake. Levitsky and Ziblatt say that autocrats dissolve democracy through disposing of checks and balances by buying off the media or bullying them into silence. They tilt the playing field by quieting the press. If we don’t recognize this democratic erosion on a digital level, we could be facing an eventual future with restrictions on press and censorship, which limits our power in a democracy that is dependent upon government responsiveness to our voice.
Sources:
Stayton, Jennifer. “Fake News Study Finds Truth Has ‘Very Little Influence’ On What We Believe.” KUT, 18 Feb. 2020, http://www.kut.org/post/fake-news-study-finds-truth-has-very-little-influence-what-we-believe.
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Penguin Books, 2018.
Dahl, Robert A.. Polyarchy; Participation And Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971. Print.
Nathaniel Persily. “Can Democracy Survive the Internet?” 28 Journal of Democracy vol 28, no. 63, 2017.
Your article examines the importance of the role of the press in keeping the people informed and educated on the current actions of their national leaders, as well as the danger of a president lashing back against the media. However, I think it’s important to analyze not just who is eroding democracy and what they have done, but what has enabled them to do so. The internet and social media, with their decentralized means of spreading information have over the past decade become an essential part. The large role that social media and journalists have in political campaigns can be seen in the 2016 election. According to Nathaniel Persily’s article “The 2016 US Presidential Election: Can Democracy Survive the Internet?”, Trump’s team spent about half of their budget on digital media. He understood that he had to appeal to his audience and the younger generations who spend the majority of their time online. Unfortunately, these younger generations also make up a large percentage of the people who would support an alternative form of government because they have lost faith in our democracy.
This loss of faith in democracy is likely a result of the internet accelerating the erosion of democracy in a more visible way. As Persily’s articles examines, social media has become an outlet for “fake news” and increased interaction and contestation. Your article points out that government officials, like late Senator John McCain, consider the press to be an important element of democracy. Considering that, this makes the internet another aspect of democracy that requires guardrails and gatekeeping to prevent erosion. Levitsky argues in his book How Democracies Die that guardrails help to keep democracy and its branches within the parameters of the Rule of Law. Journalists and the press can be considered the gatekeepers in this scenario because of the role that you point out, where they are responsible for reporting on the truth and keeping people educated and aware of the actions of those in power. They exercise their right to freedom of speech to keep our leaders honest and accountable for both their actions and their online and social presence. The things people in power share are public and available to anyone with internet access, which is potentially dangerous. On the internet, everything can be a message to your followers. Digitalization enables the spread of disinformation, and according to Persily, the internet saw an increase in fake news on Facebook and hate tweets on Twitter after the 2016 election.
The increase in the spread of false information on social media platforms has also resulted in increased polarization. This is likely due to the point you make about Trump’s use of Twitter to delegitimize and his tendency to attack political opponents through revenge tweets. For example, Trump calls the media the “enemy of the people,” accusing those who oppose him of promoting “fake news”. To expand on your idea, I believe we must consider whether the news is actually fake or if it is just an outlook that the other party dislikes or disagrees with. According to the article, “Fake News Study Finds Truth Has ‘Very Little Influence’ On What We Believe”, written about a study by a professor at UT Austin, about three quarters of the participants could not differentiate between fake and real news. Professor Moravec, who headed the study, explains that people are more likely to accept something to be true when it aligns with their ideology. Conversely, when we see or read something that does not align with our beliefs, we are more likely to perceive it as false or fake news. This lack of discipline in the media allows people to only follow channels that promote and cater to their preference, which leads to toxic polarization. In addition, when “fake news” accusations are flying everywhere, America begins to lose tolerance towards other preferences. Mutual tolerance is an essential cornerstone for a successful democracy. Therefore, when Trump uses Twitter to lash out against news outlets that report on something he dislikes, he further polarizes his millions of followers. Uneducated people on the platform that align themselves with Trump are more likely to take what he says as truth, rather than the press, whose purpose is to report and spread the truth.
The largest offense that stems from Trump’s war against the press is its role in giving his followers a more tangible enemy. I agree with your analysis of Trump’s influence on America’s public opinion of the media. He quite literally expresses in his tweets that the press is the “enemy of the people.” Portraying the media in such negative light separates the press from the rest of the population, which is harmful because the press exists to protect, expose, and promote the truth. Discrediting and delegitimizing media as a political institution does more than just enforce Trump’s messages and actions to his followers. It also puts freedom of the press and freedom of speech at risk, which are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The power of our own Bill of Rights could be at stake. Levitsky and Ziblatt say that autocrats dissolve democracy through disposing of checks and balances by buying off the media or bullying them into silence. They tilt the playing field by quieting the press. If we don’t recognize this democratic erosion on a digital level, we could be facing an eventual future with restrictions on press and censorship, such as in the examples of Saudi Arabia and North Korea that you provide.
Sources
Stayton, Jennifer. “Fake News Study Finds Truth Has ‘Very Little Influence’ On What We Believe.” KUT, 18 Feb. 2020, http://www.kut.org/post/fake-news-study-finds-truth-has-very-little-influence-what-we-believe.
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Penguin Books, 2018.
Dahl, Robert A. Polyarchy; Participation And Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971. Print.
Nathaniel Persily. “Can Democracy Survive the Internet?” 28 Journal of Democracy vol 28, no. 63, 2017.
This article has very specific, current examples of risks to the media. The attempt to delegitimize free press institutions is very authoritarian in nature, and its widespread support is even more cause for concern. When citizens are quick to dismiss the validity of the information they’re given in the name of, “fake news,” democracy is threatened.
I do think that this article does point out a problem with media and the internet and its relationship to candidates and presidents and nations. I do have an answer that i have never been satisfy-ably answered. Is the media immune to criticism and if not then who is allowed to criticize media outlets outside of themselves. I am under the assumption that the population is supposed to keep the news media in check but that opens another can of worms like how are we supposed to keep them in check if the defense is that they provide us with information that we wouldn’t have without them and that the media is “essential” to keep the powers in check. But what do we do when the media is biased, or unchecked an allowed to feed the population whatever they they please? A gallup.com poll showed that citizens in the US’s trust in news media has dropped to as low as 41% in 2019 (https://news.gallup.com/poll/267047/americans-trust-mass-media-edges-down.aspx). So it is clear that there is distrust and I do believe that that can be partially, not wholly, attributed to the Trump administration. Yet can that be contributed to the media showing a bias against the administration but not toward candidates on the other aisle?
Hi Alexandra,
Your post is very well written and you make some good points. I agree that it is generally not good for an executive of a country to be so critical of the press. Although I think there is a major difference in what Trump has done and what is being done in other countries such as the ones you listed where journalists are censored by their governments and they do not have the right to report freely. If Trump was actively proposing/endorsing legislation that prevented the press from reporting freely I think that would obviously be a serious problem. Because we have the first amendment and the way our government is set up with separation of powers, I am confident that the press will always have the ability to report, they will just always be subject to criticism from leaders if they report inaccurate information.