‘Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and the trio of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham have attained wealth and power by exploiting the fears of older white people. They are thriving financially by exploiting the very same free-press umbrella they seem determined to undermine.’
That’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd calling out for his fellow journalists “to stop complaining — and start fighting back” against a campaign to “destroy the legitimacy” of the American press corps.
“Antipathy toward the media right now has risen to a level I’ve never personally experienced before,” he wrote for the Atlantic. “The closest parallel in recent American history is the hostility to reporters in the segregated South in the 1950s and ’60s. Then, as now, that hatred was artificially stoked by people who found that it could deliver them some combination of fame, wealth, and power.”
President Donald Trump’s relentless assault on the media, of course, has fanned the those flames but, as Todd points out, he didn’t start the fire, “he’s only spread it to a potentially more dangerous place.”
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Todd recalls that the attack on the American press corps has its roots in Richard Nixon’s “angry foot soldiers,” most importantly Roger Ailes, who went on to help build Fox News and continue the fight long after the Nixon era came to an end.
“His sustained assault on the press created the conditions that would allow a president to surround himself with aides who argue for ‘alternative facts,’ and announce that ‘truth isn’t truth,’” Todd wrote. “Without Ailes, a man of Trump’s background and character could never have won. Roger Ailes was the godfather of the Trump presidency.”
Now, says Todd, is the time for the press to fight back, but not by engaging in the same tactics that gave rise to the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world.
“Instead of attacking rivals, or assailing critics — going negative,in the parlance of political campaigns — reporters need to showcase and defend our reporting,” he wrote. “Every day, we need to do our job, check our facts, strive to be transparent, and say what we’re seeing. That’s what I’ve tried to do here. I’ve seen a nearly 50-year campaign to delegitimize the press, and I’m saying so.”
Todd is urging a “lower tolerance for talking points” along with a “greater willingness to speak plain truths.” Avoid the spin, and don’t allow guests a platform to unleash their spin, he says.
“Access isn’t journalism’s holy grail — facts are,” he wrote.
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