The tirade against the US news media by no less a person than President Donald Trump is disgusting. The attack on the media escalated sharply at a White House press conference recently when the president berated reporters as "dishonest" and "peddlers of fake news". Through a tweet he denounced the mainstream media as the "enemy of the American people". Republican Senator John McCain has observed: "attacking the legitimacy of the free press is how dictators get started."Â
Hostility against the news media did exist in the United States of America. President John Adams, second President of USA, signed alien and sedition acts which made false allegation of his government a crime while President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a reporter a "dunes hat" and asked him to sit in a corner. President George W. Bush did not allow old and experienced journalists to ask questions during press conferences in the White House. Helen Thomas, a senior member of the White House press corps, was not allowed to accompany Bush on a foreign visit and she had to take a back seat because of her critical questions on invasion of Iraq.Â
Representatives of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the CNN, the Politico and Buzz Fed were debarred from asking questions to press secretary to the president during a press briefing in the White House. President Trump declined to attend this year the annual dinner of White House correspondents, which began in 1914. Â This reflects escalating war of the president against the news media.Â
Mohammad Amjad HossainÂ
Virginia, USAÂ
amjad.21@gmail.com
Â