“Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R Party!” tweeted President Donald Trump on April 2, 2017.
This tweet is one of dozens sent by Trump that help form a picture of the current presidential administration’s relationship with the media — a rocky one at best.
But how different is this administration’s relationship with the media, and how important is this relationship as the foundation of the principles and purpose that define the role of a reporter?
The Trump administration may be more unconventional, and this reflects in the former candidate that currently serves as president, who ran a very unconventional and unpredictable campaign.
His relationship with the media, however, is one part of his presidency that should not be all that shocking.
“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in his opinion on the landmark First Amendment case New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 US 713.
The case, which ultimately allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers, was decided upon June 30, 1971. This was decades before the Trump administration ever took office, and involved an adversarial relationship between the media and the Nixon administration, the government of the time.
The lesson that can be learned from the impact of this case is that the media’s relationship with those in power must often be a conflicting one.
This adversarial relationship has and undoubtedly will carry on to future presidential administrations and other forms of government within the U.S.
This is because the press’s role as a watchdog is a complicated one, that isn’t only defined by afflicting those in power but also by recognizing when those in power make moves that are beneficial to the society they are governing.
The role of watchdog has informed many of the positive moves made by previous presidential administrations, and it has revealed deception that has caused the downfall of presidential administrations as well.
The media is not the friend or enemy of the government. Its obligation is to the people, meaning it will inevitably be at odds with the government from time to time.
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Previous presidential administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have at times tried to discredit the press — and the current administration’s creation of the term “fake news,” in the long run, is really no different.
Accepting the sometimes conflicting role the media has in relation to the government acknowledges the foundation of the role of the watchdog, as well as its purpose.
In a Feb. 18 interview between U.S. Sen. John McCain and reporter Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” McCain actually sums up the purpose of the relationship quite nicely, in his answer to a question regarding the free press.
“I hate the press, I hate you especially. But the fact is, we need you. We need a free press, we must have it, it’s vital if you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it you have to have a free and many times adversarial press, and without it I’m afraid we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time.”
Nichole Harwood is a news reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Nolidoli1. The views presented in this column are her own.
