Over 300 newspapers unite against Trump attacks, Trump hits back

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US President Donald Trump blasted on Thursday the hundreds of newspapers across the country that had united against his "war" on media and his accusations that most media reports are "fake news."

In a tweet on Thursday morning, he said, "THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY.”

“It is very bad for our Great Country….BUT WE ARE WINNING!" read the tweet.

Screenshot of Donald Trump’s official Twitter account

About 350 newspapers across the United States are pushing back against President Trump with a coordinated series of editorials condemning his attacks on “fake news” and the belief that journalists are the enemy of the people.

The Boston Globe invited newspapers across the country to stand up for the press with editorials on Thursday.

Some of the most respected and widely circulated newspapers in the country joined the effort to defend freedom of the press, including The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Some papers in the states that Trump won during the 2016 presidential election also took part.

A shop owner reads the Boston Globe in Boston, Massachusetts, US, August 15, 2018. /VCG Photo

The Globe’s editorial accused Trump of carrying out a “sustained assault on the free press.”

“The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a free press to speak the truth to the powerful,” the Globe’s editorial said.

“To label the press ‘the enemy of the people’ is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries.”

Trump has frequently criticized journalists and described news reports that contradict his opinion or policy positions as fake news.

In a tweet from February 2017, he said that “the FAKE NEWS media” – mentioning mainstream news organizations such as the New York Times, NBC News and CNN – is not his enemy but the enemy of the American people.

An advert in a Finnish newspaper is displayed during the US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin's summit in Helsinki, July 16, 2018. /VCG Photo

The New York Times editorial said it is right to criticize the news media for underplaying or overplaying stories or for getting something wrong in a story.

“News reporters and editors are human, and make mistakes. Correcting them is core to our job,” it said. “But insisting that truths you don’t like are ‘fake news’ is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people’ is dangerous, period.”

The Chicago Sun-Times said it firmly believed most Americans know that Trump is talking nonsense, and they understand that a free society is impossible without a free press.

“Rather, we hope all the president’s supporters will recognize what he’s doing — manipulating reality to get what he wants,” the North Carolina newspaper said.

A Trump supporter holds up a sign showing major news organizations along with the words "fake news" at a Trump rally in Washington, Michigan, US, April 28, 2018. /VCG Photo

Others expressed mixed sentiments.

The Wall Street Journal, which said it was not participating, noted in a column by James Freeman that the Globe’s effort ran counter to the independence that editorial boards claim to seek. Freeman wrote that Trump has the right to free speech as much as his media adversaries.

“While we agree that labeling journalists the ‘enemy of the American people’ and journalism ‘fake news’ is not only damaging to our industry but destructive to our democracy, a coordinated response from independent — dare we say ‘mainstream’ — news organizations feeds a narrative that we’re somehow aligned against this Republican president,” The Baltimore Sun noted.

Newspaper editorial boards overwhelmingly opposed Trump’s election in 2016. Polls show Republicans and conservatives have grown more negative toward the news media in recent years.

(Top image: Copies of the Boston Globe sit on the shelf with other daily papers at a newspaper stand at Boston's South Station, August 15, 2018. /VCG Photo)

Source(s): AP ,Reuters