Donald Trump has such an utter contempt for journalists that it’s become worse than Richard Nixon and Bobby Knight combined.
He’s openly declared full scale war against the concepts of transparency and accountability, and he’s blatantly aiming to dismantle the very ideal of a free press.
Last Wednesday’s press conference, the first Donald Trump had held in nearly half a year, was a farce on numerous levels, with the condescension aimed at CNN and Buzzfeed the most egregious offenses. However, it was also the incident which can galvanize us journalists to fight back, and make no mistake about it, we will fight back!
Here's the exchange where CNN's Jim @Acosta tries to ask Trump a question and the President-elect refuses pic.twitter.com/LlwmhPj5w3
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) January 11, 2017
Journalists, sports writers, movie reviewers, travel bloggers, entertainment reporters, life styles columnists, feature writers, business editors, etc. etc. we all must come together, right now to fight against this con man of the highest order.
Whatever your niche, no matter your specialization, it’s an “all hands on deck,” situation on the good ship democracy.
The fourth estate, acting as a check on the powers that be, is requisite to a healthy functioning republic. As Thomas Jefferson famously said “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that can not be limited without being lost.”
It’s truly a “calling all cars, suspect is incredibly armed and extremely dangerous” moment, because Donald Trump has already initiated step one in the dictator’s authoritarian playbook.
The march towards a totalitarian state always begins with “silence dissent,” and annihilate the “free-thinkers.”
https://twitter.com/dominicholden/status/819236397987012608
If he succeeds, it’ll end with Breitbart serving as his version of the old Soviet Union Politburo, and we already know that he’s got Russian affinity.
We’re going to need everyone in order to correctly combat his offensive, so no matter how big or small your reach is, every bit will help. Whether you write for a huge organization with millions of unique visitors per month, or have a personal blog on WordPress, we need you.
Or if you just have a Twitter account, where you like to express your political opinions, that works too. On Monday, we observed the holiday honoring Martin Luther King, and as MLK famously said: “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
What are the consequences if we don’t speak out?
Friday is the perfect example, as the first African-American President will be replaced by one endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.
Fight with the pen, because this is going to require a “Greatest Generation” kind of effort, to make sure something like this never happens again.
It’s the writing equivalent of WWII, when American factories shifted from making their usual products and instead produced guns, tanks, bombs, ships, bullets, shells, rations, supplies, whatever was needed for the much greater cause.
While the 1996 film Independence Day isn’t the paragon of cinema, the rousing pre-combat speech is one of this generation’s greatest moments in American filmmaking.
The prose fictional President Thomas Whitmore (played by Bill Pullman) perfectly applies:
“We can’t be consumed by our petty differences, anymore. We will be united in our common interest.”
“We’re fighting for our (first amendment) right to live, to exist.”
Or you could look at Donald Trump’s war on the free press within the context of “First they came…” a poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller about the cowardice of German intellectuals as the Nazis’ rose to power and purged their chosen groups, one by one.
“First they came to cut off CNN and I did not speak up because I was not CNN…
Then they came to revoke Buzz Feed’s credentials and I did not speak up because I was not BuzzFeed…
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”
All journalists should share this link on your social media channels, tweet it to Trump’s followers. Then go and write your own call to arms against Donald Trump. Write a better, more eloquent one than I did. Then be sure to share that essay with your following.
Paraphrasing Whitmore, the ideals of questioning authority, and free speech will not vanish without a fight. They’re going to live on!
#WritersResist #TheResistance
“Where there is a free press the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.” — Lord Macaulay
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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