By Grant Mercer
This article was originally published in GPR’s Spring 2017 Magazine.
The president, fearful of outsiders creating havoc on American lands, signed into law a bill allowing for any person with ties to an enemy nation to be deported immediately. Newspaper headlines lambasted the president for his foreign policy, urging citizens to “turn out, rise up, and save the country from ruin.” Mobs in Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia denounced the president for his actions. In return, the president took aim at the group, that in his opinion, was inciting these rabble-rousers – the press. Passing an act that made it illegal to publish any news that might be false, scandalous or denigrate the administration, the president set about silencing his detractors in the press. Any news published with the intent to heap contempt upon the president was punishable with fines and imprisonment. Twenty-five newspaper editors were arrested and thrown in jail for the offense of reporting the news. This is not Donald Trump’s vision for America’s future, but rather John Adams’ reality over two hundred years ago.
Adams’ passage of the Sedition Act of 1798 was aimed squarely at silencing a free press. At a time when rumors of a French invasion were daily fodder, Adams placed the need to keep foreign invaders at bay above the right of everyday Americans to challenge his decisions. First Lady Abigail Adams worried that if “journalists weren’t stopped, the nation would be plunged into a civil war or forced to bow down before the French Crown” and urged her husband to silence reports criticizing his executive actions. Even Thomas Jefferson noted that he “feared to write what I think” as this crackdown on the press swept America.
The president and the press have always had a love/hate relationship built upon a foundation of shared distrust. The media’s role is to report on how the president is performing, holding him accountable for his actions, while also educating voters on their democratic rights. The president’s role is to promote the needs of Americans while protecting the nation against its enemies, both at home and abroad. The balance between the media keeping the public informed and the president maintaining secrecy for the sake of national security is delicate. This balance became even more fragile when television became a key force in the political arena.
In the 1950s, a mere 10 percent of Americans owned televisions. By the 1960s, over 90 percent of American homes had televisions planted firmly in their living rooms. Aware of television’s ability to sway public opinion, President John F. Kennedy was the first to televise live news conferences. Surprisingly, the press loathed them, labeling them dog-and-pony shows. No longer could they choose what segments of a president’s message to print: now the public would hear his thoughts in their entirety, making their own decisions on its validity.
As Kennedy began his presidency, the press was entranced with this handsome, young leader, welcoming us into Camelot alongside him. However, this trust eroded during the Cuban missile crisis. In the name of national security, Kennedy restricted press access to his administration. Kennedy did not want a war with the press, but felt that the deadly challenge facing America warranted secrecy. He asked that all news agencies ask themselves two questions before reporting their findings: Is this news, and is it in the interest of national security?
The media responded in mass to these two simple questions by accusing the president of cutting off critical information to the American public. In response, Kennedy forbade his department heads from telling the press anything about foreign entanglements. The Dallas Morning News accused the president of “spreading propaganda that could pave a path to dictatorship. The people cannot rule unless they have the facts upon which to base their judgments.” Kennedy, while never enjoying a public lashing by the press, saw that the United States “needs an active press for its democracy to thrive. That’s what differentiates us from a totalitarian system.”
While Kennedy accepted the media’s role, President Richard Nixon made press manipulation central to his tenure in office. Intimidating journalists, sidestepping White House reporters, staging reality-TV-worthy events — now common presidential practices — were all originally a Nixon brainchild. Labeling reporters “the elites”, Nixon proclaimed that the “media were an unrepresentative, irresponsible interest group that patriotic Americans needed to defend themselves against.” Wiretapping reporters’ phones and directing IRS harassment at them were a few of his bullying tactics. After a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote about the cost to the taxpayers of Nixon’s vacation home, he was immediately banned from the White House.
Nixon’s browbeating tactics proved effective. While presidential aides plotted crimes within a hundred feet of the press room, White House correspondents, harassed for delving too deeply into political matters, instead focused on reporting the president’s daily schedule. Two Washington Post police reporters flying under Nixon’s radar – Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – broke the Watergate scandal.
After Watergate, the press corps was determined to never again let a scandal of that magnitude go undetected on their watch. Press conferences became battlegrounds – the president standing as a lone gladiator facing his foes while the White House correspondents lob verbal spears at him. Reporters repeatedly ask variations of the same question, hoping as much to goad the president into a news-worthy reaction as to glean new information. Trump, in his February free-for-all masquerading as a news conference, lambasted the journalists for being “out of control for reporting on Russia”, advised that “all bad news is fake”, and scolded a reporter for asking a question that he considered unfair, then commanding him to sit down. Seeking not truth but rather victory, Trump, at least in his own mind, had vanquished the enemy.
With the rise of social media, presidents have an even greater opportunity to take their messages directly to the American people. Presidential postings on Twitter and Facebook, regardless of their passing acquaintance with the truth, become established reality in many American minds, without having been verified by an independent press. Failure of the media to agree with his message, when their fact-based sources tell them otherwise, earns them the president’s assertion of being “dishonest” and “failing.” Likewise, that designation, very quickly, also becomes an established fact for many Americans.
Senator John McCain (R – AZ) observed that dictators get “started by suppressing the free press. I hate the media. But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital.” Nixon’s tapes disclosed that he privately ranted that the “press was the enemy” while today’s president publicly blasted the same sentiment, tweeting that the media is “the enemy of the American people.” While Trump’s war on the media has left many fearing that freedom of the press is under siege, the American press has walked this path before under past presidents, prevailing even under threat of imprisonment.
By the power of the First Amendment, the media is charged with being America’s watchdog, always holding the commander-in-chief accountable for his deeds. No amount of presidential insults will reduce the media to the status of lapdog, blindly accepting the president’s words without verification of his deeds. A free press shall always be the cornerstone of American democracy.