A Boston newspaper wants every newspaper in America to attack President Donald Trump in response to his criticism of the news media.
The Boston Globe on Friday began reaching out to newspapers across the country to publish editorials on Aug. 16 denouncing what it called a “dirty war against the free press,” according to a report in The Boston Globe itself.
“We are not the enemy of the people,” said Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor for the editorial page of The Boston Globe.
As of Saturday, “we have more than 100 publications signed up, and I expect that number to grow in the coming days,” she said, according to CNN.
Trump has said that the media is hurting America.
“The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE,” he tweeted recently. “I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!”
Pritchard said media organizations such as the American Society of News Editors are helping make the national effort succeed.
“The response has been overwhelming,” Pritchard said. “We have some big newspapers, but the majority are from smaller markets, all enthusiastic about standing up to Trump’s assault on journalism.”
The Globe is targeting opinion writers, whose work is on the editorial pages of a newspaper, and not news reporters. It wants even newspapers that endorsed and still support Trump to attack him for criticizing the media.
“Our words will differ. But at least we can agree that such attacks are alarming,” the appeal said, acknowledging that newspapers were likely to take different approaches.
Pritchard said The Globe acted after some high-profile criticism of the news media by Trump.
Last weekend, at an Ohio rally where the crowd chanted “CNN sucks,” Trump delivered his critique of the media.
“Oftentimes I’m getting ready to do the fake news with CNN or MSNBC — MSNBC is so corrupt it’s so disgusting,” Trump said, according to The Hill.
“I would say they’re almost, they’re worst,” he said. “They’re really a fake news group of people.”
Those coments followed similar ones at an Aug. 2 rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
“What ever happened to the free press? What ever happened to honest reporting? They don’t report it. They only make up stories,” Trump said then, according to the Associated Press.
Pritchard said the newspapers want Americans to see Trump’s coments as an attack on basic American rights.
“I hope it would educate readers to realize that an attack on the First Amendment is unacceptable,” she said. “We are a free and independent press, it is one of the most sacred principles enshrined in the Constitution.”
Washington Post editor Martin Baron has said it is not hostile to the president.
“The way I view it is, we’re not at war with the administration, we’re at work. We’re doing our jobs,” he said, The Washington Post reported. (For more from the author of “Newspaper Calls for Coordinated Attack Against Donald Trump” please click HERE)
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