Newspapers join Boston Globe's rebuke of Trump

By Umar Farooq

WASHINGTON

More than 200 newspapers, ranging from national outlets to small local weeklies, joined the Boston Globe on Thursday in publishing editorials denouncing President Donald Trump's analogy equating the press as the enemy of the people.

The Globe garnered enormous support since Deputy Editor Marjorie Pritchard issued an appeal, mounting a counterattack in the war of words between Trump and news outlets.

Among the newspapers that have joined the Globe's effort are the New York Times, Dallas Morning News, the Denver Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Chicago Sun-Times, according to the Boston-based newspaper.

"This dirty war on the free press must end," the American Society of News Editors wrote on their blog. The organization has also joined in support of the movement.

While the newspapers created and published their own editorials independent of each other, they all send the same message: the press is not the enemy.

Tensions between Trump and the media have been high since he was elected. A month after being in office, he posted a tweet calling out what he deemed to be "fake news".

"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Trump wrote last February.

In an analysis done by CNN in January, Trump used the term "fake", referring to news, media or polls, at least 404 times throughout his speeches, interviews, and tweets over the span of his first year in office.

In early August, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta walked out of a White House press briefing after spokeswoman Sarah Sanders refused to debunk Trump's comments saying the press is the enemy of the people.

A poll conducted by the Axios news site in June showed 72 percent of Americans say traditional media outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories.

Pritchard hopes the move by newspapers will help in the efforts to fight the narrative being pushed by the Trump administration.

“I hope it would educate readers to realize that an attack on the First Amendment is unacceptable,” she told The Associated Press. “We are a free and independent press, it is one of the most sacred principles enshrined in the Constitution.”