As if the war that President Donald Trump has been waging against the news media is not enough — calling those news organizations critical of him and his policies “fake news” — now the administration through the Office of Press Secretary Sean Spicer has “fired ballistic missiles”, so to speak, against the Fourth Estate, by barring reporters from several large media organization from participating in a scheduled press conference in the White House.
Politico, the New York Times, Buzzfeed and CNN, as well as the majority of the foreign press, were barred without any explanation from the Office of the Press Secretary just before the press briefing started on Friday.
Other members of the White House press pool including NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News, were allowed to enter the press briefing room, as well as many smaller conservative media outlets, including the Washington Times, the One America News Network, and Breitbart (alt-right media outlet which was formerly run by White House senior strategist Steve Bannon). CNN reported that “Time and the Associated Press boycotted the gaggle.”
This move just adds credence to what many people already suspect: that the Trump administration will do anything and everything to silence news media organizations that Steve Bannon previously called the “opposition party.”
As the Washington Post reported, Bannon issued a warning during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday, February 23, saying, “It’s going to get worse every day for the media.” Bannon added, “If you think they are giving you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.”
Trump himself had repeatedly been demonizing mainstream news media organizations like CNN, Buzzfeed, the New York Times, and the Washington Post for reporting news that were not good for the Trump brand, even when these reports were accurate and based on facts. He would dismiss and malign these news organizations by calling them “fake news.”
He even tweeted on February 17, and repeated this again in his speeches, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
Is the Trump administration moving closer and closer to becoming a dictatorship? Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s statement last December 2016 may answer this question:
“Look, there’s a big difference between a campaign where it is a private venue using private funds and a government entity…I think we have a respect for the press when it comes to the government. That is something you can’t ban an entity from.”
“Conservative, liberal or otherwise,” he continued, “that’s what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship. I think there is a vastly different model when it comes to government and what should be expected, and that’s on both sides.”
