If Nothing is True, Then Everything Can Be False
Similarly, transition spokesman Sean Spicer, disputing a New York Times report that Russia hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer system, tweeted that the story was “Exhibit #1 in the fake news.” And Trump adviser Newt Gingrich made the connection even more explicit: “The idea of The New York Times being worried about fake news is really weird,” he told a chuckling Sean Hannity on Fox News. “The New York Times is fake news.”
Journalism is an inherently imperfect profession. We write the first rough draft of history -- as best we can, subject to correction and revision. But there is a difference between inevitably flawed and intentionally false. To deliberately blur this distinction is to seek to undermine the central role of media in a free society.
This is where Trump has gone beyond the norm, and beyond the pale. All politicians chafe at their coverage. In 1992, George H.W. Bush’s campaign passed out bumper stickers proclaiming, “Annoy the media, re-elect Bush.” But the tone of Trump’s unrelenting assault on the “dishonest media” and his zeal in inciting the mob against them -- “these people are the lowest form of life” -- are more menacing than any president since Nixon.
Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that he would prefer to have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers. The Trump team would clearly make a different choice, at least when it comes to his government.
If that is not within his reach, Trump is going for second best: a society in which all truth is malleable and all news suspect. Whose voice, whose vision, whose authority will then be trusted? Trump doesn’t say, but it is not hard to guess.
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Ruth Marcus’ email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.
(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
