According to him it's only ever biased if it's critical of his actions or policies. That injects more noise into claims of bias and can lead people to take them less seriously than they realistically should. Bit of a boy who cried wolf situation.

That just means you disagree with his criticisms, it doesn't mean his criticisms pose any type of political threat to the free press.

Public opposition to any institution by the President of the United States is a political threat. Or rather anyone person who holds so much influence publicly attacking something is a threat.

I wholeheartedly disagree. The president doesn't lose his right to free speech because of his job or how much influence he has. There is a clear distinction between criticizing the practices of an institution versus criticizing its existence categorically.

A lot of people are purposefully blurring the lines here and it's really dangerous. The same argument could be used to say that the press has undue influence, and should therefore be regulated in what it is able to say or how it is able to report.

The press in America has the same freedom of speech as individuals do: near unlimited. They come together. If you start picking and choosing, free speech is no longer a right.

This argument make no sense. Rights don’t exist in vacuum. The person occupying the Presidency swears an oath to the country and in the process he assumes both the power endowed by the State and the responsibility to use it wisely. Yes of course he can’t say any damn thing he wants to say publicly if it engenders the institution of the presidency he has sworn to protect. The right to free speech is not absolute.

Similarly, the press give up the right to say any foolish claims without substantiation when they assume their official roles as journalists. They promise to back what they say with evidence and facts; that stops them from making baseless claims. Is that restricting their free speech? Free speech does not exist in a vacuum.

It does make sense. There is obviously a question of where the boundary lies and that's what we're exploring.

I think you do have a point. But consider what you're trying to apply it to here. The president is not saying "I think we should nuke Korea" or "the press should be abolished." He says "CNN? That's fake news." It's a criticism leveled at an organization that has had a rampant hyperbolic partisan slant and has printed fake news, making the criticism accurate.

Calling the media out for this behavior could be seen as holding it accountable. These types of criticisms mean nothing in terms of any meaningful action that could restrict the press.

I think more people need to question from where they have gotten the perspective that these attacks are particularly threatening towards a free press in the US. Was it from the press?? Go figure.

Sorry, don’t buy it. There are legitimate criticisms of CNN. But his criticism isn’t restricted to just CNN, but to literally any media outlet that will umflattre him including NYT, WaPo and Fox News. Fox News in fact chided him quite frequently during the Republican primary until he beat them down into submission. He tried to do something similar with other media outlets and has been quite enraged that they haven’t changed their tune as drastically as Fox News did.

I think you need to question from where you have gotten the perspective that getting one or two things right in a rant somehow legitimizes everything in a rant.

Again, what you're describing is a personal vendetta between the press and the president. They cover him and he responds, and they attack each other. It's normal. Ask any celebrity. You are not describing a situation that is indicative of a threat to the press.

> I think you need to question from where you have gotten the perspective that getting one or two things right in a rant somehow legitimizes everything in a rant.

I don't believe this at all.

His "criticisms" are not limited to specific outlets. He has publicly called the press "truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!"[0] which feels like a broader attack on the press as an institution.

[0] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11142215334617907...

I think this is an error of taking literally what is figurative. It's common parlance to call the mainstream pop press "the press." That's how generalizations work and anybody reading that knows it without needing it explained.

If you were one of the Central Park Five, wrongly accused of rape, or if you were a climate change activist, facing climate-denying articles, and said "the press has got it all wrong and are the enemy of the people" how would you interpret that? As anger, representing a valid critique that should be explored? Or that this person is literally calling for the end or restriction of journalism as a practice? It seems obvious. The only way to interpret it as the latter is to interpret it in such bad faith that it borders on malevolence.

It should be patently obvious that he is chomping at the bit to muzzle the press.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/freedom-press/donald-t...

I disagree with the assessment. Nearly all of the points here are either contextless, are meaningless statements in themselves, take as literal the figurative, or are about aggressions that could only be accused of influencing others' view of the press' bias, rather than offering any real threat to rights.

I wouldn't call it "[accusing the press of being] biased and doing a bad job" if the most powerful president of the western world calls the press The enemy of the people[1]

As a matter of fact such statements are borderline incitement of violence when you look at some of his heavily armed, but not necessarily smart supporters.

What you argue here is borderline historical revisionism.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/07/donald-trump...

edit : clarification

Trump parroting 'Fake News' every time the press ask him a question he doesn't want to answer is hardly criticism.

I mean if you already believe that the press is mostly Right in their reporting, it might be difficult to convince you otherwise. But there are so many instances of fake news related to Trump reporting that it's really not inaccurate to call it that.

If literally everything you said was twisted in a way to misrepresent you don't you think you'd get a little tired of it, roll your eyes at it, and shrug it off sometimes too? That's not an absolute defense for doing this exclusively, but he doesn't do this exclusively. He calls it out, then answers.

But this is altogether besides the point of what I was responding to, which is that this kind of talk is existentially dangerous to the press as an institution. You could claim Trump is a liar and a deflector and is doing bad things and says a one-liner instead of justifying, and that would be a fair criticism. But then it would be a danger insofar as it means we have a lack of responsibility and accountability in our leadership, not insofar as it poses a threat to the freedom of the press.

> That's not an absolute defense for doing this exclusively, but he doesn't do this exclusively. He calls it out, then answers.

he does not answer shit. He spews nonsense. He does not speak coherently about facts at all.

That's a tangent we could go down but not really the point of what I'm talking about.

Actually it’s not a tangent at all but a core part of the strategy. Flooding the system with Shit as bannon so aptly calls it.