Trump Nips Media Hand That Feeds Him
To those who admire Donald Trump's pushback campaign against political correctness, please note of how quickly his own inner thought cop leaps forth when his own fragile ego is poked.
"I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money," Trump said in a rally rant last weekend, without bothering to offer any examples of what he was talking about.
"We're going to open up those libel laws. So that when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected."
In other words, Trump promises to pursue those who dare to use the First Amendment for what it was intended to protect: your right to criticize the powerful.
Ah, yes, scratch anyone deeply enough and you will find a censor, especially if -- like Trump -- that someone has made bullying a central feature of his brand.
Even for Trump, his assault against press freedom was breathtakingly detached from reality. A public figure, which Trump is, already has the right to sue and "win big" when someone has published false or malicious statements about him. But someone who sues also is required to offer such niceties as facts and evidence, two obligations that Trump seldom allows to get in the way of a good rant.
In journalism school, we were schooled thoroughly in New York Times v. Sullivan, among other press law. That landmark Supreme Court case established "actual malice" as a standard before public officials could claim defamation or libel. The case was brought to push back against lawsuits filed by Southern governments to chill news coverage of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights protesters.
That civil rights connection took on new significance a couple of days after Trump's tirade as he hemmed and hawed his way through an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. Trump tried to sound as if he had never heard of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who had just endorsed the billionaire developer's presidential campaign.
Ah, here come those pesky, inconvenient facts again. CNN video of Trump in 1991 and a report by The New York Times in 2000 showed Trump rejecting Duke as "not company I wish to keep."
But that was then. In the days before Super Tuesday, Trump suddenly developed amnesia about any knowledge not only of Trump but also the Klan.
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