News outlets across America are under attack.

And in today’s political climate, this can mean one of two things is happening: either there has been yet another shooting in a public space or the president has taken to Twitter. But if I’m being completely honest, it could be both at once.

However, the current issue is Donald Trump’s inability to let reporters do their jobs. He is constantly crying “Fake News,” and at some point, his allies and supporters are going to have to catch on to this boy-who-cried-wolf routine.

But for now, journalists are labeled as “the enemy of the public” because they shed light on his alleged misdeeds. 

On July 19, during the Russian summit of 2018, Trump sent out four different tweets concerning the “Fake News” and another three days later when the summit ended. And if I thought Trump was an honest person, maybe that wouldn’t be such a concerning fact, but since he seems to dump tweet after tweet about how horrible the media is to him only when reporters are talking about his alleged wrongdoings, a little voice seems to be shouting “blatant coverup.”

 This attack on journalism is precisely why periodicals across the country chose Aug. 16 to display articles that defend their profession against this title of “enemy of the public.” This national argument, proposed by the Boston Globe, was meant to uphold the freedom of the press.

However, Trump tweeted that day, “There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!”

This was an ironic statement, considering the myriad false claims he has made—to name one: that at his inauguration speech, “the audience was the biggest ever”—but what really sticks out about this tweet is Trump’s disillusion that he may deem what is honest and what is not. He might look at MSNBC, a liberal news station, and say that they are liars, and
then he could look at Fox News, a station far to the right, and say that they know what they’re talking about.

The truth is that as long as Trump thinks he holds the ability to tell honesty at a glance, he will be susceptible to dishonesty from, say, foreign dictators and real fake news like conspiracy theories. And as long as this is true, he is putting the United States of America at risk.

I, for one, would rather rely on a nation of media professionals, trained in the art of relaying information, than one game show star.