The press is the opposition and should keep their mouths shut, according to Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s adviser.
Really?
We have listened to Trump’s “alternative facts” for over a year now.
He has lambasted the press anytime they fact-checked his statements.
He has called them liars, terrible people, scum.
Trump contradicted himself time after time, boldfaced lied to garner followers and then chastised anyone who dared to speak the truth.
I understand that a portion of the country wanted to believe what he said.
But to win, he needed to create doubt, anger, a target for the pent-up frustration.
But our very democracy requires a free and independent press.
Thomas Jefferson states it far better than I.
In 1792, in a letter to George Washington, he stated: “No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense.”
When we allow our government to filter verifiable news and clamp down on information exchange, we are moving toward authoritarianism (according to Webster’s Dictionary, defined as “concentration of political power in an authority not responsible to the people”).
The only hope we have is not to listen to disjointed, early morning tweets from Trump but to look to the free press.
If they weren’t such a threat to him and his agenda, do you really think he’d be trying so hard to make the general populace distrust them?
Think about it.
And just for the record, alternative facts are simply lies of convenience.
Sharon DelaBarre,
Sequim