The president complains about the press which means the press is doing its job
The Short Version
The 45th president, in a rambling 77-minute press conference that resembled the chaos of his administration, repeatedly picked on, attempted to bully, and called out specific members of the press. “Out of control” and “fake press” he calls them. Yet, whether the president likes it or not, they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do: keep the government from lying about what it’s doing.
A Little History
Ever wonder why the freedom of the press is guaranteed in the US Constitution? The founders had seen the fallacies of a government-controlled press not only under King George III but all across most of Europe at that time. Kings of the 18th century kept very careful control over the information that the public received regarding matters of the crown, and often the picture that was painted was nowhere close to the truth. When framing the amendments of the Constitution, those early patriots wanted a press that would be part of the checks and balances of government.
Of course, that ultimately meant they would sometimes write what presidents didn’t want people to know. Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the first to call the press liars. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle,” he wrote in 1807. Whether Mr. Jefferson was correct in his assertion is now a matter of historical debate. No one is around to set the record straight.
Other presidents have had difficult relationships with the press as well. Richard Nixon’s tirades are well documented, as are his attempts to bug the phones of journalists. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had their moments of frustration with the press as well.
What’s worth noting, however, it that every time this has happened, the dominant reason for the feud is the press doggedly calling out the president and, in some cases, his administration, for what they are doing. The Washington Post blew open Watergate. The New York Times closely reported on both Clinton and Bush. The high degree of surveillance given the current president is no different than his predecessors.
The difference is that there’s more for the press to write.
A Difficult Relationship
There’s little question that the relationship between the press and the president has become more adversarial over the years. Gone are the days when the White House press corp would help keep a secret as significant as President Roosevelt’s polio disability or John F. Kennedy’s extramarital dalliances. The modern press is more aggressive in looking for their stories and less trusting of official White House communications.
What makes the relationship with the 45th president more thorny that before is the fact that even before he was elected this president was repeatedly caught in outright lies as he attempted to skew information in his favor and cover errors he had made. The candidate who would become president wasn’t alone in using that tactic, however, and lies and misstatements became so commonplace within the campaigns that fact-checking became a regular requirement after ever speech by every candidate.
Even now, the Associated Press still fact checks every statement coming out of the White House. This morning’s article checks the validity of the president’s statement that he “inherited a mess” from the Obama administration. The AP finds that the president’s statement, once again, the president is either lying, misleading, or totally ignoring evidence to the contrary. You can read the full article for yourself here.
Is the AP out of control? No, they’re just doing their job in keeping the president and his White House honest.
Is every member of the press so responsible? Of course not.
Long before there were websites totally given to biased accounts of the news, there were tabloids that filled their pages with nothing but lies and nonsense. We knew that they were nothing but lies and nonsense even when they ran stories as ridiculous as Elvis Presley being alive and waiting tables in some rural backwater town. Yet, people kept buying the tabloids carefully positioned at the checkout of the local grocery store. The difference between then and now is that people would read the stories and laugh. Now, people read the same kind of nonsense and believe it.
The fact that there are millions of people who are willing to believe ridiculous stories from the most dubious of sources gives credence to the president’s assertion that the press is lying. He stands in an incredibly long press conference that seems to have no central purpose and after several minutes declares, “I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you. You know, you’re dishonest people. But I’m not ranting and raving. I love this. I’m having a good time doing it.” The same people who once believed the tabloid stories about werewolf babies from Mars are all too willing to believe that the press is intentionally being dishonest.
However, the majority of press members, including but not limited to the hundreds of local daily newspapers, are not dishonest. Instead, they are finding and reporting the dishonesty of the president’s administration, a level of oversight to which the president is not accustomed. In his previous life, the man who is now president could easily enough blow off questions from the press, retreat to his gold-encrusted penthouse, and let any potential storm blow over. His actions then rarely affected anyone outside his business dealings. Now, every word he tweets and every off-hand remark he makes has the potential to become a national crisis, and much of it has.
Contrary to his assertion that he is running “a well-oiled machine,” the chaos of his administration is so evident that one doesn’t really need the filter of the press in order to see what is happening.
From the Associated Press:
[The president’s] first month has been consumed by a series of missteps and firestorms, and produced far less significant legislation than Obama enacted during his first month.
Republican-led congressional committees will investigate the [president’s] team’s relations with Russians before he took office and the flood of leaks that altogether forced out his national security adviser in record time. His pick for labor secretary withdrew because he didn’t have enough Republican support.
By many measures, the administration is in near paralysis in its earliest days, leaving allies unsettled and many in Congress anxious about what Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., called the “constant disruption.” To many Republicans — never mind Democrats — the “fine-tuned machine” seems in danger of its wheels coming off.
Perhaps what the president means when he asserts that the press is “out of control” is that it is out of his control, which is exactly the way it should be. The press is doing its job and for a president who made his way into office on lies and misinformation, the harsh glare of honest light is one he finds painful.
The Nation of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg lays out the future for the world
The Short Version
In a 5,800-word essay delivered yesterday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg described what he sees in the future for the social media giant and how that future could impact the world. The manifesto was so sweeping that it raises the question of whether the company might one day become more powerful than governments.
A Bit More Detail
There are some 1.85 BILLION Facebook users around the globe. Pretty much the only place you won’t find people on Facebook is China, where it is illegal, and even there some people manage to get around the laws. Approximately 1.23 billion of those people use Facebook daily. In a strictly digital sense, one could say that Facebook is its own country, which is interesting. If Facebook owned enough real estate to house all its users, it would be the largest country in the world.
Stop and think about that for a moment. Facebook—the largest digital country in the world.
When we couch it in those terms, that makes yesterday’s missive by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg the equivalent of a State of the Union address. All the same points are there. He addresses the current state of Facebook, recognizes some challenges, they lays out some long-term plans for making everything better—just like a good State of the Union speech only with more thought and cohesion than we’re likely to ever see from the 45th president.
Zuckerberg bases his statement around the question: are we building the world we all want? Looking at that question as the head of a giant global technology firm is one thing. What we see in how Mark answers that question, though, is something broader. He uses the word “communities” in both an online and offline context, effectively blurring the line between the two. As the two merge, the possibility of creating an actual nation-state based not on physical geography but on digital interconnectedness becomes a genuine possibility.
Consider what he says early on in his essay:
Our greatest opportunities are now global — like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding, lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest challenges also need global responses — like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.
I’m sorry, is this a software company or the United Nations he’s addressing? What he’s attempting to tackle are issues that traditional governments have not had much luck in successfully solving. Does he actually think that Facebook can do a better job?
Yes, he does, and he could actually be correct. Facebook does a much better job of building cohesive communities around topics and ideas and convincing those communities to take action than even the best of governments. Facebook also had a broader reach than do most governments, successfully reaching to almost every country in the world. Facebook’s biggest limitation at the moment is the 4.2 billion people who are still without Internet. Solve that problem, and Facebook’s ability to drive community action could well become limitless.
How does this nation develop?
To fuel growth and address the challenges he’s raised, Zuckerberg says five questions must be answered:
He then divides the remainder of the essay into sections addressing each of those questions. His words are well thought out, intelligent, and realistic given what he has already proven he is capable of doing. Facebook has the ability to reach across borders without needing to sign treaties or worry about bureaucratic policies. The software company can effect change simply through the will of its users without having to worth through an argumentative congress or parliament.
Should Facebook be successful in matters such as recognizing and shutting down things such as bullying and terrorist recruitment, it will have addressed global violence more thoroughly than all the armies of the world and will have proven that it can be done without firing a single shot or levying the first sanction. I don’t know that we would necessarily consider this online diplomacy, for there would be little need for negotiation. The software would assist the affected communities in eliminating the problem for themselves.
I strongly encourage you to read Zuckerberg’s treatise in full. Think carefully about everything he has to say. Then, consider, if you were offered digital citizenship in the Nation of Facebook, would you take it?
That reality could be closer than we think.
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