Many in the national media are worried that President Trump’s continued broadsides against the press will inspire violence against reporters, even as vocal opponents of the White House on the Left have encouraged assault or directly attacked some journalists.
On Trump’s rhetoric, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg asked Wednesday night, “How long before someone is seriously hurt, or worse?”
Jim VandeHei, founder of the news website Axios, told Rutenberg for his column that Trump is directly “putting reporters at real risk of retribution or violence.”
Trump has long complained about the media’s coverage of him as being “unfair” and “fake” but he turned up his aggression during a campaign-style rally Tuesday in Phoenix. There, he vented about the press being “divisive” following the violence in Charlottesville, Va.
“I really think they don’t like our country,” Trump said of reporters. “I really believe that.” He called them “sick people” for not giving him sufficient credit in his denunciation of white supremacists.
Jeffrey Toobin, a writer for the New Yorker and a CNN commentator, said those comments are likely to inspire the president’s supporters to act out physically.
“Someone is going to do something awful to a journalist,” he said on air Wednesday. “I feel for our colleagues who are sitting there as people yell and boo and chant ‘CNN sucks.'”
Thursday in the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristoff wrote, “When Trump galvanizes crowds against reporters in the room, I worry that we may lose journalists in the line of duty not only in places like Syria but also right here at home. Trump will get people hurt.”
To date, more than two years after he launched his campaign and seven months after his inauguration, there is no clear evidence linking Trump’s rhetoric to any violence against reporters.
There has been some violence against reporters. In March, people who work for a local California news agency said they were assaulted at a Trump rally by his supporters, according to the Los Angeles Times. But the report said that among the four people arrested at the incident, all were counter-protesters, and made no mention of them being inspired by Trump.
At the same time, there have been some recent incidents of some on the Left assaulting journalists.
After the riot in Charlottesville, nearly two weeks ago, some reporters on the scene said on social media that they had been attacked by people counter protesting the white supremacy rally.
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Media fear Trump will fan the flames of violence against reporters https://t.co/2CfNsSAMav pic.twitter.com/B3bA5nlUrX
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) August 25, 2017
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