Editorial: The dangers of President Trump's repeated attacks on free press

Even if you accept as fact the accusation that some news outlets claiming objectivity surreptitiously slant their reporting against Donald Trump, you have to find this phrase about all media from a speech by the president of the United States chilling: "Just remember," President Trump told a national gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City on July 24. "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

How can you know "what's happening"? The president had a terse answer to that question as well. "Just stick with us," he said in the same speech.

Reflect on that a moment - the head of a government declaring that the only reports to be trusted regarding his leadership come from him.

Then consider the dust-up that the president inaugurated last Sunday when he broke his own requirement that his July 20 personal meeting at the White House with New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger be kept off the record.

The president tweeted on July 29 that he "had a very good and interesting meeting" in which the men "spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, 'Enemy of the People.' Sad!"

With the off-the-record agreement broken, Sulzberger responded with a tweet of his own linking to his own five-paragraph statement describing his version of that meeting. In his version, he and the president did indeed talk about the phrase "enemy of the people," but it was in the context of Sulzberger's complaints that President Trump's repeated attacks on the press are "undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and eroding one of our country's greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press."

Sulzberger said he was especially concerned about increasing threats against journalists in foreign countries that don't share America's commitment to democratic values, and he noted something critical to this discussion. It's one thing for the head of the government to take issue with the reporting of a specific news agency; it's something altogether more troubling when he sows distrust in all news media, in reports that come from any sources other than those favorable to him.

That's a point that cannot be overstated. Reasonable people can and should judge whether a report from The New York Times or any other publication, broadcast station or online outlet is reliable. But when the narrative becomes that the only reliable version of events is the one endorsed by the government, the activities of that government are no longer subject to the judgment of reasonable people.

And such a government is not a democracy. As a person sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, President Trump has a duty to defend, not assault, the free press. And, if we wish to remain free, we who are citizens under the American government - regardless of whether we favor or oppose the policies of the particular administration in charge - must also "just remember" this: that a commitment to free speech and a free press isn't merely, to quote Sulzberger, "one of our country's greatest exports" to other nations. It is one of our country's inviolable principles at home.