Nearly 350 news organizations are set to publish editorials on Thursday pushing back against Donald Trump’s attacks on the media and defending freedom of the press.

The publications are participating in a push organized by the Boston Globe to run coordinated editorials denouncing what the paper called a “dirty war against the free press”.

As of Wednesday morning, 343 publications had pledged to participate, said Marjorie Pritchard, the Globe’s deputy managing editor overseeing the opinion page.

The Guardian has also joined the effort and has published an editorial alongside outlets around the United States.

“Donald Trump is not the first US president to attack the press or to feel unfairly treated by it. But he is the first who appears to have a calculated and consistent policy of undermining, delegitimising and even endangering the press’s work,” the Guardian’s editorial says.

Trump has routinely attacked the press as a whole as well as individual reporters, labeling factually accurate reports “fake news” and calling the news media “the enemy of the people”.

Source: The Guardian

BDST: 1232 HRS, AUG 16, 2018
SI