Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
This sentiment has been lost on the current electorate, as evidenced by the continuing, serial demise of newspapers; the shrinking percentage of Americans who said they read a newspaper yesterday (29 percent, according to the Pew Research Center); and the fact that a majority of Americans do not trust newspapers.
If this startling attitude toward the press is a conflagration, then President-elect Donald Trump heaped more wood on the fire when he called reporters “ liars” and “ lowlifes.” With newspapers already on the run, will they still be willing to act as the Fourth Estate, counterweights to government shenanigans or will they choose, instead, to handle — with kid gloves — policies and philosophies that, in their private hearts, they find repugnant and un-American, in the hope that a friendly understanding can be reached with forces hostile to them?
We already have witnessed the inclination of Trump’s supporters to become violent. Protesters have been roughed up at his rallies — at Trump’s behest. Trump himself issued a directive to his supporters to think hard on the Second Amendment, should Hillary Clinton prevail, the inference being that Annie (and Andy) should get their guns. And if you doubt the rabidity of some of his supporters, I refer you to the Aug. 3 New York Times video, “ Voices From Donald Trump’s Rallies, Uncensored.” I regret that, because of the virulence of the sentiments, I cannot quote the language verbatim here. Suffice it to say that I served three years on a U.S. Navy warship and the hard-bitten vernacular of my shipmates pales when compared to the unbridled, hate-fueled speech of Trump’s so-called “base.” If Clinton had not pre-empted me, I would have described such speech as “deplorable.”
In this political and social climate, it is not difficult to imagine President Trump attacking the papers in earnest — with real power to back him up, this time. He has already threatened tougher libel laws, and he wants to make it easier to sue newspapers. With much of the public and the chief executive — and his hangers-on — allied against the papers, it is questionable whether they will be able to continue without changing their character.
In the end, what it comes down to are two things: accommodation and hope. The newspapers may bend as far as they can to get along with the Trump administration. This would call for tongue-biting on the part of editorial boards and an unfortunate propensity to pretend that Trump is actually a reasonable, even-tempered man with whom they (may) have (gentle) disagreements, which they will respectfully point out from time to time, perhaps giving the administration an opportunity to review editorials before they go to press. As for hope, this will be a shared burden between the press and the public, for this reason: As commander-in-chief he could deploy a nuclear weapon on a whim. One hopes that he does not.
And so the scene seems to be set for the newspapers’ own nuclear winter — a four-year (perhaps eight-year) period of lying low, giving malignant policies the benefit of any doubt and struggling to see both sides of every coin, which means seeing no side at all. It will be interesting to note where the profiles in courage lie and which papers, in the end, come out of it with their integrity intact.
Robert Klose teaches at the University of Maine at Augusta-Bangor. He is a frequent contributor of essays to The Christian Science Monitor and a four-time winner of the Maine Press Association award for opinion writing. His novel, “Long Live Grover Cleveland,” won a Ben Franklin Literary Award and USA BookNews award.