‘To the average American, seeing an editorial in their local paper trashing Trump is called “A day that ends in y…”‘
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) An estimated 350 newspapers gave new meaning to the term ‘echo chamber’ on Thursday with a coordinated editorial-page attack on President Donald Trump that was spearheaded by The Boston Globe.
Using the hashtag #FreePress on Twitter, the effort ostensibly was aimed at Trump’s characterization of the press as an “enemy of the people.”
Mr. President, read the hundreds of powerful editorials from around the country and learn the true meaning of a #FreePress pic.twitter.com/HVzklOdqpS
— marjorie pritchard (@marjoriepritch) August 16, 2018
However, while the participating media outlets commended themselves for their bravery, onlookers wondered if the exercise in groupthink didn’t prove precisely the point they were arguing against.
Politico’s Jack Shafer noted, “[T]his Globe-sponsored coordinated editorial response is sure to backfire: It will provide Trump with circumstantial evidence of the existence of a national press cabal that has been convened solely to oppose him.”
CBS News’ Michael Graham also observed the redundancy of the effort: “[T]o the average American, seeing an editorial in their local paper trashing Trump is called ‘A day that ends in y.’”
In his Twitter response to the editorial campaign, Trump doubled down by calling left-wing media “the opposition party” while taking a jab specifically at The Globe‘s foundering finances.
The Boston Globe, which was sold to the the Failing New York Times for 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (plus 800 million dollars in losses & investment), or 2.1 BILLION DOLLARS, was then sold by the Times for 1 DOLLAR. Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2018
In 2013, The New York Times sold The Globe to Boston Red Sox owner John W. Henry for $70 million, losing more than a billion dollars on the investment it had purchased in 1993.
However, Trump’s use of the $1 figure (sure to roil and excite so-called fact-checkers) was more than figurative speech.
In 2010, The Washington Post sold the once vaunted Newsweek to stereo mogul Sidney Harman for $1.
Although the magazine survived, it since has been plagued by legal troubles, internal discord and criticisms over its increasingly shoddy journalistic practices.
Another left-leaning newsmagazine, Time, sold last November to The Meredith Corporation, a publishing entity backed in part by conservative billionaire philanthropists Charles and David Koch.
Thursday’s #FreePress campaign was not the first time The Globe’s editorial board has gone to such extraordinary lengths to breach journalistic protocol in service of their anti-Trump agenda.
In April 2016, seven months before the presidential election, they published on their front page a fake edition imagining a hypothetical scenario in which Trump were president.