Icon (Close Menu)

Logout

Your Friendly Neighborhood Enemy (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

4 min read

Last week, more than 300 newspapers across the country published editorials defending the free press against the continuing attacks by the president of the United States. It may seem quaint to think that editorials, theoretically the opinion of the newspaper itself rather than any one person, still have the power to persuade, but it is encouraging to know that there are still so many newspapers performing the role that our Founding Fathers were careful to protect.

Thanks to the internet, where dollars for cheap advertising flow mainly to giants like Facebook and Google, newspapers are starving for revenue even as demand for news has never been stronger. Niche publications like Arkansas Business are generally healthier, but we are merely a supplement to the vital work done by a paper of record like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Every president has complained about the press, a little or a lot. But what President Trump does by repeatedly declaring people like me to be “enemies of the people” engaged in “fake news” is a deliberate effort to undermine one of the pillars of the American experiment in liberty and self-rule. As even his third wife has pointed out, Donald Trump punches back 10 times harder when he feels attacked. It seems he feels attacked anytime he is held accountable for his words and actions.

His campaign against the free press is working among the kind of Americans who share Trump’s worldview. The well-respected Quinnipiac University poll found that 51 percent of respondents who self-identified as Republicans consider the news media to be the enemy of the people. It could be worse, of course — only 26 percent of all respondents to the poll conducted Aug. 9-13 felt that way.

Earlier this month, it was my pleasure to appear before the Arkansas chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the third time I’ve been invited to speak to a group whose reporting on workplace fraud has been hugely helpful to me. After my presentation on the General Improvement Fund corruption scandal, I fielded several questions from the audience, including this one: How have President Trump’s attacks on the free press made my job harder?

Great question, and one I was happy to answer: His attacks offend me. I am worried that his words may inspire more violence against journalists who are doing a vital job. He has inspired other authoritarian leaders to copy his rhetoric, which is especially dangerous in countries where they don’t have a First Amendment and can’t rely on the rule of law.

But President Trump has not made my job harder. The Arkansas Business staff still has access to all the reporting tools we had before he was elected, and the newsmakers we seek to interview don’t seem to be any less willing to take our calls than normal. He hasn’t stopped our paid circulation from reaching new heights.

I suspect this is for the same reason most members of Congress are re-elected time after time despite even lower approval ratings for that institution than for “the media.” People generally like and appreciate their local congressmen and their local journalists. It’s those other ones who are the problem.


Even well-meaning local journalists get things wrong. But the responsible ones own their errors and correct them clearly, promptly and prominently. It’s no accident that we publish our corrections on the same page as Whispers, the best-read part of Arkansas Business week in and week out.


Preparing my presentation on the GIF scandal for the Certified Fraud Examiners was mind-blowing, even though I have followed the action closely thanks to excellent reporting by the Democrat-Gazette. Since it involves two separate federal investigations, one in the Western District of Arkansas and one in the Western District of Missouri, I have described it as a Russian novel with too many characters and plot threads.

So far, there have been 11 convictions — six in Arkansas and five in Missouri — and those include five former Arkansas legislators: Micah Neal, Jon Woods, Jake Files, Hank Wilkins IV and Eddie Cooper. One of the Missouri defendants, Carl David Hayes, committed suicide, and the man who is the nexus of both cases, lobbyist and former mental health executive Rusty Cranford, is awaiting sentencing in a Missouri jail because his judge was persuaded that he was a flight risk who had tried to have a co-defendant murdered.

And I’m not at all sure this story is complete.


Email Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, at GMoritz@ABPG.com and follow her on Twitter at @gwenmoritz.
Send this to a friend