Courtesy of Pam Martens
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
August 16, 2018 will be remembered as the day there was a collective awakening by America’s media that there was something intrinsically and morally and constitutionally wrong with not just the functioning of the President of the United States – but with America itself.
In response to an August 10 appeal from the Boston Globe to newspaper editorial boards around the country to write and publish their thoughts on Trump’s “dirty war against the free press,” more than 300 newspapers responded yesterday.
The Globe’s own editorial yesterday contained one of the most poignant phrases, stating that the President tosses out lies about the media “much like an old-time charlatan threw out ‘magic’ dust or water on a hopeful crowd.” You can read the coast-to-coast outpouring of editorials on what a free press means to democracy here.
One of the most profound, and disturbing, editorials yesterday came not from a newspaper but from The Atlantic magazine. Written by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner, the editorial invoked the founding fathers’ creation of “three branches of government with distinct powers and responsibilities that had to answer to one another” plus the 10 amendments to the constitution to protect citizen rights, and a free press established under the first amendment. Rather and Kirschner, who last year co-authored What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, also wrote this in the editorial:
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