It's no secret that the current US administration doesn't have too high an opinion of journalists. President Donald Trump recently called a female reporter asking him about his involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal "piggy."

And in a press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt talked about how much of her job is taken up by dealing with what she labeled inaccurate characterizations published by White House correspondents.

How White House attack on journalists affects press freedom
Carla Bleiker

A new government website lists journalists and media outlets that Donald Trump's administration considers liars. Experts say the move endangers free media ― and thus erodes democracy in the US.

"The fake news that we see pumped out of this building on a day-to-day basis — it's honestly overwhelming to keep up with it all," she said.

In response to what Leavitt said were "fake news and … attacks" being spread by reporters, the White House has created a website that lists media outlets and reporters who, according to the government, publish false, biased or misleading stories.

The new "Media Offenders" website includes featured "Offenders of the Week" as well as a "Hall of Shame" that consists of four pages (at time of publication) of media reports the White House has sorted into the categories bias, lie, false claim, malpractice, omission of context, mischaracterization, circular reporting, failure to report and left-wing lunacy.

In a statement released on December 1, the White House said by creating the website, it "dropped a flamethrower on the Fake News Media."

Katherine Jacobsen, the US, Canada and Caribbean program coordinator at the non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists sees it differently.

"When the language that is being used on the website … looks like a smear campaign [and] smells like a smear campaign, it probably is a smear campaign," Jacobsen told DW. "And I can't overstate how concerning that is."

Jacobsen said a website like this, created by the US government, "creates a permission structure not only for potential verbal attacks against the press, but real-world attacks."

In addition to the criticized outlets, the website also lists the names of the reporters who wrote or produced the offending report in question.

"These journalists are trying to expose factual information, create a more transparent environment," Jacobsen said. "We do know this kind of rhetoric ratchets up the atmosphere, and that in turn makes it less safe for journalists out there doing their job."

The website set up by the Trump White House amounts to threatening media outlets, Jonathan Katz, a fellow in governance studies at the think tank Brookings Institution, says, too.

"It can have a chilling effect on free speech, on independent media," Katz told DW. "We're watching carefully to see how this affects press freedom in the United States."

Anything but a fully free press goes against the very DNA of the country. The first amendment to the US Constitution reads, in part, "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …"

In 1776, lawmakers in colonial Virginia passed a declaration of rights that noted the importance of a free press: "The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments."

The late Ben Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post from 1968 to 1991, spoke about press freedom in 2009, on the 215th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which includes the first amendment.

"You will never get a reporter to say that the relationships with the government are good," Bradlee told Voice of America. "Because if he did, he would probably be lying and the government would be treating him too well. They don't have to treat us all that well. They just have to stay out of the way."

The relationship between the federal US government and the press has never been purely harmonious. In a democracy, journalists are supposed to hold government officials accountable for their actions. That means they sometimes report stories that the government doesn't like, and sometimes, the president and members of his government treat journalists in ways they don't like. 

But the "Media Offenders" website, along with the Pentagon's reporting restrictions and Trump's lawsuits against several media outlets publishing unfavorable stories about him, is a sign of how unprecedented the current US government's antagonism against the press is.

"Every president, at times, has had issues with the media and media coverage. But we’ve never seen a president attack the media the way Trump has," Tom Jones, senior writer at the nonprofit Poynter Institute, which, among other functions, provides journalism ethics training, told DW. "Donald Trump, by far, has been the most adversarial president when it comes to the press."

https://www.dw.com/en/how-white-house-attack-on-journalists-affects-us-press-freedom/a-75040640

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THIS ISN'T NEW: JOE BIDEN'S ADMIN USED SECRET WAYS TO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH...

SUPPRESSING JOURNALISM IN THE USA STARTED A LONG TIME AGO.... 

SEE ALSO, FROM MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO: