Albert R. Hunt, Columnist

No, Mr. Trump, the Press Is Only the Enemy of Lies

A president who misleads and threatens is no friend of the American people. The news media should not be intimidated.

December 30, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC

Albert R. Hunt is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was the executive editor of Bloomberg News, before which he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor at the Wall Street Journal.

Don’t back down.
Photographer: Chris Kleponis/AFP/Getty Images

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President Donald Trump doesn’t read or study history, so he’s probably unfamiliar with the Alien and Sedition Acts. He'd love them. They were the infamous series of discredited measures promulgated by President John Adams in 1798 and designed, in part, to silence unfriendly journalists.

Trump poses the greatest challenge to a free press at least since President Richard Nixon. Any story that doesn't celebrate him he derides as "fake news." He’s repeatedly called journalists the "enemy of the people," putting 80 percent of the press in that category.