President Donald Trump could be crowned the king of fake news. He is, after all, in a class of his own. Trump has established a documented pattern of making false statements, repeating them after they have been disproved, and using those falsehoods to discredit institutions, including the press, that contradict him.
It is laughable that Trump says he is tired of “fake news,” and he has chosen a revealing way to fight it: Barring journalists from the White House.
He has declared CNN, MS NOW and Politico guilty.
Reporters from the three organizations arrived at the White House and discovered that their credentials had been deactivated. Some had their press passes confiscated. Trump said he barred the organizations because of what he called their “constant” reporting of fake news.
He did not identify a false story. He offered no evidence of fabrication, perhaps because doing so would require him to name the reporting and prove what was factually wrong with it.
He did not do that.
Trump also made clear that other news organizations could be next.
That threat only underscores the point. It is easier to ban news organizations and repeat the phrase “fake news” than to show, story by story, what was false and why.
If fake news is the problem, showing what was wrong with a story should be the strongest defense.
This is not simply another quarrel between a president and the reporters who cover him. Presidents have always complained about news coverage, sometimes with justification. News organizations make mistakes. Journalists can report incomplete information, omit important context or embrace an interpretation that the evidence does not fully support.
When journalists make mistakes, they should correct them prominently and accept accountability. In responsible newsrooms, that is the standard.
But criticism and government retaliation are not the same. Criticism answers journalism with more speech. Retaliation uses presidential power to punish journalists for doing their jobs.
The First Amendment does not require the press to please the president. It does not protect only reporters whose coverage government officials consider fair. It protects an independent press because people in power rarely enjoy being watched, questioned or contradicted.
Access is not a favor presidents bestow on friendly news organizations. It is one way the public examines official power.
Trump’s actions expose a remarkable contradiction. A president with a thoroughly documented history of false and misleading claims is asserting the authority to decide which journalists are truthful enough to cover him.
That is not partisan name-calling. It is a matter of record.
The Washington Post Fact Checker catalogued 30,573 false or misleading claims during Trump’s first term. Its methodology is its own, but the broader pattern has also been documented by the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The New York Times, PolitiFact and the nonpartisan FactCheck.org.
The pattern has continued during Trump’s second term.
FactCheck.org has documented inaccurate, unsupported or misleading claims involving inflation, crime, immigration, employment and health care.
In August, for example, Trump claimed he had achieved the lowest inflation of the past 10 presidents. The graphic supporting his assertion compared the first 18 months of his current term with his predecessors’ complete four-year terms.
At equivalent points in those presidencies, FactCheck.org found, Trump’s inflation rate was the fourth highest, not the lowest.
Anyone can make a mistake. Journalists do. Presidents do. The responsible response is to acknowledge the error and correct it.
A sustained pattern of exaggeration, distortion and repetition after a claim has been disproved is different. It turns falsehood into a political method.
That is why “fake news” has become such a useful but lazy label for Trump. It allows him to avoid answering what journalists report by attacking the legitimacy of the journalists who report it. He does not have to disprove the story if he can persuade people to distrust the messenger.
The question is no longer whether a particular report is accurate. The question becomes whether the news organization is sufficiently loyal to be allowed through the White House door.
Trump attacks journalists as purveyors of falsehood. Yet his own documented conduct has helped make him the president of fake news.
He has not merely made occasional factual errors. He has repeatedly offered assertions that conflict with verifiable evidence, repeated claims after fact-checkers disproved them and attacked the institutions that challenged him.
Then he asks the public to trust him as the final authority on truth.
This column is not a defense of everything CNN, MS NOW or Politico has ever reported. No responsible journalist would claim that any news organization is beyond criticism.
The larger principle is the public’s right to independent scrutiny of government power.
The White House belongs to the American people. Taxpayers support the government inside it, and that government exercises power in their name. Reporters are present not as privileged guests of the president but as representatives of a public that cannot personally attend every briefing, examine every document or question every official.
Journalists are the public’s eyes and ears inside institutions of power.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico are suing to regain access to the White House, claiming the ban is a violation of the First Amendment.
Federal courts have recognized that the White House cannot administer general press credentials arbitrarily. In the 1977 case Sherrill v. Knight, an appeals court held that denying a credential to a bona fide journalist implicated First Amendment protections and required stated standards and due process.
Courts still dispute the legal boundaries around access to smaller presidential spaces, including the Oval Office and Air Force One. But the democratic principle should be easy to understand: Government should not choose the journalists who cover it based on whether their reporting flatters the person in power.
The danger extends beyond the three organizations Trump has targeted.
Once a president may exclude one news organization because he dislikes its coverage, the same standard can be applied to another and then another. A future Democratic president could invoke the same reasoning against Fox News, Newsmax or another conservative organization.
Press freedom cannot depend on whether we agree with the news organization being punished.
We must also acknowledge another reality: Many Americans are exhausted by the news.
They have jobs to do, bills to pay and families to care for. They worry about housing, food, health care, insurance and whether their children will have fewer opportunities than they had. Meanwhile, the political news cycle delivers a relentless stream of conflict, often leaving people with the understandable feeling that they can do little to change anything.
Turning away can feel like self-preservation.
But public exhaustion does not reduce the need for independent journalism. It increases it.
Most Americans do not have the time or resources to investigate every presidential statement. They cannot independently determine whether officials have manipulated economic statistics, misspent public money, concealed military casualties or abused government power.
That is why reporters ask questions. That is why they demand public records. That is why they compare official statements with verifiable evidence.
Americans should not trust journalists blindly. Journalism must earn trust through verification, independence, accountability, visible corrections and transparency about what it knows and what it does not know.
Americans should not trust presidents blindly either, especially one with such an extensively documented record of misleading them.
The answer to imperfect journalism is better journalism: More evidence, more transparency, more competition and more reporting. It is not allowing a president to decide which journalists may enter the White House.
Trump says he is protecting Americans from fake news.
Closing the White House door does not protect them. It deprives them of witnesses.
The First Amendment protects a free press because the public has a right to know what its government is doing. Attacking the credibility of independent journalism and then using government power to restrict access weakens more than the press.
It weakens the ability of the American people to hold their president accountable.
A president who chooses which reporters may watch him is not defending the truth. He is trying to control who may test his version of it.