Sulzberger responds

Reasoning that today’s tweet by The Donald about their meeting puts their off-the-record meeting into the record, Sulzberger has issued the following statement:

Statement of A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher, The New York Times:

My main purpose for accepting the meeting was to raise concerns about the president’s deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric.

I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.

I told him that although the phrase “fake news” is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists “the enemy of the people.” I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.

I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.

Throughout the conversation I emphasized that if President Trump, like previous presidents, was upset with coverage of his administration he was of course free to tell the world. I made clear repeatedly that I was not asking for him to soften his attacks on The Times if he felt our coverage was unfair. Instead, I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country.

I think increasingly that violence against journalists is inevitable. After all, journalism is doing heroic work exposing Trump’s lies — and a scammer can’t risk truth. As he did before the VFW just a few days ago, he will continue to abuse the journalists who are covering him — and one or more will get badly hurt one of these times; probably, before the November election.

I can’t help taking this personally. As longtime readers know, I have a nephew who is a journalist. I have written on the order of one-hundred reported magazine features through the years (though I don’t call myself a journalist, but an engineer), and once worked as a magazine editor. I have known and worked with a great many journalists through the years, including some Pulitzer-nominees; they are among the hardest-working, best informed, most scrupulous people I know, and all exhibit high ethical standards.

The press won’t buckle before a plaid-suited carnival barker like The Donald, and I’m just hoping that not too many get hurt before the nightmare of Trump’s authoritarian ambitions comes to its deserved end.