During a news conference last week that most news organizations said was unprecedented, President Donald Trump lashed out at the "dishonest" media for engaging in "fake news."

He doubled down on these accusations at a rally Sunday in Florida and spent several minutes vilifying the media for dishonest reporting. He even invoked the name of President Thomas Jefferson. Our third president had a love-hate relationship with newspapers. He once said, "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Jefferson also said, however, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."Trump supporters say the American public has lost confidence in the news media because of their aggressive and unfair approach to the Trump presidency and feel there is little hope that the media will be balanced and objective in their coverage of the president and his policies.They believe that the news organizations risk losing to a president who has been successful in taking on the media and convincing his base that he is winning and the media are losing.Many of his supporters either don't care about Trump's lies or don't find them important.NBC-TV news correspondent Peter Alexander challenged Trump during the news conference on his inaccurate statement that he racked up the most Electoral College votes since Ronald Reagan. In truth, Trump's 306 votes ranks sixth behind Barack Obama twice, Bill Clinton twice and George H.W. Bush. The only president who had fewer Electoral College votes than Trump since the Reagan presidency was George W. Bush. Trump brushed off the error as having occurred because someone had given him inaccurate information.Trump has been telling lies and repeating them even when his statements are contradicted by the evidence. For example, he contends, despite incontrovertible proof to the contrary, that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, costing him the popular vote. Clinton won the popular vote by about 2.8 million.Trump has blamed the news media for causing the resignation of national security adviser Mike Flynn, but at the news conference Trump admitted that he asked for Flynn's resignation because he had misled Vice President Mike Pence.It's not unusual for a president to take issue with news coverage, but to have this preoccupation and accusatory narrative going on just about daily is reminiscent of the Richard Nixon presidency.Nixon hated the media throughout his political career. He tried to intimidate journalists and news organizations that were critical of him. It was disclosed that he wiretapped reporters' phones, and some reporters were on Nixon's infamous "Enemies' List." His famous comment after his unsuccessful run for California governor was indicative of his relationship with the media - "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore." He then went on to make one of the most remarkable comebacks in political history by capturing the presidency in 1968 and winning re-election four years later.Media organizations find themselves in uncharted waters. Many are reluctant to call the president of the United States a flat-out liar. Calling the leader of the Free World a liar implies that he knows what he says is untrue and that he means to deceive his listeners.National Public Radio announced recently that it has decided not to use the word "lie" in its coverage of the president. You will hear phrases such as "falsely said," "untruth" and "unsubstantiated claim," among other glossed-over politically correct expressions.Some say that Trump believes what he is saying IS true, so it is not so much a lie as it is delusional. But is this not the unethical equivalent of lying?It is ironic that Trump, who has lied to the point where fact-checking has become a national pastime among media organizations, branded Ted Cruz as "Lyin Ted" during the Republican primary last year. Trump also charged that no person in history has ever lied more than Obama.In his book "When Presidents Lie," Eric Alterman says, "The more a leader lies to his people, the more he must lie to his people." He went on to say that lying may appear to work for a president in the short term. "And, in many cases, it does," he said, "but a president ignores the consequences of his deception at his own political peril."In his book "Humbuggery and Manipulation," F.G. Bailey says that no leader can survive as a leader without deceiving others. He claims they put politics before statesmanship and are not the virtuous people they claim to be."They distort facts, oversimplify issues, promise what no one can deliver, and they are liars," Bailey said.Middle Ages Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, who proposed the theory that power is at the heart of all politics, believed that private moral virtues were inappropriate and ineffective for public political life and that a leader need only pretend to possess these ethical qualities.We are living in a new political world, and, for better or worse, the old rules no longer apply.By Bruce Frassinelli |

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