I think it was really interesting to learn about the Sedation Acts if 1798 because it is extremely surprising to me that John Adams was able to establish laws that completely eliminated the freedom of the press. This only proved the extent to which presidents are willing to go as a mean of attacking the fourth estate. Another instance in history that I enjoyed learning about was how Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, was often ordered to attack the press over their publications about the Vietnam War protests. Earlier in the semester, we talked a lot about how these protests impacted our nation, and I think it is important to observe ways in which the protests reflected poorly on Nixon’s presidency.
I also think it is crucial to analyze the ways in which presidents impact Americans by attacking the press. Archer described, “citizens have been primed to doubt the media’s intentions and reporting” (page 7) as a result of the behavior of politicians. This has led to the famous assumption that various news sources are delivering “fake news.” In addition, discrediting the press allows presidents to raise their follower support base. It was stated that “by 2018, roughly one-fifth of Trump’s Twitter posts about the media included a claim of the media lying” (page 12), which influences his supporters to also disbelieve the press.
It is interesting to think about how much power the president has over the public perception . However contrary to your point that presidents are discrediting the press to a point where Americans no longer trust the media, I think that it is actually a decent thing that there is a conflict between the two. After all the media is a private cooperation which is focused on a profit, so not all media is trustworthy in the first place. Secondly the conflict between the two groups promotes scepticism in the public which, would theoretically promote the idea of better media as people would go to multiple different sources, but due to humankind’s tendency to look for only what they want to hear especially on the internet
I think the whole idea of the media being controversial in whether it is biased or not is interesting because freedom of press means that the people should like it since the media would be covering things that we wouldn’t necessarily know. The fact that politicians attack the press when they uncover scandals and things like that seem very childish in a broad perspective because if you do something wrong and you are supposed to be trustworthy and in charge of the American people, I think it is good that they get called out.
When I first learned of the Alien and Sedition Acts in APUSH, I was dumbfounded. The Bill of Rights had been passed less than 10 years earlier, and this directly contradicted the First Amendment. It’s terrifying to think about what would happen if something like the Alien and Sedition Acts were put in place today.
I think that Archer talking about Adams and Nixon was essential because most people think that the war on the media began with Trump. I think that it needs to be more known that there has always been and probably always will be intense tension between elected officials and journalists, the only difference is how the official deals with it.