Trump’s repeated action of calling a majority of what the media produces “fake news” is harmful to the journalism world, as it inadequately takes away validity from a craft that is only doing their job.

The twitter feed of the current president houses a majority of anti media propaganda including, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCnews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people.” Additionally, all of Trump’s rages on media target the organizations he deems as liberal.

The main issue with Trump’s continued rants is that they are not backed up, or in some cases even quite hypocritical.

For example, Trump told supporters at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that “the fake media doesn’t tell the truth” and that reporters should not be allowed to use anonymous sources, but just earlier that day an unidentified White House administration official provided a briefing on a condition.

Also, a Trump approved source, The Hill, used the source of a Harvard-Harris Poll, stating “Americans largely oppose sanctuary cities”, but no piece of information on this poll can be found on the internet, not even on the website for Harvard Center for American Political Studies, which is the supposed producer for the poll.

The most harmful feature of Trump’s newest trend of rants is that it deters the nature of Freedom of Speech. Trump states that he loves the First Amendment, but the action of declaring some news sources good, while others an enemy just because he doesn’t like what they say about them is practically stomping on the fact that reporters have a right to write on whatever they please. Trump is also ignoring the fact there are already laws in place protecting officials from the actions of libel or slander and he does not need to use his twitter account as a form of policing.

Such a principle brings attention to that fact that Trump ignores what a bias is. Yes, his deemed crown jewel of media, Fox News, is comparably more conservative than other organizations such as NBC or CNN, but Trump fails to realize that a political bias does not create failure among news. Bias is created by who determines how news is presented and is just an unavoidable concept among a group of people.

Trump is lacking a realization that an extremely important factor of journalism is bias, as that requires a citizen to reach out to multiple sources to obtain the full story. Trump is enabling a large  group of people who will rely singularly on one conservative source- a practice that is terrible for one’s political efficacy, and would be the equivalent situation if a president was persuading people to stick to solely the other side of the spectrum.

To maintain a politically literate society every American needs to embrace the right the freedom of the press and read news from all networks. No news platforms are failing as long as they have the support of the people, and none are the enemy as long as they are just doing their job of presenting the news to the people.