Journalists Will Never Be Loved Least Of All By Trump

If you’re a journalist in a lather over Donald Trump, you’ve probably given some thought to the possibility that our profession might be exaggerating itself into oblivion.

Let’s compare. “Ladies and gentlemen,” wrote Friedman, “we were attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and we were attacked on Nov. 8, 2016. That most recent attack didn’t involve a horrible loss of lives, but it was devastating in its own way. Our entire intelligence community concluded that Russia hacked our election by deliberately breaking into Democratic National Committee computers and then drip-by-drip funneling embarrassing emails through WikiLeaks to undermine Clinton’s campaign.”

Especially at a time we have a tweeting president who tells the country, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

Journalists will never be loved, and I see no particular reason why we should be. But we’re useful, and much more easily scorned than abandoned. Keeping up with what’s real is now not merely responsible—it’s au courant. Journalism’s future doesn’t look so bad.