According to him it's only ever biased if it's critical of his actions or policies. That injects more noise into claims of bias and can lead people to take them less seriously than they realistically should. Bit of a boy who cried wolf situation.
A lot of people are purposefully blurring the lines here and it's really dangerous. The same argument could be used to say that the press has undue influence, and should therefore be regulated in what it is able to say or how it is able to report.
The press in America has the same freedom of speech as individuals do: near unlimited. They come together. If you start picking and choosing, free speech is no longer a right.
Similarly, the press give up the right to say any foolish claims without substantiation when they assume their official roles as journalists. They promise to back what they say with evidence and facts; that stops them from making baseless claims. Is that restricting their free speech? Free speech does not exist in a vacuum.
I think you do have a point. But consider what you're trying to apply it to here. The president is not saying "I think we should nuke Korea" or "the press should be abolished." He says "CNN? That's fake news." It's a criticism leveled at an organization that has had a rampant hyperbolic partisan slant and has printed fake news, making the criticism accurate.
Calling the media out for this behavior could be seen as holding it accountable. These types of criticisms mean nothing in terms of any meaningful action that could restrict the press.
I think more people need to question from where they have gotten the perspective that these attacks are particularly threatening towards a free press in the US. Was it from the press?? Go figure.
I think you need to question from where you have gotten the perspective that getting one or two things right in a rant somehow legitimizes everything in a rant.
> I think you need to question from where you have gotten the perspective that getting one or two things right in a rant somehow legitimizes everything in a rant.
I don't believe this at all.
[0] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11142215334617907...
If you were one of the Central Park Five, wrongly accused of rape, or if you were a climate change activist, facing climate-denying articles, and said "the press has got it all wrong and are the enemy of the people" how would you interpret that? As anger, representing a valid critique that should be explored? Or that this person is literally calling for the end or restriction of journalism as a practice? It seems obvious. The only way to interpret it as the latter is to interpret it in such bad faith that it borders on malevolence.