Fake News Accusation Dishonors the Legacies of Fallen Journalists

What was fake about Atlantic Monthly-at-large reporter Michael Kelly, a Washington Post columnist who covered the first Gulf War with distinction, and was killed in a Humvee accident outside Baghdad while traveling with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division during the second Iraq War?

Ernie Pyle’s monument in Ie Shima

What was fake about the work David Bloom did as a journalist with NBC? Bloom died while covering the war in Iraq. He was known by his colleagues as a modern-day Ernie Pyle. At the age of 39, he was also a father and husband, a tireless and resourceful reporter whose battlefield correspondence gave millions a soldier’s perspective of war.

There was nothing fake about the work Kaveh Golestan, 52, did as an Iranian freelance cameraman for the BBC. He died instantly on a mine as he climbed out of his car in the town of Kifrey. In that same attack producer Stuart Hughes, 31, was injured in the foot by the explosion.

What was fake about the work those reporters were doing in Erbil, Iraq —when a helicopter carrying aid from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous government to stranded Yazidis in the Sinjar mountains of northern Iraq crashed, killing the pilot and injuring other passengers, including a Yazidi member of Parliament and a New York Times journalist?

What was fake about the death of Anthony Shadid, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting from Iraq, but died while reporting in eastern Syria, apparently of an asthma attack. He was 43.

Every day journalists take tremendous risks to report the truth. They die for the truth. They sacrifice everything they hold dear for the truth. They are willing to give up their families. They are willing to give up their limbs. They are willing to give up anything that is asked of them because they made a promise to themselves to do journalism.

For Trump to ridicule and provoke companies such as the BBC, The New York Times and CNN, is to needlessly dishonor the contributions of brave reporters. It is beneath the office of President of the United States.

Tom Paine at Burnham Park, Morristown, NJ

Even before the Revolutionary war started,  the founding fathers and mothers made it clear how important the Freedom of the Press is. The Continental Congress – the legislative body of these political minds – wrote in 1774:

The last right we shall mention regards the freedom of the press. The importance of this consists, besides the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated into more honourable and just modes of conducting affairs.

These are the invaluable rights that form a considerable part of our mild system of government; that, sending its equitable energy through all ranks and classes of men, defends the poor from the rich, the weak from the powerful, the industrious from the rapacious, the peaceable from the violent, the tenants from the lords, and all from their superiors.

These are the rights without which a people cannot be free and happy, and under the protecting and encouraging influence of which these colonies have hitherto so amazingly flourished and increased. These are the rights a profligate Ministry are now striving by force of arms to ravish from us, and which we are with one mind resolved never to resign but with our lives.