"The FAKE NEWS media,” Donald Trump has tweeted, “is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Has our free press ever faced as great a threat? Perhaps not—but the tension between presidents and journalists is as old as the republic itself.
Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House beat has believed with equal fervency that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Our first president, George Washington, was also the first to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, although he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists.
In this remarkable new history, acclaimed scholar Harold Holzer examines the dual rise of the American presidency and the media that shaped it. From Washington to Trump, he chronicles the disputes and distrust between these core institutions that define the United States of America, revealing that the essence of their confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Freedom of Press Session Sour, Revolution Brewery, Chicago, Illinois
BOOK: The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media--from the Founding Fathers to Fake News
https://www.amazon.com/Presidents-vs-Press-Media-Founding/dp/152474526X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/