'Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis' by Jon Marshall
Journalists can be sloppy, dull witted and wrong, but despite the faults of some reporters, journalism is essential to democracy. Trump proved that, as Jon Marshall reminds us in Clash. He was a president who “trampled the truth at a pace that far surpassed his predecessors.”
Clash is about the sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile relationship between the American press and the nation’s presidents. Rancor didn’t begin with social networking. Marshall, who teaches media history at Northwestern University, quotes bitter jabs and jeremiads during the administration of the second president, John Adams, who responded by jailing some of his critics. Abraham Lincoln closed pro-Confederate newspapers and Woodrow Wilson headed a two-pronged project of propaganda and censorship once he took the U.S. into World War I. His administration came down hard on the Milwaukee Leader, banning the socialist paper from the mail, even blocking payments from advertisers. By contrast, Franklin Roosevelt had an easy way with journalists even as he began go to over their heads, speaking directly to Americans by radio, a medium he mastered.
Marshall worries about the decline of traditional media under an onslaught of “digital parasites,” aggregating content without payment and spreading falsehoods with few checks. He also points out the important role played by Black and women’s publications in pushing for an expansion of civil rights and worries that America’s shrinking newsrooms remain bastions of white men.
