FCC/MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump has said a lot of bad things about the media since he started running for president two-plus years ago. He’s suggested that the press doesn’t really like America. He has said the media is the ‘enemy of the American people.’ He has repeatedly called journalists the ‘most dishonest’ people. He has worked to paint news stories he doesn’t like as ‘fake’ — and claimed he created that term.
But he’s never gone as far as he did on Wednesday [10-11-17] morning when he tweeted this: ‘With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!’
What Trump is suggesting here is that the Federal Communications Commission needs to examine its licensing procedures for major news networks because what they are reporting is not to his liking. The coverage isn’t positive enough for Trump, so he wants some sort of punitive action doled out.
This is, simply put, the stuff of authoritarian governments. Democracy is built on the free and independent press. If/when a president or any leader seizes the ability to control the news media, democracy dies.”
-Chris Cillizza, “Donald Trump just issued a direct threat to the free and independent media,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, Oct. 11, 2017 01:01pm