Author and journalist Naomi Wolf’s eighth step to fascism was invoked by a Trump administration spokesperson Friday, in an unprecedented government attack on press freedom. Reporters from a bevy of distinguished news organizations — the New York Times, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, and the Guardian among them — were denied access to a scheduled White House briefing by press secretary Sean Spicer. Donald Trump has repeatedly labelled the media an “enemy of the people” and threatens retaliation on reporters who use anonymous sources.
To their credit, journalists from The Associated Press and Time magazine walked out of the event (photo) in support of their excluded colleagues. The White House Correspondents Association is also protesting.
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet declared in a statement: “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. We strongly protest the exclusion of the New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.” Suppression of the same enables the rule of despots.
“Dictatorships are often unexpected. They have arisen among prosperous, educated and cultured people who seemed safe from a dictatorship — in Europe, Asia and South America,” wrote Forbes contributor Jim Powell in a 2013 article. “Consider Germany, one of the most paradoxical and dramatic cases.”