LA Times Refuses To Participate In Boston Globe’s “Groupthink” War On Trump

The Los Angeles times has refused to participate in the Boston Globe’s coordinated ‘call to action’ in which they have colluded with over 400 newspapers to publish anti-Trump editorials. 

Calling the Globe‘s campaign “groupthink,” the Times writes that while they may agree with the anti-Trump sentiment, they “would not want to leave the impression that we take our lead from others.” 

Each of the papers will publish editorials — their own separate editorials, in their own words — defending freedom of the press.

The Los Angeles Times, however, has decided not to participate. There will be no free press editorial on our page today.

This is not because we don’t believe that President Trump has been engaged in a cynical, demagogic and unfair assault on our industry. 

…

Even when we do agree with another editorial page — on the death penalty or climate change or war in Afghanistan, say — we reach our own decisions and positions after careful consultation and deliberation among ourselves, and then we write our own editorials. We would not want to leave the impression that we take our lead from others, or that we engage in groupthink.

Earlier Thursday, President Trump began the day attacking the “Fake News Media,” calling it the opposition party: 

Then shifted to a more direct shot at The Boston Globe…“Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press.”

And attempted to end on a positive note… “Honesty wins…”

As Twitter user @KidBrightwillow notes, when the pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcast group coordinated a right-leaning message that anchors across the country read, the same papers now colluding with the Globe cried foul. 

When else has the Boston Globe colluded with against Trump? Oh right, Hillary Clinton’s campaign!

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As we noted last night ahead of today’s blitz, Al Tompkins at The Poynter Institute – a five decade award-winning journalist and producer – acknowledges the reality that:

We will protest again that we are really good for democracy, that we are vital to the nation… and the people who agree with the president won’t give a damn what 200-plus newspaper editorials or a thousand editorials have to say.

Tompkins brings a common-sense perspective, likely echoing what most average Americans might be thinking right now, ultimately concluding of the breathless headlines now promising 350 “pro-journalism editorials” that it’ll be little more than the usual self-congratulatory and meaningless noise that many Americans have come to expect from the mainstream press.

He rains on their parade and predicts:

So the editorials Thursday will create a lot of chatter. Trump backers will call journalists whiners and journalists will counter-attack. Twitter and cable news will have a ball with it all.

And Friday morning we will be right where we were this morning. 

And crucially Tompkins, himself a prominent longtime educator of journalists across the nation, says that journalists as a collective profession have gotten so much disastrously wrong yet remain intransigent, and the American people understand this well.

He says:

Lots of journalists were surprised after the 2016 election. We vowed to listen to the public more, to find out why we were so surprised to hear that the public didn’t love journalists and a growing number didn’t believe us.

Meanwhile, the US Senate passed a resolution on Thursday that “affirms that the press is not the enemy of the people.” 

Maybe just an enemy of Trump?  

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