This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
As we continue to watch presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's increasingly outrageous attempts to control how the press covers his campaign, telling news outlets what they can and cannot say, I've got a suggestion.
What if the press, which has been both verbally and physically attacked by Trump and his flunkies on the campaign trail, simply stopped covering his rallies and speeches?
What if when Trump came out on the stage of his heavily orchestrated events and found nobody sitting on press row? No cameras, no sound technicians, no notebooks. What if Trump suddenly found that his blustering attacks against anyone he thought was unfair to him went no further than the people in the room?
I know it won't happen. For many practical reasons, it can't happen.
But here are my thoughts.
Trump's assaults on the press have clearly been calculated to manipulate how a free and independent Fourth Estate covers the presidential campaign. Rather than a news media using journalistic instincts to cover candidates evenly and fairly, but also holding them accountable for their actions, he wants one favorable to him and unquestioning of his unproven accusations against his opponents.
In other words, he considers the news media a public relations arm of his campaign.
If news outlets don't cover the campaign the way he wants, he has begun banning them from his events. If you, as an independent journalist, make Trump mad, you don't get to cover his speech and that gives you a disadvantage when it comes to attracting readers, or viewers or listeners because your competitors will have the story you don't have.
That means the presidential candidate, who has bragged he will behave the same way if he is president, will use his position to hurt your news organization financially if you ask him tough questions in a news conference and, as has happened, catch him in a lie.
That is a direct attack on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Trump recently announced he was banning the Washington Post from obtaining press credentials to his campaign events. He didn't like a headline the paper originally posted about his criticism of President Barack Obama's refusal to use the words "radical Islamic terrorists" when discussing terrorist attacks.
The Post quickly changed the headline to more accurately describe the remarks without any request from the Trump campaign. But to Trump, the newspaper had been deliberately dishonest.
I suspect the real reason Trump is banning the Post — which won't stop the newspaper from covering his campaign and may actually boost its readership — is because its reporters caught him in a lie.
In order to justify his boycotting a debate in January because he didn't like the questions he was asked, Trump held what he called a fundraiser for veterans groups at the same time. He claimed to have raised several million dollars for the vets, including $1 million of his own money.
But when the Post and others reported there was no evidence that he had given any money to veterans groups, Trump suddenly disbursed the money, then called the reports false and the reporters sleazy.
He has banned other publications from his events. A reporter from Univision was physically removed from a press conference by one of Trump's goons because Trump didn't like his questions. A reporter from Breitbart News was yanked by the arm when she tried to ask Trump a question.
The insidious part of this is that Trump has benefited more than any presidential candidate in recent memory from the coverage he has gotten from the press. He has even boasted that he hasn't had to spend much money on advertising because of all the free press he has gotten at his speeches and rallies.
As news organizations, one by one, are banned from Trump events in order to punish them financially for asking tough questions, the free press is under siege. It's very independence from the yoke of government tyranny is being tested.
So what if all news organizations stood by their competitors being punished by banishment and stayed away from Trump's events.
The result would be fun to see.
In the 1980s, there was an Arizona governor named Evan Mecham. He had been a millionaire car dealer and was controversial as governor from the time he was elected.
During one press conference he had called to get publicity for his budget plans, he was asked by a reporter about an ongoing investigation concerning alleged financial reporting irregularities by his campaign.
He ignored the reporter by saying, "Next question." Another reporter, a rival of the first, then asked the exact same question. "Next question," Mecham repeated. One by one, the reporters in the room asked the exact same question until the frustrated Mecham stomped out of the room.
He eventually was impeached. —