The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion The global reach of Trump’s ‘fake news’ outrage

|
November 19, 2019 at 7:11 p.m. EST
President Trump talks to reporters outside the White House on Nov. 8. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

TO THE long list of President Trump’s dubious achievements, add the spread of “fake news” as a loanword to the non-English-speaking world. Inspired by Mr. Trump’s own diatribes against press coverage he dislikes, authorities from Brazil to Tanzania deploy the epithet against reporters upon whom they, like the U.S. president, wish to focus the anger of social media crowds. We learned of this repercussion of Mr. Trump’s leadership in a meeting with this year’s winners of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ press freedom awards.

These six members of the media from Brazil, India, Nicaragua, Tanzania and Pakistan exemplify the courage it takes to engage in free expression of which officials disapprove, including in many countries usually thought of as democratic. Sadly, their jobs are made harder by a lack of consistent support from the world’s strongest democracy, the United States. To the contrary, the Trump administration radiates sympathy for some of the governments that harass them. In Brazil or India, whose elected leaders are right-wing populists admired by, and admiring of, Mr. Trump, common tools of intimidation include smear campaigns on social media, lawsuits and doxxing — as we were told by Patrícia Campos Mello, a reporter and columnist at Brazil’s daily Folha de S. Paulo, targeted for exposing manipulations of WhatsApp messaging by supporters of then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, and by Neha Dixit, a freelance investigative journalist in India facing legal and physical threats for reporting on alleged murders and abductions by police and right-wing nationalist groups. In Tanzania, Maxence Melo Mubyazi, co-founder and managing director of JamiiForums, an online discussion site and breaking-news source, has been hounded with charges of cybercrime, travel restrictions and registration fees.

Mr. Mubyazi, so far, has been jailed once, for eight days. Lucía Pineda Ubau, news director, and Miguel Mora, founder and editor, of Nicaraguan broadcaster 100% Noticias, were imprisoned for six months for covering political demonstrations against that country’s dictatorial regime. They were freed on June 11; 100% Noticias has been closed in Nicaragua, though it operates a shoestring Internet news service from abroad.

Both the Trump administration and Congress have put pressure on President Daniel Ortega’s government, demonstrating the validity of what Zaffar Abbas, editor of Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, told us: “International statements do matter.” To the Trump administration’s credit, it granted the CPJ honorees a meeting with Vice President Pence. Of course, to have meaning, expressions of solidarity must not be aimed selectively at left-wing governments such as Mr. Ortega’s. And there is no substitute for a clear message from the president himself.

Alas, too often he and the world’s would-be authoritarians speak the same language. As Mr. Abbas, recipient of a special CPJ award named for the late U.S. journalist Gwen Ifill, for his defiance of both the Pakistani military and Islamist terrorist groups, warned, “when journalism is derided as fake news in the U.S., the authoritarian mind-set in developing democracies kicks in: ‘If the White House can brand journalism as fake news, we can go a step further to destroy journalism.’ ”

Read more:

Jason Rezaian: New report paints a grim picture of global press freedom

Jennifer Rubin: Press freedom is under siege — and the U.S. is part of the problem

Jason Rezaian: Journalism under fire: Here, there and everywhere

The Post’s View: A Philippine news outlet is exposing Duterte’s abuses. He calls it fake news.

Letters: Journalists are in danger, and the president continues to demonize them

Zselyke Csaky: Hungary and Serbia have found new ways to smother the media