Donald Trump has tweeted, "THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People." Has our free press ever faced as great a threat? Perhaps not, but the tension between presidents and journalists is as old as the republic itself. Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House has believed that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Washington was the first president to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, though he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Lincoln, Wilson and Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists.
The Presidents Versus the Press
