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Losing the Newseum in a ‘Fake News’ Climate
Within minutes of reading on social media that the Newseum would be closing at the end of 2019, I received an email from a Washington, D.C.-based friend sharing the news. What a blow to journalism, I thought. Without hesitation, I put a trip in motion so I could pay my respects.
As a veteran journalist, I’ve been witnessing the decimation of my field as digital advances changed the way we consume news. According to data from the United States Department of Labor Statistics, there were nearly 458,000 journalism jobs in 1990 and it fell to about 183,000 in 2016; that’s a drop of almost 60 percent in 26 years.
But never could I have imagined that journalism would take an arguably greater hit perpetrated by a U.S. President for his own self-preservation. Donald Trump’s use of the term “fake news” and his steady expressions of disdain for the media are working.
Since he told CBS journalist Lesley Stahl in 2016 that he does it to “discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you,” he’s kept to his word, orally and via Twitter.
Add in the way the press is viciously confronted by the President’s supporters at his rallies and the journalists who have been bullied by U.S Customs border agents when returning to the country and declaring their…
