Fake News

President Donald Trump throws around the phrase "fake news" quite often regarding the Russian election meddling controversy, the topics CNN talks about, or the news covered in The New York Times. I agree with him in some ways, and disagree in others. I think he throws around the phrase too much, and too fast. The second something is brought up to him regarding the Russian election meddling topic, especially if it is covered on a democratic dominant news show, is that it is automatically "fake news". In reality, some of the topics covered may have been true. Why I also agree with him is because a lot of the time the claims these more democratic dominant news sources make are exaggerated or actually "fake news". Obviously the current president was a part of one of the most controversial elections to date, so the opposite political party to the one he's involved in are not happy about his presidency. There have been multiple times when the president has said something, and the news show breaks it apart and molds it into something it wasn't. An example of a time when a news source talks about something just to give Trump a bad name is with CNN, the very news source the president is constantly stating puts out "fake news" about him. Here is as article regarding one of the producers of the show talking about how the Russian controversy with President Trump is just a "witch hunt" and being talked about for the ratings, not necessarily because they think it's true. This just shows that even the shows talking about this don't think it's relevant or even true. There's other times when the word the president was trying to get across was switched and changed into something bad. When a certain point he makes is changed, or the videos that are put out for everyone to see aren't the original videos, people are more easily able to learn and believe false information. This makes it obvious as to why the president jumps to the "fake news" claim so quickly when he hears these topics be brought up during interviews.
As far as journalism and the free press goes, the attacks Donald Trump makes towards these people doesn't do them a disservice or harm their first amendment rights, in my opinion. If anything he is helping them be more credible in the information they put out, if this information is true. How I come to this idea is simple, he is just a strong peer review for them. He states what the journalists say isn't true, only to prompt people to check and review the journalist's claims. If what they stated was in fact true, then people will follow and trust their claims even more. Thus, Donald Trump saying they put out "fake news", actually helped them in the end. This obviously won't happen every single time, but it will happen.
I think our democracy has been strengthened regarding the president's involvement with the media. An example of this is his use of Twitter. This is because there has never been such transparency between the citizens of the US and their president, allowing them to know his thoughts as he posts on this social media site. This strengthens our democracy because it allows the people to feel like they are more involved in their future, the controversial topics we're facing each day, and other issues since they can see what the president's views are, and compare there's to his.