Trump's Takeover Adds To Media Persons' Woes

With rise in right-wing fundamentalism, more leaders with authoritarian tendencies, increasing intolerance and extreme polarisation of masses, media face enormous challenges each day.

- Ridhima Malhotra

Donald J Trump is more powerful than any other most powerful person ever in the world. The reason is not only that he is the President of a country that staunchly believes in and makes sure to establish its primacy on the global stage, but also that he is perhaps the most unpopular President of that country. Even if we assume that there had been Presidents in the past, who had also held preposterous opinions, the difference between them and Trump is that of information technology.

In the twenty-first century as the internet and social media circumscribe every nook and corner of the world, anything he does, says or tweets reaches millions of people; and there are certainly many who take his buffoonery seriously (as is evident from the fact that he was elected as President in the first place). So when Trump describes media persons as “among the most dishonest human beings on earth”, it is severely distressing not only because something seems to be really wrong with the beliefs of the US President but because of the propensity of his statements to influence millions of people across the world.

Trump and his team vociferously falsified news reports that stated that the turnout for his Presidential inauguration was much less than that for his predecessor Barack Obama. The new President’s audacious attack on the media came despite the fact that aerial views of the National Mall on Live TV did not show crowds “all the way back to the Washington Monument” as claimed by him. Anyone who saw pictures and videos of both the Presidential inauguration and the concurrent protests against him led by women in different cities of the world would know where the turnout was enormous.