Trump Slams CNN In Poland, Where Government Seized Public Broadcasting

WASHINGTON, DC — More than 4,000 miles from home in Poland's capital, President Trump couldn't help but needle his favorite target of the week, CNN, using his catch-all derogatory moniker, "fake news."

"They have been fake news for a long time," Trump said, standing next to Polish President Andrzej Duda at a press conference Thursday in Warsaw. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

He continued: "I think they've hurt themselves very badly, very, very badly. And what we want to see in the United States is honest, beautiful, free, but honest press. We want to see fair press, I think it's a very important thing. We don't want fake news. And by the way, not everybody is fake news."

But while Trump diminished the media establishment in the United States — he also took a shot at NBC news, which he said was just as bad as CNN — he was standing next to a man who many fear poses a true threat to the freedom of the press in Poland.

Since 2015, Reporters Without Borders, a nonprofit that advocates for unrestricted media, has downgraded Poland on its "Press Freedom Index," which ranks every country on its treatment of the media, from 18 to 54. Index On Censorship, another advocate for free expression, notes that media in Poland is "undergoing a rapid transformation" since the government grabbed tight control over the previously independent public broadcasters. Hundreds of veteran journalists, previously working without direct supervision of elected officials, were fired, and the government now had control over the supervisory boards of the public broadcasters.

Meanwhile, Duda's government has also considered restricting journalists' access to parliament. The European Union expressed grave concerns over this step, and domestic protests led the government to delay the law.

Asked about these plans to curtail freedom of the press, Duda said the press was important but also said it suffered from significant "pathologies." Nevertheless, he insisted through a translator, "In Poland, we have an absolute liberty and freedom of the media."

Trump's comments about CNN and "fake news" also came a day before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, who is widely believed to condone the killing of journalists and political opponents. Russia is ranked a dreary 180 on the Press Freedom Index.

Dozens of journalists have been killed under Putin's government, though none have been directly linked to his orders. British officials do believe Putin was behind the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, a former intelligence official who was poisoned with polonium-210, according to Leonid Bershidsky in the Chicago Tribune.

Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who was extensively critical of Putin, was killed in 2006. Five men were convicted of her murder, but they appear to have been hired by someone whose identity remains unknown.

According to Politifact, though Putin may not bear direct responsibility for any individual journalists' deaths, he allows a political environment to thrive in which such acts are condoned:

As for the other assassinations of journalists during his reign, experts say Putin isn’t directly responsible for any of them.
The editors and reporters of Novaya Gazeta do not believe Putin ordered the murders of their colleagues, according to Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the liberal magazine The Nation who spent several decades reporting from Moscow. However, she said on Dec. 21's Morning Joe, they do believe that he "created the climate" in which the murders are possible.

The United States does not fare extremely well in terms of press freedom, either. Reporters Without Borders ranks the U.S. 43 on its Press Freedom Index, and it notes that its concerns were present under President Obama. It cites the frequency with which American journalists are arrested at protests, Obama's war on whistleblowers and the lack of a "shield law" that would protect journalists who refuse to identify their sources.

But Trump's rhetoric, including calling the press the "enemy of the people," may be ramping up pressure on the members of the media. This week, Andrew Kaczynski, a CNN reporter who investigated the origin of a meme the president tweeted, received around 50 harassing phone calls targeting both him and his family, according to the Daily Beast.

Trump's comments critical of the press while abroad, breaking with his predecessors' deference to the First Amendment and the media while overseas, may result in a similar chilling effect in other countries, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations noted ominously:

Photo by Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images