“We Aren’t Fake News”: The Information Politics of the 2018 #FreePress Editorial Campaign

Abstract

ABSTRACT In August of 2018, hundreds of US newspapers participated in a coordinated editorial campaign to response to President Trump’s attacks on the news media. We examine the full text of 260 of these editorials to explore their discursive strategies during this high profile instance of “information politics” (Carlson [2018]. “The Information Politics of Journalism in a Post-Truth age.” Journalism Studies 19 (13): 1879–1888). We find that many editorials emphasized journalistic professionalism, along with journalism’s accountability role. Many also openly signaled their participation in the coordinated, nationwide effort, while a smaller number characterized the president as an autocrat. Conceptually arranging these rhetorical strategies in terms of journalism’s “externality” and “centrality” in relation to politics (Carlson 2018), the findings suggest that while the effort overall reflected journalism’s continued striving to appear independent of politics, quite a few newspapers positioned themselves in open confrontation with the president, thus potentially placing themselves within politics. Our findings also suggest that some of the editorials’ most combative rhetoric was related to prevailing local political sentiments. We conclude by assessing the dilemmas for US journalists of engaging in Trump’s style of information politics: In a profoundly polarized context, journalism may struggle with how to rebut populist attacks without seeming to enter the partisan fray and thus appearing to confirm populist claims.