RTDNA Urging Members To Join Trump Protest

The Radio Television Digital News Association and its Voice of the First Amendment Task Force are calling on our more than 1,200 members and their broadcast and digital news outlets to join the Boston Globe and more than 100 other local newspapers across the country on Aug. 16 in a coordinated editorial response to attacks from the President on the media.

“We urge our members to join the effort on Thursday, Aug. 16 by dedicating airtime, publishing an online editorial or sharing information via social media platforms that speaks to your viewers and listeners about the role we play in preserving the public’s right and need to know, in a government for and by the people,” said Dan Shelley, RTDNA’s executive director.

“The President has ratcheted up his anti-press contempt. Journalists are now the ‘disgusting fake news,’ and according to one presidential tweet, we also ‘cause Wars [sic].’ This rhetoric has contributed to many of the president’s supporters lashing out harshly against members of the White House press corps and other journalists. It must stop before more journalists are hurt or worse,” states Shelley.

RTDNA says its members and the other broadcast and digital journalists it represents stand in solidarity with the dozens of American newspapers that have joined the Boston Globe campaign to publish editorials pushing back against the notion that responsible journalism is “fake news” and that journalists are the “enemy of the American people.”