If the Donald Trump presidency goes down in history as a journalist’s worst nightmare, it will be because of the constant accusations of fake news toward the media. 

Before he entered the White House in 2016, Trump already targeted journalists and gave fair warning that this would endure through his years in office. Indeed, it did.

The past few years under the Trump administration have been filled with fear as the press became the people’s enemy. Especially during the past few months, this situation has seemed to become a gateway for the general public to target minority journalists over the stories they cover or merely because the President of the United States just said we as journalists are not trustworthy – regardless whether we are student journalists, veteran journalists, breaking news reporters, culture critics or columnists. 

There has really been no distinction what-so-ever.

One experience struck me personally last January. I was returning back to the U.S. after spending the Christmas holidays with my family, and I was walking up to the passport control.

All of the sudden, I was drawn toward an inquisition unlike anything I had experienced before, and I am a lifelong air traveler. The agent’s tone got progressively more aggressive, too.

“Where do you work?” he asked, to which I simply replied that I was a student, avoiding at all costs the word “journalism” or implying that by any means.

Although that memory torments me every now and then, for a few months, it has been somewhat of a less bumpy ride – until just recently with the 2020 election.

While covering the run-up to the election and challenges faced by Americans living overseas on assignment for the student-run television station, WTOP-10 TV, I reached what seems to be every journalist’s major milestone these days – being accused of fake news on social media.

“Have I done something wrong?” I relentlessly asked myself. I could not understand the rationale behind the accusations of “fake news.”

There is no such thing as “fake news” a term wrongfully coined by Trump, which has now gone widespread across the globe. The trust for the press, meanwhile, has dissipated – for any and all press.

There is a lot that still needs to be repaired by January, not only the aforementioned trust toward the press but American society as a whole.

There has never been a more crucial time to give a voice to the voiceless, because that is the true power of journalism. Thus politics will never shatter the grounds upon which the First Amendment and the United States were built.

“Storytelling is a gift, handle with care,” an acquaintance once told me. Let it be known.

Photo via Flickr