Yesterday, both the Wheeling Intelligencer and the Wheeling News-Register responded to a call by the Boston Globe for editorials that dealt with Trump's "enemy of the people" rhetoric. Some thoughts:

1. I was surprised and happy to see that our local “newspapers” were finally willing to criticize President Trump.

2. I was disappointed, however, that both editorials chose to deal with Trump’s use of “fake news” rather than what the Boston Globe had requested: editorials responding to President Trump's "enemy of the people" attacks on the media. The charge of “fake news” certainly needs to be addressed but it’s Trump’s escalation that’s has all sorts of dark implications for our democracy. Consequently, rather than the editorial telling us “Mr. President, it’s time for the 'fake news' talk to end” I would have liked to have seen “Mr. President, you need to stop calling the media the 'enemy of the people.'" To that point, today’s AP article on the editorials (not run in the Intelligencer) suggests that refuting the “enemy of the people” was the approach taken by most newspapers. The AP headline reads: “US newspapers to Trump: We’re not enemies of the people.”)

3. Additionally, the afternoon paper had this statement:

Neither we at the News-Register nor the hundreds of community newspapers throughout our nation are purveyors of “fake news.”

(Interesting. So, is the News-Register editorial not speaking for big city papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post? And are they guilty of “fake news”?)

4. Both editorials had the usual unwarranted, self-congratulatory statements that occur anytime either discusses media responsibility. Here, the winner was clearly the News-Register. For example:

A word on our editorials: We refuse to bow to special interests, powerful politicians, or passing fads. Your welfare is our only concern.

Yes, of course. (Regular readers of the local papers can fill in their own examples.)

We were also told that “(w)e publish corrections when we make mistakes.” That’s seldom, if ever, necessary; I’ve seen just one correction in the four+ years I’ve been doing this blog – they simply don’t make mistakes! (Or maybe they don’t admit to them.)

5. Some of the online commenters to the morning editorial singled-out editor Mike Myer for praise assuming that he wrote the editorial. I’m not sure that he did. The third paragraph of the editorial begins:

Here at The Intelligencer, we take our mission to accurately report the news and serve our communities through steady, consistent leadership more seriously than ever.

Drop the introductory Intelligencer qualifier and google the rest of the sentence with quotation marks. The results will be a couple of pages of Ogden newspapers which all ran the exact same editorial with only the reference to the local paper changing. Given the large number of papers and editors involved, it would seem unlikely that Myer wrote this editorial. (On the other hand, with its shots at big city newspapers and self-congratulations, my hunch is that Myer did write the afternoon editorial which doesn't appear anywhere online.)

6. While I’m glad that the locals have finally criticized Trump, I wish I could be more optimistic that Ogden Newspapers will follow through when the next Trump attack on the media occurs. Given the number of years that I’ve been reading the editorial pages of Ogden newspapers, the cynic in me views yesterday's editorials as strictly about public relations (see how we stick-up for freedom of the press?) rather than as a reflection of some serious editorial commitment to press freedom. Of course, it won’t take long to see if one of the most-solidly pro-Trump newspaper chains in the country has changed course on this topic; Trump’s next “the press is the enemy of the people” tweet is never far away.