SINGAPORE | A top U.S. State Department official here defended President Trump’s characterization of certain American media outlets as “fake news” this week despite objections from regional journalists who say Mr. Trump’s confrontational rhetoric has emboldened Asian governments to crack down on their own journalists.
“The president has been very clear in calling out unfair or inaccurate news when he sees it as is his right to do,” said Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Michelle Giuda during a global media conference Monday that drew hundreds of journalists from the across Asia, the U.S. and beyond to Singapore this week.
“One of the great things and most powerful things about the United States is that we can have this debate,” Ms. Giuda said. “It’s for the news to now report on and it’s out there and we’re having a conversation about it and a healthy dialogue about it.”
Her comments came during some at-times testy exchanges with journalists. Several questioned allowed how the U.S. can legitimately claim to promote media freedom abroad when its president so sharply and openly criticizes press outlets at home.
Former USA Today Managing Editor Donna Leinwand Leger, who moderated Monday’s discussion, questioned whether the State Department is concerned that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric “empowers other leaders to act the same way and squelch press freedom.”
Ms. Giuda said U.S. diplomats serving under Mr. Trump have not held back from “calling out for freedom of the press” in nations such as Malaysia, which made international headlines in April by passing an anti-fake news law widely criticized as a tool for authorities to clamp down on opposition media.
With a newly elected administration in Malaysia now vowing to clarify the law amid public outrage, Ms. Giuda asserted that U.S. diplomats have also “been clear in calling out and speaking to other governments” about the need to uphold media freedoms, regardless of the debate over fake news playing out in America.
But many here expressed doubts, arguing that Mr. Trump’s battles with the press have been watched closely by leaders in some of the world’s most fragile democracies.
Several journalists noted Mr. Trump’s February 2017 tweet in which the president declared that, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
While Mr. Trump’s base embraced the tweet as a justified shot at specific outlets for their coverage of the Russia election-meddling story and links to the Trump campaign, critics claim such statements have had a chilling effect overseas.
“Nothing has done more to damage press freedom around the world than the current U.S. administration,” said Tom Grundy, the top editor at Hong Kong Free Press, a nonprofit news outlet known for standing up to media repression.
“The White House has emboldened authoritarian leaders with its fake news narrative,” he said in an interview.
“Just Google the term ’fake news’ and see how it has come into vogue in many countries,” added Cherian George, a journalism professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. “This term has been used to target journalism and it’s very widespread in Asia, including in India where the mainstream press is really defensive as a result of an assault by President [Narendra] Modi.”
But it’s not clear how much credit — or blame — Mr. Trump can claim.
Reporters Without Borders, for instance, decried back in April 2016 a “clampdown on the media by ever more authoritarian and oppressive governments’ — some six months before Mr. Trump was elected.
The Paris-based organization went much further this year, citing increased “hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders.” It also described Mr. Trump as a “media-bashing enthusiast” who has “referred to reporters as ’enemies of the people,’ the term once used by Joseph Stalin.”
The three-day conference in Singapore is being organized by the Hawaii-based East-West Center, which receives financial backing from the U.S. government.
Ms. Giuda said Mr. Trump has fueling a necessary debate on the responsibilities of the news media to report fairly and objectively.
What the president has done is spark a “great conversation,” said Ms. Giuda, who was a senior vice president at the corporate communications firm Weber Shandwick before joining the State Department earlier this year.
“White House press briefings still go on, the Department of State still has press briefings,” she said. “Journalists still have access to the United States government and we don’t inhibit them in any way. So, it’s up to the American people to decide.”
But non-U.S. reporters here say they feared Americans may not appreciate the impact Mr. Trump’s words have on their freedom to operate back home. One South Asian journalist said Mr. Trump’s comments and tweets on the media have made the journalist’s own government less fearful of being called out by Washington for cracking down on free speech.
The reporter spoke only on background and asked that the home country not be named, saying, “If my name appears in your article, I’ll be in hot water with my government when I get home.”
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