In the past week, in front of our very eyes, the federal government run by the 45th President of the United States may have just failed us. I want to make that specific, though.
It didn't just do something bad. It didn't do something blatantly stupid. It failed us — plain and simple — to tell the truth.
No, it wasn't a human rights violation. No, it didn't go out of its way to impose or force a belief on us.
But it took a side, misinformed us and rather than protecting the speech of the press, harmed it with a blatant lie. It failed to protect the free speech of the press — independent of its quality.
If you don't know what I am referring to, here's some context.
There's speculation that the footage used was doctored — sped up to make it look like the reporter, Jim Acosta, was intently hitting the intern. But it doesn't end there. The video was muted in Sanders' footage because you don't hear Acosta saying "Pardon me" slightly after the impact, and it implies that he was performing an inappropriate behavior.
Bumping into somebody isn't inappropriate — it happens all the time. If that was the case, any event with a great density of people would have to go out of its way to make sure you didn't see people bumping around.
In order to call it inappropriate behavior, it has to be intended. Through a potentially doctored video, with sound off, the government tried to justify banning a federal reporter as he (since his focus was on Trump) accidentally bumped arms with an intern.
Besides misleading its audience, and potentially flat out lying to them, the government's excuse isn't one that is openly valid. It's shutting down the voice of the press without any proper reason to do so, and as a result, is chasing after it's ability to report to us what is going on.
That's not to say it's openly destroying the voice — it's not actually hurting journalists — but it's hurting their reputations through falsehoods. It's using exaggeration to justify it's actions to the public.
In other words, it's called propaganda. That's not to say that it hasn't been done before by anyone else — it probably has — but rather to note the important part that it's happening now.
That's not to say the government is an overall failure — that's not the point. That's not even to say that the government can't and won't fail in its duties from time to time — it has. But it did happen, and the government was responsible for it.
