ABSTRACT
During the 2016 election and since, no other group of professionals has been more heavily criticized for not following its own ethical standards in relation to Donald Trump than have the mainstream media. As a candidate and as President, Donald Trump has derided the media, hyping followers at his campaign rallies to jeer the media in attendance, deriding them on Twitter as "fake news" and the "dishonest media", and labeling journalists as the "enemy of the people". The 2016 campaign presented journalists with the ethical dilemma of whether the Trump candidacy was so outside the normal bounds of accepted campaigning that journalists were obligated to insert their own opinions into articles discussing the progress of the election. Today, mainstream journalism is moving ever more aggressively toward speaking truth to power again, and this means serving as a truth squad with President Trump. It means being true to the first of our first long-standing ideals.
