More Than 340 Papers Publish Anti-Trump Editorials

The Boston Globe decided it was time for an organized response to President Trump's attacks on the media as an "enemy of the people"—and hundreds of newspapers responded. At least 343 publications agreed to publish editorials Thursday against what the Globe calls Trump's "dirty war against the free press," reports the Guardian. They include some of America's biggest newspapers as well as smaller publications nationwide, though the Wall Street Journal is among the holdouts, reports the BBC. A selection:

• The onslaught from the president is "scary. We're afraid, for our personal safety and for the future of our country," write the editorial boards of the San Jose Mercury News and the East Bay Times. "These attacks on the press are an attack on our nation’s foundation. And we’re angry. Angry that we work so hard to carry out the mission our Founding Fathers envisioned, to provide the free flow of information so critical to a well-functioning democracy, only to be demonized by our president for doing our jobs."

• Not covering Trump aggressively would be a "dereliction of duty," writes the editorial board at the Topeka Capital-Journal, one of the few papers that endorsed Trump in 2016. "We're not separate from the public. We are the public. We live and work and play in Topeka and surrounding areas. We go to restaurants and send our children to school. We drive the same roads, see the same doctors," they write, describing Trump's attacks as sinister. "We’re not the enemy of the people. We are the people."
• "We support a free and vibrant press, a nation where the powerful are held to account by the Fourth Estate. Journalists are not the enemy of the people; we’re advocating for the people. We stand with our colleagues," writes the editorial board at the New York Post, adding: "Will this make a difference? Not one whit."
• "Criticizing the news media—for underplaying or overplaying stories, for getting something wrong—is entirely right. News reporters and editors are human, and make mistakes," writes the New York Times editorial board. "Correcting them is core to our job. But insisting that truths you don’t like are 'fake news' is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the 'enemy of the people' is dangerous, period."
• John Diaz at the San Francisco Chronicle says that while they have published plenty of anti-Trump editorials and spoken out many times against his attacks on the press, they've decided not to join the crowd this time. The coordinated campaign "plays into Trump’s narrative that the media are aligned against him. I can just anticipate his Thursday morning tweets accusing the 'FAKE NEWS MEDIA' of 'COLLUSION!' and 'BIAS!'" Diaz writes.

(More newspaper editorials stories.)