Gloomy days ahead for American journalism

I RECENTLY returned from the reunion celebrations of my (1980) class at Columbia University’s School of Journalism in New York City with a sense that American journalism is facing a major crisis.

Dr Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, expressed fears about the threats that America’s free press may be facing under President Donald Trump. Dr Cobb pointed to access issues, such as President Trump barring the Associated Press from White House pool events for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America”, as well as the investigations by the Federal Communications Commission into media outlets such as NBC, ABC, CBS.

Taken individually, all of these actions might seem like one-off cases, but when put together they paint a really alarming picture of deteriorating media freedom in the US.