SAM HUSSEINI, samhusseini at gmail.com, @samhusseini
Husseini is senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy. He just wrote the piece “Trump-Media Logrolling.”

He writes: “Today, hundreds of newspapers, at the initiative of the Boston Globe, are purporting to stand up for a free press against Trump’s rhetoric.

“Today also marks exactly one month since I was forced out of the July 16 Trump-Putin news conference in Helsinki and locked up until the middle of the night. [See “I Came as a Journalist to Ask Important Questions” for The Nation.]

“As laid in my cell, I chuckled at the notion that the city was full of billboards proclaiming Finland was the ‘land of free press.’

“We should scrutinize both thuggish behavior toward journalists trying to ask tough questions — and to those professing to defend a free press when they are engaging in more of a marketing campaign.

“As some have noted, the editorials today will likely help Trump whip up support among his base against a seemingly monolithic media. But, just as clearly, the establishment media can draw attention away from their own failures, corruptions and falsehoods simply by focusing on some of Trump’s.

“Big media outlets need not actually report news that affects your life and point to serious solutions for social ills. They can just bad-mouth Trump. And Trump need not deliver on campaign promises that tapped into populist and isolationist tendencies in the U.S. public that have grown in reaction to years of elite rule. He need only deride the major media.”

Husseini is also founder of VotePact.org.