"Suppressing free press is 'how dictators get started': US Senator McCain - Reuter 18 Feb 2017
MUNICH: U.S. Senator John McCain, defending the media against the latest attack by President Donald Trump, warned that suppressing the free press was "how dictators get started".
The Arizona Republican, a frequent critic of Trump, was responding to a tweet in which Trump accused the media of being “the enemy of the American people”.
The international order established after World War Two was built in part on a free press, McCain said in an excerpt of an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that was released in advance of the full Sunday morning broadcast.
"I hate the press. I hate you especially," he told interviewer Chuck Todd from an international security conference in Munich. "But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital."
"If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started," he continued.
"They get started by suppressing free press. In other words, a consolidation of power. When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I'm not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I'm just saying we need to learn the lessons of history," McCain said.
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, told the conference on Sunday she was also concerned about Trump's comments."
Senator McCain is one of the "good" decent politicians. A rare breed for sure. By most reckoning.
He is right that dictators start with muzzle-ing free press. This is especially so if the free press is for truth n not another instrument by other oppositions of the incumbent government or President.
In Sgp, we would add: a responsible free press that present facts without fear or favour letting the readers reach their own conclusions.
President Trump has to deal with the established "free press". He will not hv his way of shutting out the reporters who may be hostile to him n his ideas of what make good policies. These reporters unfortunately r expected to play, as mentioned by Senator McCain, an adversarial role! An idea that I disagree.
We need fearless responsible free press. That's all. N it is very hard to get in the USA now; n in Sgp too, sometime! Yet, we must insist n encourage for democracy to prevail.
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