Channel 4 News this week is wall to wall Trump bashing ahead of the great handover day on Friday. Just now and then we get a bit of remoaning about Brexit but the main focus is nailing The Donald. Having engaged in serial fake news reporting of the actual campaign as I pointed out here on numerous occasions, with beltway liberal Kylie and little Matt Frei the worst offenders, C4 just won't let go.
The final segment yesterday saw coverage of Obama's final press conference. Cue Jon Snow: "we will miss him." No pretence of impartiality there from the dozy old posterboy of the liberal media establishment. Meanwhile Kylie was really agitated, warning that Trump may change the format of White House press briefings and who was invited and that this threatened the freedom of the press.
Hell's teeth, the freedom of the press is about being allowed to print or report what you want and there is no suggestion that Trump will repeal the Speech Act or enact Leveson type controls. He is not going to stop Kylie reporting half truths and smears about him.
How he communicates with the established mainstream press has nothing to do with press freedom. If CNN, the BBC and C4, which happily reported the Golden Shower allegations as fact/quasi fact even though they are either unverified second hand rumours or, in many cases, now already proven as false, maybe Trump might decide that such outlets are so "fake news" driven that there is no point in showing civility to folks who clearly just hate him and do not pretend otherwise.
Or perhaps he now accepts that more Americans get their news from "new media" than from Newspapers so maybe he should democratise news dissemination by giving equal access to all media outlets not a privileged front seat to establishment beltway liberals like Kylie.
Kylie told the most ghastly lies about Trump, stating as fact that he claimed things he never claimed, as part of a deliberate attempt to make him less electable. She is part of an establishment that served up fake news. Making the working life of Kylie and her ilk less of a walk in the park is hardly a war crime and however much she whines it is no threat at all to press freedom.