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Trump had previously called for making it easier for public figures to sue news organizations for libel, a change that would practically suffocate a free press and potentially disable some news companies.
Some news companies need disabling, though the right way to do it would be with a class action suit by the Middle Class, demanding treble damages for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. It is not actually necessary IMHO to weaken the right of the people to print (or post on the Internet) truth or frank opinion about politicians. But when “news” is distorted by - in a particularly egregious example - the broadcasting of George Zimmerman’s “911” call with an answer and then a question subtly edited out, that is defamation not only of the “white hispanic” Mr. Zimmerman personally but, by manifest intention, of white people in general. We should all sue - and NBC should pay with its very heart’s blood.
Not only so, but the Associated Press - which is the mechanism whereby “people of the same trade,” as Adam Smith put it, “meet together,” and “the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public” should have its very right to exist at all challenged. Its original, nominally legitimate mission was to conserver expensive communications bandwidth in disseminating the news widely. The bandwidth which it conserves now is actually dirt cheap, so the mission is obsolete but the damage to independence of presses which inheres in any and all wire services remains.
What’s more, Trump’s campaign organization has blocked from his events news outlets whose coverage has not suited the candidate. And reporters who are allowed to attend must stay in “pens” rather than move about freely.
Hey, if it was good enough for CNN when dealing with Saddam Hussein . . .
“Donald Trump misunderstands—or, more likely, simply opposes--the role a free press plays in a democratic society,” said Thomas Burr, the National Press Club president.
Maybe so, but maybe he understands it too well. If they are weak enough to be pushed around by an entertainer/businessman the way CNN was pushed around by Saddam Hussein, then . . .
But the central fact is that the Constitution intends that we should have free and independent presses, not one “associated” press with multiple front organizations. Which is what the AP and its membership actually is, and has been since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary.

Trump doesn't care about the First Amendment? Sure. Forget about the fact the press often distorts what Trump says and the fact that the press is majority liberal, and their coverage often reflects it.

Since the public pays newspapers to print bad news, criticism to the point of cynicism inheres in journalism. The point, surely (and stop calling me Shirley), is that the cynicism which inheres in journalism is not - repeat, NOT - objectivity. In fact, it is inherently tendentious, dismissing any distinction between the failures of “the man in the arena,” on the one hand, and the depredations of Clinton-style systematic evasions of responsibility, on the other.