UN Human Rights Chief calls Trump’s attacks on media dangerous

President Trump’s relentless attacks on the media are provocative and could incite violence both in the United States as well as in other countries, UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Wednesday.

Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, the UN’s high commissioner on human rights denounced Trump’s recent comments in Phoenix in which he alluded to “crooked media deception” concerning the Charlottesville, Va. rally, The New York Times reported, calling them dangerous and “poisonous.”

Al-Hussein said Trump’s relentless and unfounded attacks violate the free speech tradition and respect for the press which the United States has always stood for. “It’s really quite amazing when you think that freedom of the press, not only a cornerstone of the Constitution but very much something the United States defended over the years, is now itself under attack from the president himself,” he said. “It’s a stunning turnaround.”

In response, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The Times in an e-mailed statement: “We believe in a free press and think it is an important part of our democracy, but the press also has a big responsibility to the American people to be truthful. Their job is to report the news, not create it.”

After the violence in Charlottesville, Va, Trump initially condemned the neo-nazis and alt-right groups but then provoked bipartisan rage when he blamed both supremacists and those who protested against them for the violence that killed a 32-year old woman. The president then went on to charge that The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN with giving a platform to hate groups, in an attempt to deflect criticism away from him.

Trump once called CNN “garbage journalism” and constantly alludes to “the failing New York Times” and its “fake news”.

Al-Hussein called the Charlottesville rally “an abomination” and said that the swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs had no place in America — or anywhere else in the world. He also said that the constant demeaning of the press could incite more killings and violence.

“To call these news organizations fake does tremendous damage,” Mr. al-Hussein added. “I believe it could amount to incitement. At an enormous rally, referring to journalists as very, very bad people — you don’t have to stretch the imagination to see then what could happen to journalists.”

The High Commissioner also said countries that do not have a tradition of respect for the media and journalists could be inspired by Trump’s demonization of the press, using as an example Cambodia’s recent citing of Trump as an inspiration after it withdrew licenses from the media.

Comparing Trump to a reckless bus driver “careening down a mountain path,” he characterized the President’s relentless attacks on Muslims, minorities and transgender people as “grossly irresponsible,” The Times reported.