Trump’s anti-press tactics are bad enough in the US. Now Reform is importing them to the Midlands | Jon Allsop

OIn the day he returned to functions in January, Donald Trump signed an order reversing the Gulf of Mexico The “Gulf of America”. A few days later, the Associated Press, a main global news agency which is also a linguistic bible for the editorial rooms of the United States, said that even if it would recognize the order of Trump, it would mainly continue to use the original name. In response, the White House prohibited journalists with certain media availability. Trump accused the agency of not having followed the law. The PA said that the government was trying to dictate the words it can and cannot use.

This week, the county council led by Nottinghamshire declared that it would impose a radical ban on Nottingham Post, its affiliated website and journalists funded by the BBC who work there. It was apparently a story that the newspaper had written about a proposed reorganization of the local government. The chief of the council insisted that he will host a meticulous examination, but has the “duty” to fight against “disinformation”. The post -chief of the post has described the decision “a massive attack on local democracy” – and it is difficult to disagree.

The prohibition has clear echoes of Trump’s tactics, and some criticisms have said so explicitly. In the United States, there is a clear tendency in the longer term of republican officials imposing poorly justified restrictions on the press. But he does not need to look to that to understand the ban on Nottinghamshire. Indeed, the reform was previously accused of having eliminated journalists, or of treating them with lack of respect: last year, the party would have excluded certain points of sale opponent and journalists from its conference; Earlier this summer, the chief of the Nigel Farage reform accused local journalists in Scotland of having helped to coordinate the demonstrations against him. Everything seems to add up, on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, at a time when hard-right politicians, in particular, believe that they do not need to engage with the traditional media to convey their message and that they will not undergo electoral consequences to prevent them. They could even benefit from doing so, by transforming the media into a sheet in the context of a wider war against the establishment.

And yet, there are also reasons to doubt these conclusions, or at least to texture them. It is true that Trump, for example, excluded journalists whose stories deploy him. (In addition to the IMMBROGLIA, his White House recently prohibited a journalist from the Wall Street Journal from a trip to the United Kingdom, after this newspaper reported in an inexpensive way on Trump’s alleged ties with Jeffrey Epstein.) At the same time, Trump will regularly speak about all those who listen, the consumer media are very included. (Earlier this year, he described the editor -in -chief of the Atlantic “Sleazebag” – then gave him an interview shortly after.) Indeed, Trump has long used media coverage successfully to establish the political agenda.

In the United Kingdom, Farage seems to use the same game book. Of course, he looked, in particular, on the right press. But these articles are not necessarily natural allies for reform given their deep cultural ties with the conservatives. And Farage also sucked oxygen in more hostile districts. This week, just like the Nottinghamshire Council prohibited journalists, Farage was congratulated, by Politico, for answering questions on his mass deportation plans with a franchise that other parties should seek to imitate.

Trump clearly proved that there are no difficult electoral consequences for the denigration of the press. But there are still significant differences between the political culture of the United Kingdom and the United States. Confidence in the media is also at a low reflux here. But in a recent past, right -wing political figures who used Trumpian rhetoric to divert the blame for their own failures on the media have not always succeeded. Dominic Cummings launched the press after his journey of the era cocoked at the Château de Barnard, but could not escape massive public anger. Boris Johnson dodging difficult questions – of the Today program, for example, that his government has boycotted – did not spare him from the dazzling of the long -term scandal.

This does not guarantee that the leaders of the Nottinghamshire Council will suffer from the ban on their local newspaper. Indeed, this could very well be the advantage of the reform to let fidget aspire attention to the national scale while dodging the actions of the party’s advisers across the country; The party surely wants the media to speak of immigration, not the reorganization of the local government. And local points of sale may seem an easy target, reduced in power and in range to a time of cuts in local news and an Unchained online speech.

And yet, the Directorate of Reformation Councils is an important test for the party in a country where voters still, to a certain extent, appreciate competent governance. “If the reform cannot even face questions from the Nottingham Post,” wonders the president of the Conservative Party Kevin Hollinrake this week: “What hope is they that they could face the serious responsibilities of the government?” He is certainly not the only one to ask this question. Even in the United States, where the culture of the political press basket is more rooted, local republican legislators in certain states cooperate with proposals to lead more resources to their local decline. It is not an act of altruism, say the defenders, but a born of the awareness that they need the voters to know what they did when the elections are happening.

The prohibition of reform could hold. But at one point, local reform advisers will want to deceive a achievement, and when they do, it would not be a huge surprise if they went to Nottingham Post. Politicians can, of course, reach voters on social networks these days. But the local information brands established can always give prestige. And good advertising is good advertising. For the moment, Trump has not released the AP. But he did not hesitate to present his journalism when it suits him. A work of art based on the emblematic image of Trump pumping his fist after his attempted assassination last year now adorns a wall of the White House. He was taken by a photographer AP.

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