Trumpled: The Making of Trump and the Demonization of the Press

In Trumpled, award-winning journalist Ted Gutsche, Jr. highlights the main elements of journalism’s struggle not only with the direct challenges of the Trump administration, but the underlying social and cultural turns and positions of power that led to the alarming situation in Washington, D.C. during Trump’s tenure. He emphasizes that this is not just a response to the current political regime, but a call to conceptualize the actions of the press - and the possible legitimate concerns of press critiques - that creates a narrative of one of the biggest threats to normalized news understandings the world over.

From fake news to ＂alternative facts,＂ banning reporters from press conferences to leading a nationwide partisan attack against mainstream press, the rise of Trump and neoliberal democratic values has been at the center of socio-political change in the U.S. The implications are international and personal: concerns surrounding civil liberties, militarization of U.S. forces abroad and police at home, and at the center of public discourse today, the potentially destroyed role and existence of a free press in American Democracy.

Robert E. Gutsche Jr. is a journalism professor at Florida International University, USA, and journalist since 1996, having written for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and other regional and local publications. He’s the recipient of multiple honors from the Tow-Knight Center for Entrenpreneurial Journalism, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Journalism Center on Children and Families