[Shivetya]

It isn't that journalist see social media as a threat but so do the politicians they report on. Prior to the rise of social media, this should not be simply considered Facebook, Twitter, and like, but all the internet as a whole, we relied on the idea that the press, print, radio, and televised, told us the truth.

However the internet showed this was never true. Yes elements of the media did report the truth but they also produced some stories that were outright fabrications or purposefully did not include information that did not support the narrative; three very big stories that fall under this are the GM pickup fires which were assisted in catching fire, that chemical and biological weapons were widespread in Iraq, and of course Dan Rather's fake National Guard document.

Both the media and the political class help each other. One does it to gain favor and the other does it control the message. The internet took the ability to control the message, the narrative, away from the established media and politicians. It put it back into the hands of everyone.

So Greenwald's assertion is true in many ways. A return to where politicians used the media to control the message is a return to a system which allowed the Iraq war to come to fruition. The claim he makes that the press holds the office of the Presidency to different standards based on the party that controls it is easily provable as well. We never saw a level of press persecution before that occurred under Obama yet all of Trump's rambling diatribe was considered worse? On what planet?

Hell this site is guilty of the same as well. We have people here cheering on the FBI, likely the same that screamed when the same agencies trampled on people they liked. This is the society the old media and politicians gave us, putting us at each others throats and taught to revel in it

[nicolasp]

I mostly agree with you. I just want to point out that the reason Trump was held to a different standard than previous presidents is simply that he lied so much from the start. Journalists from "mainstream media" rightly perceived him as a threat because when called out on his lies he overtly attacked them and encouraged violence against them (arguably resulting in casualties in the Capital Gazette shooting).