The San Francisco Chronicle did not join the effort of  more than 300 US newspapers that ran editorials on August 16, 2018 in an effort to counter Donald Trump’s attacks on the media. John Diaz, Editorial Page Editor for the Chronicle, explains the Editorial Board’s reasoning, arguing that a united front of newspapers “plays into Trump’s narrative that the media are aligned against him.”
When the Boston Globe called on the nation’s newspaper editorial boards to come together against President Trump’s “dirty war on the free press,” regular readers of The San Francisco Chronicle no doubt assumed we would be among the first in line.
After all, in our unsigned editorials and in my Sunday column, this newspaper’s criticism of Trump’s efforts to delegitimize, threaten and neuter independent journalism has been clear, emphatic and repeated since the early days of his presidential campaign.
But our editorial board will not be joining the estimated 300 newspapers which have signed on to the Globe’s pitch for a coordinated editorial campaign in Thursday’s editions.
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Our editorial page will continue to speak out against this president’s war on the free press. Our silence on Thursday is testament to our commitment to do it in our own way, on our own timetable.