CNN’s Clarissa Ward: Trump’s Attack on CNN International ‘Emboldens’ Hostile Foreign Governments

EXCERPT:

BALDWIN: "You would know in all your years and Clarissa Ward, just same question to you. You saw the president’s tweet this weekend. How did it make you feel?" 
WARD: "Brooke, my real concern in all of this is that it emboldens people in different parts of the world who may be hostile to the west, who may be hostile toward western journalists, because it sends a message very clearly that even our own president is volubly and publicly disparaging us; it’s open season on journalists and it’s OK to come out and say that we’re a joke. The problem is what might be funny as a joke in the U.S. is potentially life-threatening when you’re out in the field. The other thing I found sort of frustrating is most of us, the vast majority of us who are covering international news are not covering the day to day minutia of U.S. politics. We’re not covering the Trump White House beyond covering what the world’s response to the Trump White House has been. For the most part we are focused on covering wars, and famines and natural disasters and genocides and issues across the world that, frankly, have no business entering this kind of petty partisan arena. So for a number of reasons it’s obviously disheartening because of the kind of work we do, but I do also think there is a significant elevation of the threat to journalists, particularly American journalists when you have the president of the United States of America coming out and saying that it is essentially OK to disparage and mock journalists within an institution like CNN International, Brooke."