President Donald Trump keeps lashing out at the media as the enemy of the people. His surrogates refuse to say whether they agree with that description of the press, notably Sarah Sanders when she is accosted by CNN Jim Acosta in the White House. Journalists, including conservative anti-Trump pundits like Bret Stephens of The New York Times, are being threatened with dire consequences. Alarming? Yes, but there may be method in Trump’s rant.There are different ways in which an authoritarian, or would-be authoritarian, goes after the media in a democracy that constitutionally mandates a free press. The old-fashioned way is to censor the media, ban criticisms of the leader and the administration, and throw leading journalists in jail. It still the preferred method of outright tyrants. A more effective way in a political system that is democratically structured is to avoid the appearance of suppression of a still independent media on the way to delegitimising it. It works like this: Keep a significant part of the media unquestioningly on your side as virtual state megaphones witness Fox News and the overwhelming majority of US talk radio while systematically attacking the credibility of the rest of the media. All the while, keep ranting against the media as corrupt and untrustworthy even as a substantial part of it is on your side. The part that is not, call it the enemy of the people’ to stoke popular opinion against the press. The term has long been used by leaders in power who would brand a subgroup, including an independent media, that might pose a check to unchallengeable authority. Robespierre used it during the French Revolution, so did Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union. All authoritarians hate an independent press. Trump, not a full-blown authoritarian thus far, realises how it makes tactical sense at this juncture of his drive to make America in his own image to keep berating the press as purveyors of fake news and to beat up the media as the enemy of the people. The tactic cleverly devalues truth and erodes the credibility of objective reportage. The press in a liberal democracy is, of course, necessarily an enemy of some people at a given point of time. It performs its defining role as watchdog, the more so when sections of it want to be lapdogs. In such a role it barks when it spies misconduct.