What sort of person sits and watches a colleague being bullied and says nothing? Someone in a low-status job fearful of their boss, someone with low self-esteem who thinks they can do nothing, someone who feels powerless. Someone who is a coward? Maybe. This is the way the bully is sanctified and lives to fight another day. I wouldn’t say that my profession is full of people with low self-esteem or who are easily cowed. I like to think of all the noble and brave reporters out there; I know most hacks are egomaniacs. So how then do we explain the entire press corps at Donald Trump’s news conference on Wednesday?

Jeff Sessions' biggest crime? Putting loyalty to his office above Trump | Lawrence Douglas Read more

What did they think they were doing? I often think Americans are over-polite, but this was madness. Trump hasn’t just arrived on the scene; his modus operandi is well known. He lies and dismisses any criticism as fake news. He goes in for word salads of fact-free association. He has only one message: that he is the greatest, and the assembled media are the enemies of the people. Obviously he was going to come out of the midterms claiming victory and on the attack. This time he went for Jim Acosta from CNN and some microphone wrangling ensued. Acosta had pointed out that “the caravan” is a distraction and very many hundreds of miles away. He was told he was a rude and terrible person. A reporter who asked about enabling white supremacy was told the question was racist. Acosta has now had his press credentials removed.

The rest of them sat there as if stunned by Trump’s routine bad behaviour. What do they think these press conferences achieve? Do these journos think they are going to get a scoop? Why do they take part in this show of malicious narcissism? Where is their solidarity? The deference shown to Trump is remarkable. A walkout or a boycott should have happened long ago. Trump behaves this way in part because the press pack lets him. It amplifies his behaviour.

Obama loved the media and the media loved him back, because it shared the same cultural references and jokes. But that was another era. The question of how to respond to Trump is one that the US media continue to refuse to address in any coherent way. “Stories” come from his Twitter feed daily, another way of distracting them and confusing every situation. Behind every Trump statement is an implied threat. Behind every lie another lie, and yet even to point out the deliberate falsehoods has been controversial to the media establishment. In 2017 Gerard Baker, then editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, said: “I’d be careful about using the word ‘lie’ … Lie implies much more than just saying something that’s fake. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead.”

Indeed it does. What is journalism when it cannot bring itself to say this? The result of this reticence means Trump calls all the media – except Fox and mad-old Infowars – liars. One of the huge divides in American society is now two sets of media. It is only when you live there, too, do you see how much news is “local” rather than national. Trump knows this and can bypass the established press with ease.

In holding on to this idea of balance – a noble idea – the press corps sets itself up to be trampled on time and time again. It ends up broadcasting its own irrelevance and powerlessness as long as it is left to individual reporters to challenge the president. They are simply manhandled away. The press is merely a tool for him to use. This policy of treating him as a giant toddler – ignore the bad behaviour and reward the good – has not worked.

If the press is to be seen as the honourable protector of the truth, it must have the courage to disrupt and boycott these displays of brute power. Or it remains complicit in them. Hannah Arendt described a long time ago the ideal subject of totalitarian rule as “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … true and false … no longer exists”. This is where we are. No one will stand up for the freedom of the American press if its journalists won’t stand up for each other and walk out of these ritual degradations called press conferences, where questions are only ever answered by lies and intimidation.

• Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist