President Trump said in a recent executive order that the policy of the U.S. is “to promote democracy, the principle of free expression and press, the rule of law, and respect for human rights throughout the world.”
As one of my colleagues responded, “How about a little of that at home?”
Freedom of the press is essential to a free society. Trump’s legendary hostility to any media that is not fawning or submissive is a danger to our freedom — and to Americans who benefit from reporters exposing official lies and making it possible to hold government leaders accountable for wrongdoing.
Federal agents recently arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, who covered an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest at a Minneapolis church. As Reason magazine noted, “the attempt to treat reporting on the event as a federal felony looks like a thinly veiled assault on freedom of the press.”
Two judges had refused to sign a warrant for the reporters’ arrest, saying there was no evidence they had broken any laws. But the Justice Department, which seems to function primarily as a weapon against people who displease Trump, secured a grand jury indictment. Lemon offered to turn himself in, but Trump’s team sent a dozen officers to arrest him. A MAGA Republican running for governor in Florida even declared that Lemon “is lucky he’s not getting hanged in the public square.”
Trump uses public bullying and legal warfare to try to intimidate the media from reporting truthfully and critically about him. Like most aspects of his aggressively lawless and authoritarian second term, his efforts to subdue the media have been more intense since his return to power.
In January, FBI agents raided a Washington Post reporter’s home and seized her phone and computers. The Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press said the invasive move endangers confidential sources and undermines the public’s interest that is served by investigative reporting. PEN America called it evidence of “a growing assault on independent reporting.” It’s bad news for the First Amendment.
Trump has long used rallies and other public appearances to generate hostility and mistrust toward journalists. He and his press secretary, Katherine Leavitt, routinely heap insults and contempt upon reporters who ask challenging questions.
Trump is especially demeaning toward women journalists who are not part of the right-wing cheering section. When CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins recently asked Trump about justice for girls and young women victimized by Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking operations, Trump called her “the worst reporter” and complained that he has never seen her smile.
Meanwhile, Trump and his allies have followed the dictatorial playbook of Hungary’s authoritarian leader by engineering or supporting the transfer of major media outlets and online platforms to oligarchs whose financial and political interests line up with the president’s.
And all this is happening at a time when the internet and social media have upended journalism’s traditional business models.
We’ve seen the collapse of countless local news outlets and the shrinking of once powerful media operations. The Washington Post has just slashed a third of its staff — hundreds of journalists — in its most recent round of layoffs. Those firings took place just days after the premiere of “Melania,” a vanity and personal enrichment project for the president’s wife, funded to the tune of $75 million from Amazon, whose billionaire owner is overseeing the Post’s destruction.
There’s a method to Trump’s madness when it comes to media.
When Trump and his right-wing allies convince millions of Americans not to trust journalists — or their own eyes — it becomes easier for Trump to get away with lies and corruption. When they strip access from actual reporters and give favored treatment to far-right ideological warriors, they ensure the spread of their deceptive propaganda. And when corporate owners of media outlets bow to Trump’s demand for more compliant coverage, Americans lose an important independent check on abuses of government power.
In short, Trump’s attacks on the media undermine our democracy and threaten Americans whose lives, health and financial security are being sacrificed to cronyism, corruption and senseless crusades like the assault on vaccines and cancer research.
But we can fight back. Americans are fighting back. As Martin Luther King Jr. was known to say, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
Nonprofit media outlets are doing essential investigations. Journalists as solo operators or working on small teams are finding audiences online. People with cell phone cameras are exposing official cruelty and lies.
And social media networks are making it possible for Americans to educate themselves and each other, organize mutual self-defense and mobilize to take our country back. In other words, promote democracy, free expression and press, the rule of law and respect for human rights, right here and right now.
