By Andrew Gawthorpe
Donald Trump’s second term has begun with an attack on press freedom which has already reached much greater proportions than anything that we witnessed under his first administration. Trump has long been famous for calling journalists “enemies of the people”, but his first-term assault on the press was mostly rhetorical. This time around, it looks like he has a systematic plan to bring the press to heels. Even worse, it might be working.
Trump’s attack on the press has four components. The first is an intensification of anti-media rhetoric. Trump has begun to cast any media criticism of himself or his administration as “illegal” and “corrupt”. He claims that the only reason TV networks like CNN and MSNBC criticise him is because they are “political arms” of the Democratic Party. The purpose of this rhetoric is to delegitimise and potentially criminalise all criticism of his administration.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, brings the same energy to her press briefings. She frequently suggests that the very act of journalists asking critical questions is “insulting” or disrespectful, as if the role of the media is merely to act as stenographers of the White House line.
Secondly, the administration has used its power over the White House briefing room and press pool to attack professional outlets and elevate the role of highly partisan defenders of the administration. This latter group includes outlets like Breitbart, which the Anti-Defamation League has described as “white nationalist”, and a newer crop of pro-Trump social media influencers. These voices are more akin to propagandists than journalists. Although not directly funded by the state, they serve the role of a pliable state media for the Trump administration, allowing it to broadcast propaganda to tens of millions of Americans.
At the same time, the administration has sanctioned outlets who it views as insufficiently pliable. The most high-profile example is the Associated Press, a non-partisan, not-for-profit news agency which plays a crucial role in the global dissemination of news. The administration removed the organization from the White House press pool after it refused to use the term “Gulf of America” rather than “Gulf of Mexico”. That the White House took this step over a merely semantic issue, and that it targeted a non-partisan outlet, is revealing. It expects unquestioning obedience from all parts of the press and will punish anything else.
A third component of the administration’s attack on the press is its use of lawsuits and investigations to punish critical outlets. Last year, Trump initiated several lawsuits against media organizations like ABC and CBS. He even sued the Des Moines Register and its renowned pollster, Ann Selzer, for publishing an opinion poll that he didn’t like. Although launched by Trump in a personal capacity, these lawsuits took on ominous overtones when Trump assumed the powers of the presidency and began using it to lash out at outlets he disapproves of.
In an apparent attempt to avoid the president’s wrath, ABC settled a defamation lawsuit before Trump was inaugurated, even though the network was widely assumed to be headed to victory in the case. The twin threats of lawsuits and other government sanctions seem to also have caused other outlets to dial back critical coverage of the president. Businessman Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post and frequent target of Trump, ordered his paper not to endorse Kamala Harris in last year’s election and has announced changes to editorial policy to appease Trump.
Under Trump, the Federal Communications Commission has also ordered investigations into several outlets – including NPR and PBS – claiming that they have promoted “DEI” in a way which runs counter to FCC regulations. These investigations could become the eventual basis for taking punitive action, including cancelling government funding for the outlets.
The final prong of Trump’s attack on media freedom is his attempted deconstruction of government-run outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. In his first term, Trump put loyalists in charge of these organizations who then predictably tried to make them publish pro-Trump content. These efforts were mostly frustrated as Congress, the courts, and brave journalists within the outlets themselves who fought back. Perhaps in frustration at his first-term failure, Trump has now ordered them closed entirely.
Last year, the U.S. government’s state-funded outlets collectively reached some 420 million people weekly in over 100 countries. In places which lack independent media of their own, these stations often provide the only access that citizens have to journalism that meets professional standards rather than being state-produced propaganda. This blow to press freedom is hence a global one. It’s a stark signal of the Trump administration’s intolerance for independent voices and its hatred of the basic values of honesty and integrity which underpin professional journalism.
As concerning as all these moves are, they are only the tip of the iceberg. Beyond those organizations and individuals targeted, others are beginning to self-censor in the hope of avoiding the attention of Trump or one of his lieutenants. The administration is attempting to disorientate and demoralize the press to scare it into silence. Hopefully, U.S. media is big, diverse, and rich enough to withstand the onslaught. If it is not, the country will be one step closer to autocracy.
Andrew Gawthorpe is an expert on U.S. politics and foreign policy at Leiden University in The Netherlands. He writes the newsletter America Explained.
