Journalism in America is under siege, and has been since the 1990s. While many liken the decline in press freedom to the situations in Russia and Hungary, the reality is a bit different and, in some ways, more insidious. The threat in the U.S. isn’t just political -- it’s corporate. In the marriage of autocratic power and business interests, those who believe in a free press are treated as inconvenient liabilities.
Trouble Started Long Before Trump
Repression of the press didn’t begin with Trump. The U.S. government always had an uneasy relationship with the press, but it’s fair to say that the government’s response to the September 11th attacks laid the groundwork for a new era of suppression. In October of that year, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which gave the government permission to launch a huge surveillance operation. These programs allow the NSA to collect and analyze vast amounts of data, including emails, social media posts, web browsing history, and phone metadata.
The impact on journalism in the decades that followed was profound. Journalists had a difficult time protecting their sources and maintaining their confidentiality; lawyers who defended those sources faced challenges in preserving attorney-client privilege. Not surprisingly, sources grew wary of speaking with reporters, even about unclassified matters. Worse, the government began classifying a wider range of information, and cracking down on leaks, which made it nearly impossible for journalists to report on matters of public interest. Government prosecution of journalists sources began to escalate.
In 2013, the Committee to Protect Journalism (CPJ) analyzed the Obama Administration’s treatment of the press, and its report was rather damning. Reporters told CPJ that administration officials refuse to answer questions from the journalists, systematically ignoring or stonewalling inquiries. And the answers they did receive were pre-approved talking points.
Media advocacy groups were alarmed, warning that the Obama administration was prosecuting leakers and restricting access at levels not seen in the recent past. According to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Obama used the Espionage Act to put a record number of reporter sources in jail. The administration implemented an "Insider Threat Program" requiring federal employees to monitor colleagues for potential leaks, creating a chilling effect on government sources speaking to journalists.
Trump hasn't jailed as many sources, but his approach to the press has been nothing short of brutal. He attacks the media relentlessly -- calling journalists “the enemy of the people” and “human scum” and dismissing critical coverage as "fake news." This behavior has helped fuel a climate of hostility toward reporters. The consequences were real: in 2020 alone, there were over 600 documented physical attacks on journalists, many occurring at protests where reporters were harassed or assaulted. Organizations that advocate for freedom of the press have warned that Trump's rhetoric emboldened anti-media sentiment, making journalists increasingly vulnerable to violence.
In his first term he mainly called journalists names, especially female ones. In his second term he appears to be upping his game, attacking the press more systematically.
The White House Chooses Its Own Press Pool
It's still in his second term, yet Trump has made impressive strides in dismantling long-standing press freedoms. For over a century, the White House Correspondents’ Association has managed the press pool, ensuring diverse media representation in covering presidential events. But Trump has unilaterally decided that he alone will determine which journalists are allowed access. HuffPost, Reuters, and other major outlets have been barred from covering key White House events. In their place, conspiracy-oriented media outlets friendly to Trump get seats, including Newsmax and The Blaze.
In other developments:
Trump banned The AP for refusing to go along with the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Defense Department also ordered several outlets, including NPR, NBC News, Politico, and CNN, to move out of their workspaces at the Pentagon to make way for Washington Examiner, Daily Caller, and Newsmax.
The State Department ordered all of its embassies and offices to cancel subscriptions to the New York Times, AP and others.
The implications are chilling: a president choosing who can report on him and what Federal workers can read is pretty much a textbook definition of state-controlled media.
Shakedowns
Trump has launched a legal strategy against media outlets that looks an awful lot like a shakedown operation, weaponizing the courts to intimidate and financially drain news organizations. For instance, Trump filed a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS over a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris, alleging that careful editing made her look smarter than she is (a rich accusation given the way producers of “The Apprentice” had to edit Trump to make him look smart). His suit is completely frivolous, as editors get to edit; that’s their job. They get to remove extraneous tangents, clean up sentences for clarity, and so on. He's suing other media outlets under an equally ridiculous pretext, claiming that news organizations he doesn't like violate state consumer protection laws by publishing "deceptive" information (again, coming from a man who says he won the 2020 elections) You can’t make this stuff up.
Say what you will, but his strategy has delivered impressive payoffs for Trump. ABC settled a defamation suit for $15 million regarding a misstatement about the E. Jean Carroll case verdict. Meta forked over $25 million to settle litigation over Trump's deplatforming following the January 6 Capitol riots. Why not file a $20 billion suit against CBSNews? True CBS reporters want their company to fight the suit, but it seems that corporate brass find it more expedient to settle and get on with the business of making money (more on that in a bit).
Now that he’s in office Trump has a new set of tools for getting money and positive press coverage. The new Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, has been busy launching investigations against Comcast, NBCUniversal, NPR and PBS. In the Comcast NBCUniversal case, Carr says he wants to make sure these companies, “are not promoting invidious forms of discrimination in violation of FCC regulations and civil rights laws.” Invidious discrimination is the legal argument used in landmark civil rights cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. Evidently, Carr is concerned that Comcast’s DEI policies are discriminatory against white people.
Anticipatory Obedience is a Business Decision
So what’s a CEO of a media organization to do? You’d expect Paramount Global, the owner of CBSNews, to fight Trump’s bogus lawsuit in the name of press freedom, but you’d be wrong. From the outside it sure looks like Paramount Global is planning to settle Trump’s lawsuit, not because the case has legal merit, but because doing so serves its business interests. The company is currently navigating a high-stakes merger with Skydance, valued at $28 billion, but it needs FCC approval in order for that to happen. Avoiding legal entanglement with Trump could streamline the approval process.
Much to the chagrin of the CBSNews staff, Paramount is in talks with Trump’s legal team, and both sides are actively seeking a mediator. Shareholder influence is also a factor. Shari Redstone, who controls Paramount, reportedly favors settling, probably because she has a keen financial interest in keeping the merger on track. Meanwhile, the FCC has launched an inquiry into the "60 Minutes" broadcast at the center of Trump’s complaint, further complicating an already delicate situation.
This all points to a growing tension between journalistic integrity and corporate interests. Newsrooms can push back against political and legal intimidation all they want, but if the corporations that own them see a business reason to settle, that’s what they’ll do. So while we can shake our fist at Trump’s shakedowns, we need to understand that he’s working with a willing partner.
Amazon founder and Washington Post owner, Jeff Bezos seems like the poster boy for anticipatory obedience (one almost feels sorry for him, it must hard to walk without a backbone). Just last week he announced that going forward the paper’s opinion section will write, “every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets." His announcement went to say that he’ll leave thornier issues to other outlets. This follows on last year’s announcement that the Washington Post will no longer endorse presidential candidates, a move that infuriated readers and prompted 250,000 subscribers to cancel their subscriptions. Like journalists, subscribers can stick up for free press all they want but if the corporate owners see a business benefit to obedience, journalistic integrity doesn’t stand a chance.
The press has been dealing with corporate takeover of news organizations since the 1990s, when vertical integration, not a deep commitment to journalism, was the driving force in C-suites. Big conglomerates saw the potential for big profits in controlling both the creation and distribution of content. It’s why Disney acquired ABC News in 1996 and Comcast took over NBCUniversal in 2011. These companies viewed news as just another product, valuable sure, but not terribly essential to their mission.
More recently, billionaires have entered the fray, buying up legacy news organizations. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, Marc Benioff acquired Time in 2018, and Patrick Soon-Shiong snapped up The Los Angeles Times that same year. Hedge funds and private equity firms, which never saw an organization they didn't think worthy of looting, got into the game, slashing newsroom budgets in the name of efficiency. Alden Global Capital has become infamous for gutting local newspapers, while New Media Investment Group’s 2019 acquisition of Gannett left much of America’s print media in the hands of a single corporate entity.
The one thing all of the companies, billionaires and hedge funds have in common is a love of profit. They didn’t go to journalism school, they don’t have a driving passion to uncover stories. No one should be surprised that major news organizations owned by these companies and individuals are bending a knee.
And now, Trump is taking full advantage. He doesn’t need new laws to weaken the press when media owners already see journalism as a liability. No one should expect a Bezos or a Benioff to stand up to Trump, or to any future autocrat. If sanewashing coverage of Trump is what it takes to secure FCC-approval for a merger, then we should expect to see the most sanewashed versions of the news money can buy.
And this is my point: Journalism in the U.S. isn’t being crushed under an iron fist, it’s being cashed out by people who see press freedom as a negotiable asset, not a principle worth defending.
The Last Holdouts
Despite the corporate stranglehold on mainstream media, independent journalism refuses to die. Journalists are sidestepping traditional outlets, taking to platforms like Substack to report directly to readers. Crooked Media (Pod Save America) and The Bulwark have built dedicated followings by delivering sharp, unfiltered analysis without corporate interference. Investigative outlets like ProPublica still go after the powerful, and The Guardian, The Atlantic and Wired are committed to serious journalism (Wired’s reporting on DOGE is phenomenal and it’s well worth the cost of a subscription). These are the last holdouts of a truly free press -- proof that while corporate-owned media is up for sale, real journalism still has a pulse. For now.