Donald Trump targets press freedom

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais Associated Press The future strongman of the White House praised Monday “a free, fair and open press and media,” something important, “even vital,” according to him, “to make America great again.”

Fabien Deglise

Published at 0:00 Analysis

• United States

The promise made by Donald Trump on Monday left many perplexed. In an interview with Fox News Digital, the next president of the United States assured that he would be “open and available” to the media during his second term, which will begin next January, after months spent during his election campaign denigrating and questioning the legitimacy of several of them.

In the process, the future strongman of the White House took the opportunity to praise “a free, fair and open press and media”, something important, “even vital”, according to him, “to make America great again”.

The statement cultivates both paradox and ambiguity for this politician who, far from preparing to protect freedom of the press, has instead announced for years his intention to settle scores with a part of the media class—the one that fact-checks and catches the populist out on his alternative realities and lies.

This climate of vengeance, coupled with the brutal defeat that the Republican imposed on the Democrats and the stranglehold that he is preparing to have on the country’s institutions and ministries, now threatens one of the pillars of American democracy: the fourth estate.

“Donald Trump’s first term was a warm-up [in terms of attacking the media], commented Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University and an expert on the American press, a few months ago in the pages of Washington Post. A second term is going to be a wild ride. I expect a no-holds-barred approach. He could close the White House press office and expel reporters. There could be retaliation if you report critically on the president.”

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In the hours following his consecration at the polls, on the night of November 5 to 6, the Republican set the tone. He took advantage of a speech usually used by candidates to welcome victory with humility and unity to instead fuel divisions by pointing the finger at the “enemy camp,” namely CNN and MSNBC, according to him. During his first term, the press was described as the “enemy of the people.”

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In the days leading up to the election, Donald Trump also suggested, at a political rally in Pennsylvania, that he would “not be so bothered” to see members of the “fake news“, Trumpist vocabulary evoking the non-servile media, placed in the crosshairs of a shooter seeking to hit him again. This violent and hateful speech against the media followed the numerous calls made, during his campaign, to imprison journalists, to revoke the broadcast licenses of networks critical of him or to initiate legal proceedings against them.

A threat

“[Donald] Trump's impending second term represents a credible and unprecedented threat to press freedom as America has known it,” Jon Allsop wrote a few days ago in the digital pages of the Columbia Journalism Review. A fear expressed by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in the hours following the election of Donald Trump, described as a “turning point for media freedom as an essential pillar of democracy,” it wrote.

“The threats and lies against the media that characterized much of the Republican Party’s presidential campaign represent a clear and present danger,” CPJ Executive Director Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement. “At this critical moment in American history, we urge the next administration and government and business to recognize press freedom and factual reporting by journalists as essential to democracy, stability, and public safety.”

Yet the repressive regime appears to be slowly getting under way, according to letters sent just days before the election by Donald Trump’s lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik to the New York Times and publisher Penguin Random House. He is seeking $10 billion in damages for articles critical of the populist. It was the Columbia Journalism Review that revealed the thing last week.

On Sunday, the president-elect also named Brendan Carr to head the Federal Communications Commission, a government agency that Donald Trump has threatened to use against those he portrays as his media opponents. On the campaign trail, he called on the agency to strip NBC and CBS of their broadcast rights over what he considered biased coverage of Kamala Harris.

Brendan Carr, who serves on the commission, is the author of the chapter on the FCC in Project 2025, the ultraconservative playbook for a future Republican administration. He also embraces Trump’s promises to cut regulations and crack down on Silicon Valley companies and media outlets that don’t actively build on Trumpism.

“Starting next year, Trump’s assault on the press will intensify,” predicts journalist Kyle Paoletta in the pages of Columbia Journalism Review, speaking of an “attempt to stifle” negative reporting or to allow access to the “West Wing,” the epicenter of the White House’s executive branch, only to conservative media outlets.

“The plans of Donald Trump and his allies to turn the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission against the media could lead to a series of investigations into leaks, the politicization of broadcast licenses, and the potential indictment of journalists for espionage,” he continues. The scenario has played out in authoritarian regimes such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Narendra Modi’s India, and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, regimes that Donald Trump regularly praises. “Journalists covering [anti-government] protests or immigration enforcement will be detained not only by local police, but also by the Department of Homeland Security. Trump may even seek Congressional reform of defamation laws to criminalize dissent,” he continues.

And the future president will be able to do so in a climate of media distrust that he has skillfully maintained in recent years and that now offers him fertile ground because of the 49% of Americans who believe that the coverage of the election campaign was biased, and the 57% who believe that it was biased against Donald Trump, reports a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Tuesday.

Worse still, in the divided and constantly confrontational political context, fact-checking or shedding light on lies or half-truths are no longer seen as a rigorous practice of journalism: 60% of respondents see it more as the defense of a cause than impartial journalism, the poll summarizes.