Trump and the media, a stormy relationship that could get worse

Photo: Alex Brandon Associated Press Journalists and technical crews work at a Republican Party rally in West Palm Beach, Florida, on election night, Nov. 5.

Andréa Bambino – Agence France-Presse in New York

Posted at 1:54 p.m.

• United States

Vitriolic attacks, lawsuits, journalists banned from the White House: Donald Trump has made his hostility to the media a catalyst for his success, raising fears of new threats to press freedom as he becomes President of the United States again.

From his first victory speech, the Republican billionaire used the rhetoric of the “enemy camp” to evoke the news channels CNN and MSNBC, where some columnists hardly spare him, giving echo to the expression “enemies of the American people” that he had used from the beginning of his first term.

On Sunday, during a rally, he joked about journalists who “would have to be shot through” to reach him, after the two assassination attempts he survived. His team responded that the meaning of his remarks had been distorted.

During his campaign, Donald Trump also threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of CBS and ABC, which he accused of favoring Kamala Harris. Very complex procedures that would go through the communications authority (FCC).

First Amendment

During his first term (2017-2021), journalists were also refused access to the White House, including CNN star Jim Acosta, who ended up getting his access badge back after a legal battle.

“We’re concerned. We’ve been concerned since he [Donald Trump] started using inflammatory anti-media rhetoric, since his first campaign in 2015,” Katherine Jacobsen, U.S. correspondent for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told AFP.

In a 2020 report, CPJ denounced Trump’s use of defamation lawsuits to intimidate journalists and the White House’s attempts to violate protections for their sources after leaks.

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When Trump returns to power, he “will appoint even more judges who will try to restrict press freedom,” predicts Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. In the United States, freedom of expression is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, and the Supreme Court enshrined the right to criticize the press in a famous 1964 decision.

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Trust

For Katherine Jacobsen, by accusing journalists of lying at every turn, Donald Trump has contributed to undermining public trust in the media, in an economic context that is already difficult for them, particularly for the local press.

“Trump has perfectly fit into the anti-establishment and anti-institutional discourse in the United States, and he has involved the media in a very worrying way,” she explains.

For her, the episode of January 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters invaded the Capitol in Washington to prevent the certification of the results after his defeat against Joe Biden, is a glaring example: “there are two completely different stories, one that journalists have documented and shown as real, and Trump's version” exonerating his supporters, “which is moving away from reality in a worrying way.”

Strategists around Donald Trump assure, on the contrary, that traditional media are totally disconnected from the realities of American society.

“Lassitude”

Donald Trump's first term was an opportunity for prestigious press titles, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, to release numerous political investigative scoops, notably on the relations of Donald Trump's close associates with Russia. Which had boosted their sales and advertising revenue.

The Wall Street Journal, owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, had revealed the affair of the hidden payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, which led to Donald Trump being convicted in criminal court in New York.

“I don't know if we'll see the same kind of surge that we saw during Trump's first term, because people are exhausted,” says Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

“There is so much weariness around Trump today that the media won't be able to count on this economic boost in the future,” also thinks Mark Feldstein.

The election campaign was marked by the decision of the Washington Post not to support either candidate, a choice criticized and interpreted as the consequence of pressure from its owner, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, to avoid alienating Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos defended this position as the best one to take at a time when “Americans no longer trust the media.”