Is the Press Next? - The American Prospect [View all]

[justaprogressive]

One of the oddities of America’s slide into dictatorship is that it’s all playing out publicly and bring reported on by a still-free press, often to Trump’s embarrassment. If you look at other despotisms, one of the first thing the dictator does is to shut down the opposition press.

As Trump tries to destroy one free institution after another—universities, law firms, independent public agencies, trade unions—sooner or later he will come for the press. For the moment, his forays against the press have been petulant and feeble rather than systematic.

He has haphazardly tried to restrict access to the White House press room, which isn’t exactly an inalienable right. His vendetta against the Associated Press began with AP’s refusal to accede to his pathetic demand to use his new name for the Gulf of Mexico.

He made a passing swipe at the broadcast license of CBS, for the temerity of having run an interview on 60 Minutes with Ukrainian President Zelensky that was critical of how the U.S. was handling the Russia-Ukraine war. He has threatened public broadcasting, which is mostly supported by listeners and viewers, with loss of public funds.

This is still pretty small beer. But unless Trump’s other efforts at dictatorship are restrained by the courts, he is very likely to come for the press more systematically, and there are several ways he can do this.

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-04-22-press-freedom-censorship-trump/