There aren’t a lot of things that cause me to lose sleep, but the diminishing state of press freedom in the United States has led me to a few sleep-deprived nights as of late—and this is happening before the second Trump administration has even started.
Why am I so worried? Here are just a few examples:
• ABC News agreed to pay a whopping $15 million to go toward a future Trump presidential library, to pay $1 million to Trump’s attorney, and to issue an apology, all to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by the former and future president. What did ABC News do wrong? It has to do with statements made by George Stephanopoulos on the March 10, 2024, edition of This Week. According to The New York Times: “Mr. Trump sued after George Stephanopoulos, the star ABC News anchor, said on the air that Mr. Trump had been found ‘liable for rape’ in a New York civil trial. In fact, Mr. Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse, although the judge in that case later noted that New York has a narrow legal definition of rape.”
The difference between sexual assault and rape—that’s all it took. That NYT piece also noted in the lede: “Media law experts predicted the move would embolden Mr. Trump to file other lawsuits that could test the limits of the First Amendment.”
• In fact, Trump did file another lawsuit that could test the limits of the First Amendment. As explained by NBC News: “Donald Trump is suing Ann Selzer, her polling firm, The Des Moines Register and the newspaper’s parent company, Gannett, accusing them of consumer fraud, according to a copy of the filing reviewed by NBC News. The suit … says it seeks ‘accountability for brazen election interference’ over a Nov. 2 poll that showed Kamala Harris up by 3 percentage points in Iowa. Trump won the state by double digits, a difference that his lawyers argue in the suit constitutes ‘election-interfering fiction.’ Trump is making the claim under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising.”
That poll was obviously terrible—so bad that Selzer announced afterward that she’d no longer do election polling—but now Trump is accusing her and her newspaper of consumer fraud, when clearly the poll didn’t hurt his election prospects? Yikes.
• As previously discussed in this space, the billionaire owners of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times spiked endorsements of Kamala Harris shortly before the election. Since then, the owners’ behaviors regarding the president-elect have gotten even more, well, submissive. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post (and, of course, Amazon) dined with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago in December, and reportedly plans to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Meanwhile, Patrick Soon-Shiong told the Los Angeles Times editorial board to “take a break” from writing about Trump. The Guardian reported: “(In December), Soon-Shiong announced plans to incorporate an artificial intelligence-powered ‘bias meter’ into newspaper articles. He also reportedly barred the newspaper’s editorial board from publishing an editorial about Trump’s cabinet picks unless it also published a piece with an opposing view. … Along with advising the editorial board that it needed to take a break from writing about the president-elect, Soon-Shiong reportedly instituted a policy banning editorials critical of Trump unless they are also published with another piece that offers the opposing view. The restriction has ‘effectively killed or indefinitely delayed multiple editorials’ that were written but not published.”
This is not normal. This is not good.
• Before the election, the PRESS Act passed unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives. As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press explains: “The PRESS Act would bar the federal government from using subpoenas, search warrants, or other compulsory actions against journalists to force the disclosure of information identifying confidential sources as well as other newsgathering records, except in very limited circumstances. It would also broadly limit the government’s ability to use the same actions against third parties, including email providers and search engines, to seize journalists’ data, with narrow exceptions.”
The bill moved to the Senate, and was not taken up before the election. Then on Nov. 20, in a Truth Social post, Trump linked to a PBS story about the PRESS Act and stated: “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!”
On Dec. 10, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden finally brought the bill—which, again, was passed unanimously by the House of Representatives—up for a vote. Well, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton did Trump’s bidding, and blocked the bill, saying its passage would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.”
“America-hating and fame-hungry journalists.”
As of this writing, the bill is presumed dead.
The post A note from the publisher: Press freedoms are under attack—and Trump’s second term hasn’t even started yet appeared first on Reno News & Review.