There was a telling moment in Donald Trump’s first press conference after returning to the Oval Office, when he encountered a sharp line of questioning by a network correspondent about his pardons of the January 6th rioters. Trump said: “Stop interrupting.” He said, “Take a look at the election. Just look at the numbers on the election. We won this election in a landslide,” he went on, inaccurately, “because the American public is tired of people like you that are just one-sided, horrible people, in terms of crime.”
Is it now a crime to ask a tough question of the president of the United States?
What this diatribe exposes is the fact that we are confronting a dangerous period for journalism in America – for the work of accountability that tries to sustain our democracy. Fact-based journalism – that is, the day-to-day reporting that isn’t locked into a political party’s agenda, that is just trying to give people a view of what’s true beyond their own line of sight – that work has declining influence already, because audiences are shifting to entertainment and the digital revolution has disabled the for-profit news ecosystem.
But there’s also an even tougher adversarial environment that will face U.S. journalism, and the likelihood of regulatory pressure, and both legal and online harassment.
Just look at what was said in the media section of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the 47th presidency. Among the proposals were these: “Make it easier to seize journalists’ emails and phone records.” And this: “Consider booting reporters out of the White House.” And this: “Punish former officials who speak to reporters.”
We have already seen a lot of this sort of thing with Trump. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders has catalogued it all. He has issued at least 15 separate calls to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks in political retaliation; he has vowed to investigate media outlets that are critical of him; he has insulted or threatened journalists hundreds of times on the campaign trail, formed an alliance with anti-journalism tech mogul Elon Musk, threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with jail time in an apparently successful effort to extract concessions on content moderation, and sued multiple media outlets for coverage he disliked.
No wonder the U.S. is now at a record-low placement on the Reporters Without Borders annual press freedom index: out of 180 countries, the U.S., home of the First Amendment, is 55th in press freedom.
Americans are deeply divided on political issues. But we agree, fundamentally, on the value of the free press: A Pew study recently found that 74 percent of U.S. adults agree that reporting serves as a valuable check on politicians – that it keeps them from doing things that they shouldn’t do.
George Orwell, in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” (1946?) made clear why we need journalism. He wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” That’s harsh. But consider how language can shape perception: Think of the difference between “undocumented workers,” which sounds like a clerical error, and “illegal aliens,” which suggests an invasion from Mars. Journalists try to give us truth with language that we understand.
Independent and aggressive journalism will survive only if its business model is strong and sustainable. A few big media companies can promise that: The New York Times, for example. Rich and diversified companies can support news divisions that don’t make much money. But the manipulation of news organizations by wealthy owners can disable newsrooms – as we have seen recently at The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
That’s why strong not-for-profit newsrooms are so important – like those of Northeast Public Radio, which is where you’re hearing this. After all, philanthropy has long been the essential ingredient of success for another key element of society: the arts. The Medici family, which was politically dominant in Florence during the Renaissance, enabled Vivaldi to work; Archduke Rudolph of Austria was a patron of Beethoven; the financier Andrew Mellon founded the National Gallery of Art. That is increasingly how great journalism must be sustained: by people who recognize its value to our society and who therefore refuse to let it die.
So while Donald Trump may continue to treat journalists with derision, press freedom must not be seen as a partisan issue – because journalism has been a fundamental pillar of American history. And those of you who support not-for-profit journalism in our time deserve gratitude, because you are helping to sustain democracy.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.