Since his first term in the White House, Donald Trump has labeled the media and journalists as the “enemy of the people,” a tactic lifted directly from the authoritarian playbook that advises would-be despots to attack the press and dismiss any criticism as “fake news.”
After his 2024 election win, Trump has escalated his attacks on the press by suing multiple media outlets for reporting he dislikes, including the CBS show 60 Minutes, ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos and The Des Moines Register. The White House has also barred the Associated Press from covering White House events because the AP refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” as he decreed in a January executive order. More recently, the Trump regime has ended nearly a century of practice in which the independent White House Correspondents’ Association selected a rotating group of news outlets to cover the president inside the White House and on trips. Now the president himself selects the journalists who get to ask him questions. The White House Correspondents’ Association condemned the action, declaring that “This move tears at the independence of a free press in the U.S.,” and announced it would no longer distribute White House pool reports that the “public can no longer trust.”
The Trump administration has openly discussed using the Federal Communications Commission to target the licenses of radio and TV outlets whose reporting they disagree with. Meanwhile, billionaire owners of major media outlets have intervened in newsroom policies to demonstrate their fealty to Donald Trump in order to deter retaliation. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Katherine Jacobsen, Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator with the Committee to Protect Journalists, who takes a critical look at Trump’s alarming campaign of threats and intimidation to suppress U.S. press freedom.
KATHERINE JACOBSEN: The kind of dizzying array of different executive orders, and, you know, just comments made by Trump and his associates in the first month-plus of the presidency have really been part of the kind of the “flood the zone technique,” right? To make it difficult to keep up with what’s going on. And part of that is an attack on the media, really, and making it much more difficult for journalists to do their job.
It’s about controlling the narrative and making sure that the journalists and the public more broadly are aware of how the White House feels about their reporting, right? And what we’ve seen from the White House is barring the Associated Press from pool events, which seems especially egregious given the AP’s kind of position as one of the largest news agencies in the world, really, with subscribers all across the United States and globally.
What that really means, it’s a lot more difficult for local news outlets to be able to keep up with the news and also then for the American public to keep up with what’s going on. You know, other actions taking back control from the White House Correspondents Association and deciding who can attend pool events is kind of yet another measure from the White House to try and control who can access what information and when — and really sets a tone for intimidation or trying to intimidate in any way the national press corps in a very concerning way.
SCOTT HARRIS: Katherine, I did want to ask you about we’ve seen over recent years and particularly during the 2024 election, that disinformation — right-wing propaganda networks in particular — have been very successful in changing the narrative and changing many voters’ perception of reality, which certainly impacts outcomes of elections. And there’s been an effort by some to create independent media that can counter what’s been going on in terms of podcasts and social media that have been so successful in sowing distrust of institutions, as well as spreading lies that a substantial number of Americans believe to be the truth.
What are some of your thoughts on effective ways to combat disinformation? I know you’ve probably given it some thought. What are just a minute or so of some things you’ve been thinking about.
KATHERINE JACOBSEN: I think the most important thing, though, is to kind of continue to document factually what is going on. This is my personal belief that eventually the universe will kind of bend toward justice, right? And that the factual narrative will win out.
I think it’s important to still engage with people who perhaps have different views than us and have kind of a logical discussion about what’s actually going on, because there is enough evidence to show that this disinformation is just that, right, that it’s not accurate and that the people who are putting it out have ill intent.
That’s why it’s called disinformation and not just misinformation. And so I think by having that dialog, as difficult as it might be and trying to understand what drives people to want to believe those narratives is very important. And I also just kind of want to add one last thing if I could.
I think there’s this idea that we would never have these types of problems in the United States, right? I remember when I first started in this role about seven years ago, working on issues of press freedom in United States. People were kind of like, “Oh, that’s nice. You must not be that busy, right?” And now there’s very much a demand and understanding that there are press freedom issues here. And in fact, we do have a lot to reckon with in this country.
American exceptionalism and understanding the media doesn’t really work, right? I think we also need to look at what has happened in other countries, such as, you know, Hungary or Russia, for instance, to see and — not to compare what’s going on here to there — but to see patterns of control of the media and control the narrative and how that has led to democratic backsliding and to think long and hard about how we can prevent that in this country.
For more information, visit the Committee for Protect Journalists at cpj.org.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Katherine Jacobsen (20:02) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
For more information, visit the Committee To Protect Journalists at cpj.org.
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