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Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
"If major media outlets succumb to intimidation from the Trump administration, the First Amendment is in serious danger."
Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Monday took aim at both President Donald Trump's attempts at "suing the media into submission" and news outlets' willingness to settle such cases and self-censor as "incredibly dangerous" precedents.
In a video posted on social media, Sanders highlighted that CBS News parent company Paramount is in talks with Trump's lawyers to possibly settle a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the president just days before the 2024 election accusing "60 Minutes" of deceptively editing an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Sanders also noted how ABC Newsagreed last year to pay a $15 million settlement that included a letter of regret after veteran anchor and political commentator George Stephanopoulos said Trump had been found "liable for rape" of writer E. Jean Carroll. A federal jury in Manhattan found Trump civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll, but not rape—even though Caroll testified in graphic detail that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
"I regard that as an incredibly dangerous precedent, both of those, ABC and CBS," Sanders said in the video, denouncing "major media outlets succumbing to pressure from the Trump administration."
"People have a right to express their own point of view," Sanders asserted. "Yeah, networks are wrong all of the time. They're wrong about me, wrong about Trump. But if you use the power of government to intimidate networks, they're not going to do the big stories. They're not going to do the investigations. Why should they go out on a limb and tell you something if they're afraid about being sued by the Trump administration?"
The video also notes Trump's lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling firm Selzer & Company, The Des Moines Register, and the Iowa newspaper's parent company, Gannett, alleging fraud and "brazen election interference" over a November 2 poll showing Harris beating Trump by 3 points in the 2024 election. Trump won Iowa by 13 points.
"If major media outlets succumb to intimidation from the Trump administration, the First Amendment is in serious danger," Sanders stressed. "We need an independent press that reports the truth without fear of retribution."
Major media outlets have also been accused of self-censorship. Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owners of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, respectively, have come under fire for prohibiting or restricting opinion pieces critical of Trump or supportive of his adversaries.
"If you believe The Washington Post's slogan that 'Democracy Dies in Darkness,' their owner was the first to switch off the light," journalist David Helvarg wrote last month for Common Dreams.
The Nation justice correspondent and columnist Elie Mystal wrote last month that "recent events have shown that Trump does not have to impose a new regime of censorship if the press censors itself first."
"And that, I believe, is what we are witnessing now: a press that gives away its First Amendment rights before Trump takes them away," he continued. "A press that will not speak truth to power if power threatens to kick their owners off a cocktail party list or gum up their operations."
"The debasement of the press will continue until readers and viewers reject the media that would rather lie to them than tell the truth to Trump," Mystal added. "The people who run these publications and news organizations are betting that we won't."
What we are witnessing is not simply right-wing ascendency in national politics but a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism.
Two billionaire publishers, the Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos and the LA Times Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked their editorial page editors from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election (a Washington Post editorial cartoonist than quit when her cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos, Son-Shiong and other billionaires abasing themselves in front of Trump was killed). If you believe the Washington Post’s slogan that ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ their owner was the first to switch off the light.
Soon-Shiong also blocked an editorial asking the Senate to perform its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on Trump’s cabinet picks. Next ABC News (owned by Disney) agreed to pay $15 million in a settlement of a Trump defamation lawsuit plus $1 million in attorney fees because George Stephanopoulos said on his Sunday show that Trump was found liable for the ‘rape’ of writer E. Jean Carroll. Actually, he was found guilty of ‘sexual abuse’ because a New York civil jury believed her claim that he forced his fingers into her vagina but was uncertain if he also used his penis. New York law states only penile penetration is considered rape. This was a case ABC could have easily pursued in court but made a political—really a business—decision not to because Disney has less courage than a mouse.
Trump is now suing the Des Moines Register and their pollster for a pre-election poll suggesting he would not do as well as he did in Iowa. And, while you probably shouldn’t be getting your news from Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has also announced the end of fact-checking on his Meta platforms in the U.S. which won him a compliment from president-elect Trump.
While billionaire 'tech bros’ like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg embrace Trump and Trumpism, working journalists are portrayed as part of an elite that he has defined as ‘enemies of the people’ mainly for exposing the machinations of those in power including the president-elect.
It seems likely that top-down self-censorship may preempt the expected legal attacks on critical coverage from the incoming administration that has been promised by Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel and, of course, by Trump himself.
This is in large measure the result not simply of right-wing ascendency in national politics but of a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism. Also, helping to undermine the public’s ability to stay informed is the rise of the internet as a selective news source which generates revenue by reinforcing existing biases through algorithmic infrastructure that aims to keep viewers online longer.
While billionaire tech ‘bros’ like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg embrace Trump and Trumpism, working journalists are portrayed as part of an elite that he has defined as ‘enemies of the people’ mainly for exposing the machinations of those in power including the president-elect.
The proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and incitement to hate on social media or through the use of AI fakes also raises questions about who’s left to mediate what passes for news and to sort facts from fabrication...
I’ve worked as a freelance journalist for half a century. According to a study by the job recruitment company Zippia there are close to 15,000 freelance reporters working in the U.S. whose demographics skew slightly more white and female, than the nation as a whole and who earn an average of $61,000 a year compared to full-time journalists who average $86,000. Freelancers make up a third of the 45,000 working journalists in the U.S. so figure your news is coming not from some media “elite,” that promote “fake news,” but working people like myself covering wars, politics, pandemics and the climate emergency.
Earlier in this century I got to train colleagues in Poland, Turkey, Tunisia and elsewhere on environmental reporting. I remember in Turkey going over some of the basics of investigative reporting including always keeping good notes and tapes stored and dated including by year as some stories become beats that can continue over a lifetime. Sergei Kiselyov, a Ukrainian colleague who’d covered the Chernobyl disaster, offered an addendum, “I’d just suggest you also keep your notes and files somewhere other than your home or office so that when the police come to look for them, they won’t be there.” This tip is worth keeping in mind over the next several years.
Most journalists of course are less likely to be jailed than to be laid off. Many of my friends and colleagues who worked in newspapers are now freelancers like myself, the newspaper industry being in a near terminal stage of collapse. This is largely due to loss of revenue to online advertising, corporate consolidation, and hedge fund predation where operating enterprises are bought up, wrung out (staff layoffs focused on older higher-paid reporters doing complex investigative work), and then sold off for parts (printing presses, data-bases, real-estate). This has resulted in massive job loss. Newsroom employment dropped 26 percent between 2008 and 2020 according to a study by the Pew Research Center and continues today. I know of one Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who agreed to a one-third pay cut rather than see a second wave of layoffs further hollow out their publication.
Most journalists of course are less likely to be jailed than to be laid off.
The loss of competitive newspapers has resulted in the absence of a lot of good reporting, particularly at the local and regional level where many papers continue to shut down each year. Since most local TV news stations depend on local newspapers for their hard news this has also had a cascading effect on the public’s ability to access reliable information about those with and in power and how they’re wielding it from zoning boards to local corporations and government agencies. Many people have turned instead to unreliable online social media including bloggers and influencers to get their information.
The proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and incitement to hate on social media or through the use of AI fakes also raises questions about who’s left to mediate what passes for news and to sort facts from fabrication, particularly at a time when much of the public now agree with Donald Trump. An October 2024 Gallup poll found 69% of the public has either “no trust” or “not very much confidence” in the media. When I began working in 1974 over 70% of the public trusted the news media. And with some reason.
When I was covering the wars in Central America I asked my friend photo-journalist John Hoagland how he saw our role. “I don’t believe in objectivity because everyone has a point of view,” he said. “What I say is I’m not going to be a propagandist for anyone. If you do something right, I’m going to take your picture. If you do something wrong, I’ll take your picture also.” He was killed in crossfire a year later. Ironically the best recent movie on how reporters actually behave under fire and under stress is ‘Civil War’ that is set in a near-future America at war with itself.
With the “legacy” network news operations of ABC, CBS and NBC now under the control of Disney, Comcast, and ViacomCBS, major corporations dependent on the regulatory whims of Donald Trump, and with Trump’s talk of eliminating public funding for PBS (and its ‘News Hour’ and ‘Frontline’ reporting) plus ‘news outlets’ such as Fox and the Sinclair Broadcast Group that owns 294 TV stations covering 40% of U.S. households, acting more as propaganda arms of the MAGA movement than traditional sources of broadcast journalism, the likelihood of much critical mainstream coverage during a second Trump administration is doubtful even before the expected lawsuits, indictments, and jailing of journalists.
To paraphrase a quote from a darker time, “First they came for the journalists and then we don’t know what happened.”
One expert said that while the lawsuit has little chance of success, Trump's "true motivation is to intimidate the press and journalists."
Free press advocates voiced alarm Tuesday over what one commentator called the "chilling effect" of a lawsuit filed by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump against a prominent pollster, her firm, and an Iowa newspaper that published a preelection poll showing Vice Kamala Harris leading the Republican nominee in the state which he ultimately won by double digits.
Trump sued pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling firm Selzer & Company, The Des Moines Register, and the paper's parent company, Gannett, alleging fraud and "brazen election interference" over a November 2 poll showing Harris, the Democratic nominee, ahead of Trump by 3 points. Trump won Iowa by 13 points.
"I'm doing this because I feel I have an obligation to," Trump explained after filing the suit on Monday. "I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by 3 or 4 points."
Trump's lawyers say the disparity between Selzer's polling and the election's actual outcome shows the defendants acted with "intentional" malice and engaged in "election-interfering fiction."
Unlike other Trump lawsuits including the one ABC Newsagreed Saturday to settle for $15 million plus $1 million in legal fees, the new suit does not accuse the defendants of defaming the president-elect. Instead, it alleges violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and related provisions.
Responding to the filing, a spokesperson for Gannett—which owns over 100 daily and 1,000 weekly newspapers in the United States and abroad—said that "we stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit."
Media and legal experts said that although the new lawsuit has very little chance of success, Trump—who has called the press the "enemy of the people" and has even suggested that he would not mind if journalists were shot—is aiming to silence critical media through resource-sapping lawfare.
"The odds of success here are slim to none, but winning in court is not likely the real goal of this lawsuit," Clay Calvert, a media law expert and professor at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law, toldNBC News. "The true motivation is to intimidate the press and journalists. I unfortunately suspect this lawsuit is just a harbinger of things to come."
Fox News commentator Howard Kurtz said on social media that while it is "very hard for a public figure to win" a lawsuit like the one Trump filed, "the chilling effect is clear."
Trump said today that he’s planning to sue the Des Moines Register, 60 Minutes, Bob Woodward, and even the Pulitzer Prizes, awarded by Columbia University. He claims the Justice Department should have done it for him. The weaponization of power is on full display.
— Voter Protection Project (@voterprotectpac.bsky.social) December 16, 2024 at 4:39 PM
Joel Simon, director of the City University of New York's Journalism Protection Initiative, toldCNN that he "would not have imagined" that such tactics "would be deployed in the United States."
"I would also be concerned about the arbitrary, petty, and vindictive nature of these legal actions that President-elect Trump is pursuing," he said. "The possibility of legal victory is slim because under the 'actual malice' standard reporting done in good faith is protected in the U.S. But for a smaller or less-resourced news organization, mounting a legal defense can be a serious challenge."