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7 and a Half Tips for Good Reporting as Trump Floods the Zone
It’s probably uncharitable to pick on journalists when they’re under attack from so many powerful and malign forces, but it’s still necessary to keep the news media true to their purpose.
May 03, 2025
It’s not a good time to be an American journalist. Or a consumer of American journalism. Or, for that matter, even a skimmer of the headlines crawling across American phones.
U.S. President Donald Trump is suing media corporations and targeting individual journalists on social media. The White House press office is playing musical chairs at its press conferences and withholding press pool reports it dislikes. Republicans in Congress have called on public broadcasters to defend themselves against “systemically biased content” and are trying to claw back their funding. Large newspapers are choosing to tailor what they write to stay in the government’s good graces and smaller ones are being forced to do the same. Sources are increasingly reluctant to go on the record and violence against journalists has become a punchline. Even student newspapers haven’t escaped the threats.
You’d think that, after all this time, journalists would have figured out how to cover Donald Trump. They haven’t.
In the how-petty-can-you-get category, White House officials have refused to answer questions from journalists who use identifying pronouns. “Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in an email to The New York Times. (Sometimes I think that if I roll my eyes any more often, they’ll fall out of their sockets.)
It’s probably uncharitable to pick on journalists when they’re under attack from so many powerful and malign forces, but it’s still necessary to keep the news media true to their purpose.
Bad News
It’s not as if we weren’t warned. Scholars studying autocrats note that one of their first targets on gaining power is almost invariably an independent and open press. Trump made it all too clear during his second presidential campaign that he views journalists as his enemies and, now that he’s back in the White House, he continues to disparage, ignore, or run circles around traditional news outlets. What’s new is the willingness of all too many media corporations to cave in so cravenly.
Even before Trump won the election, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had set bad examples by squelching already-written editorial endorsements of then-Vice President Kamala Harris for president. I guess you might say that they were just hedging their bets if they hadn’t followed up by instituting distinctly dubious new editorial policies. Washington Post owner and billionaire Jeff Bezos, refocused his paper’s opinion section on defending “personal liberties and free markets,” while LA Times owner, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, fired his paper’s editorial board and instituted AI-generated “political ratings” for its opinion section. Both papers have been hemorrhaging subscribers and much-admired journalists ever since.
I’m not sure why anyone was surprised that Bezos betrayed the editorial independence of The Washington Post. Although he had previously exercised restraint there, he’s been rapacious in steering Amazon, his main hustle, which came under attack in the first Trump administration. The Post has essentially been a hobby, and hobbies are easily cast aside when they become inconvenient. Apparently, principles are, too.
It doesn’t help that other large media companies have recently capitulated to lawsuits that Trump, as one of his hobbies, filed or threatened to file. Last December, ABC News settled a defamation suit involving star anchor George Stephanopoulos’s description of Trump’s sexual abuse trial with an apology and $15 million for a Trump-related foundation. In January, Meta settled a lawsuit from 2021 over the company’s suspension of Trump’s social-media accounts in the wake of the January 6 assault on the Capitol. It agreed to pay him $25 million and, coincidentally (of course), tossed out all its DEI initiatives. Recently, CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, agreed to mediation for a lawsuit Trump brought over editorial decisions made when “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Kamala Harris. (He later upped his demand to a whopping $20 billion in damages.) In all three cases, Trump’s legal claims were widely seen as weak, yet the companies chose not to test them in court.
Of course, you won’t be surprised to learn that Trump wasn’t satisfied with such groveling. He never will be. (He recently renewed pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to pull CBS News’s license.) His need to dominate, which makes your average control freak look weak-kneed, keeps him demanding ever more obeisance. Take, for instance, his response to The Associated Press’ policy of continuing to call the body of water he renamed the “Gulf of America,” the “Gulf of Mexico.” He promptly banned AP reporters from covering most of his official events. Even after AP won a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds and the judge in the case, a Trump appointee no less, ordered the White House to lift all restrictions on the news agency, an AP reporter and photographer were still barred from a White House news conference on the very day the court order was to take effect.
AP, a 178-year-old cooperative, with four billion readers daily in nearly 100 countries, could afford to take the federal government to court. Many smaller news outlets can’t.
More Bad News
However much Donald Trump may overestimate his abilities, he is a pro at playing the media. His instinct, talent, skill—I don’t know exactly what to call it—is to read the room remarkably accurately, and his rooms are increasingly restricted to his boosters. He’s spent decades both courting and denigrating the press, all the while honing his innate sense of what makes news. You’d think that, after all this time, journalists would have figured out how to cover Donald Trump. They haven’t.
This is not for lack of trying. Back when newspapers delivered the news once or twice a day, reporters “worked a story,” filling in details to make it as complete as possible by deadline. Now, with our 24/7 news cycle, digitized news media, and myriad distractions, when news drops, reporters put up a quick placeholder—a few sentences on a website or live blog—and then add to it continually as the story and their understanding of it develop. The result is news dolloped out in bite-sized bits, digestible but seldom filling. Meanwhile, news outlets suffer from a journalistic version of FOMO (fear of missing out on a scoop), which can lead to their chasing dubious stories with sometimes unsettling consequences, as when multiple news outlets picked up a false report on X about Trump’s tariffs, which sent the stock market soaring and then erasing $2.4 trillion in value within half an hour.
Trump thrives in just such a context by carelessly creating chaos and a continuous loop of contradictory headlines. His former aide Steve Bannon seemed amused when he suggested in 2018 that the way to drive the media crazy was “to flood the zone with shit.” It’s a practice the humor-deficient Trump has ardently embraced.
Support your local and national outlets however you can and, as stakeholders, urge them to do better.
For a prime example, you need look no further than the staged unveiling of his tariff policies. Like a carnival barker calling out, “Step right up, ladies and gents, for the greatest tariff show on Earth!,” he teased for months about the tariffs to come, christening April 2 as “Liberation Day” and promising to divulge what they were then. That day dawned and percentages determined by a formula about as sophisticated as something scribbled on the back of an envelope were revealed to much fanfare and wall-to-wall press coverage. A few days later, some of the tariffs were imposed. A few days after that, many of them were paused, then some withdrawn, others left pending or threatened, and on (and on) it goes. With the policy changing by the hour, so did the rationales for it, leaving the media endlessly scurrying to catch up.
As the world economy tanked in response, news stories dutifully noted the justifications du jour, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s appraisal that it took “great courage” for Trump to “stay the course” as long as he did. (Most of the reciprocal tariffs lasted about 12 hours.) But the general tone of the reporting shifted, as if the media suddenly sensed that they could finally say out loud that the wannabe emperor had no clue. So I guess it is “the economy, stupid” (to cite President Bill Clinton’s aide James Carville), not civil liberties, healthcare, job security, historical accuracy, or any of the other basics, which I stupidly thought might tip the balance in reporting.
Some Good News
Tempting as it may be, the media can’t ignore what a president says. It’s unprofessional to abet the public’s ignorance. It’s also dangerous to democracy. An ill-informed populace is easily manipulated and, in regions without a local news source—in 2024, there were 206 “news deserts” in the United States, encompassing almost 55 million Americans—it’s hard to maintain a sense of community or organize to challenge bad governance. Still, amid all the chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration, the media are not defenseless. His endless efforts to undermine them attest to their continuing power and importance. Being of a practical turn of mind, I’ve culled some ideas for how to use that power from several sources and added a few of my own to come up with seven-and-a-half propositions for good journalism in the Age of Donald J. Trump.
1. Get the Story Right
If you think about it, the only thing journalists have going for them is that people believe them. Without that, their usefulness ceases to exist. So, it’s important (particularly in the Age of Trump) that they call out lies and flimflam in clear, accurate, precise, straightforward language, including in headlines. For example, Trump’s desire to turn Gaza into a golf course is ethnic cleansing, not a “plan to rebuild” Gaza, and tariffs are “import taxes,” not an incentive to reindustrialize America. It’s necessary also to keep repeating the truth in the face of lies: Immigrants, for instance, are considerably less likely to be imprisoned for crimes than U.S.-born people (though you certainly wouldn’t know that from listening to Trump and crew), and pulling funding from universities is as much about curbing antisemitism as Covid was about clearing our sinuses.
2. Supply Significance, Context, Proportion, and Consequences
Key tasks for reporters and analysts are to separate the substantial from the silly, the consequential from the sensational, and random musings from faits accomplis, then to report the hell out of the real issues, keep them prominent within the churn of news cycles, and explain why they matter. A place to begin is by giving less attention to Trump’s executive orders—aptly defined by a law professor as “just press releases with nicer stationery”—and more attention to the effects of his policies that get enacted. And while his ruminations may bear noting, they could appear, not in headlines, but on, say, page 11 (or its online equivalent), which is where The Boston Globe relegated its report of the local 100,000-strong Hands Off! protest.
3. Heed Framing
News stories are a snapshot of a specific, often fleeting moment during which reporters decide what to include, what to leave out, and what to emphasize. The problem arises when conventional thinking and herd instinct solidify those choices as the only choices. There may be just two dominant American political parties, for instance, but there are other political forces at work in the country and we’d all benefit if they weren’t covered primarily as nuisances or threats. And while gyrations of the stock market matter, they matter less to most people than gyrations in their rents or mortgages, grocery bills, or prospects for retirement.
4. Resist Euphemisms, Circumlocutions, and Normalizing the Abnormal
The term “sanewashing”—reporting Trump’s loony pronouncements as if they were lucid thoughts or comments—hasn’t been popping up much since the 2024 presidential campaign ended. It’s been replaced by the tendency of mainstream journalism to reinforce the status quo, as when the CEO of CNN instructed his staff to omit mention of Trump’s felonies and his two impeachments in their inauguration coverage. Or maybe it’s been folded into the journalistic task of trying to make sense of events—what The Atlantic‘s editor Jeffrey Goldberg called a “bias toward coherence”—which presented the schoolyard taunts about tariffs slung between Trump advisors Elon Musk and Peter Navarro as if they were serious policy discussions.
5. Lead With Empathy
They’re called news stories for a reason. As cheap as tug-the-heartstrings journalism can be, readers, listeners, and viewers pay attention to stories about people, especially when they’re like them. So, while USAID staff getting locked out of their offices by Elon Musk’s DOGE may not resonate with many Americans, parents whose kids are locked out of daycare because its funding was cut by Musk, a billionaire father of perhaps more children than he can keep track of, probably will.
6. Control the Message
Here’s the central messaging thing about Trump: He’s remarkably skilled at lassoing any discussion, any topic he brings up, and holding onto it. That means the media, whose relationship with politicians should be inherently adversarial, all too often starts out on the defensive if it tries to hold him accountable for his words and deeds. Of course, he never apologizes, never takes responsibility for anything, never rules anything out, and never admits to error or failure. Instead, when he says something outlandish and gets called on it, he doubles down and dispatches his minions to repeat and embellish it. The media then amplify and discuss it, as if it were actual governance, rather than gibberish, whim, or theatrics. Which means that we get stories about what Trump said and then stories about the stories about what he said, and on and on until he comes up with a new distraction.
7. Be Creative, Adventuresome, and Strategic, and Always, Always Stick up for Each Other
This is hardly the first time the press has faced government hostility, and the American news media have struggled for years to overcome skepticism and win over tough audiences. Trade publications, podcasts, newsletters, and other independent and niche outlets fill some gaps and help engage not-so-obvious audiences, but standing up to power can be a very lonely task. In a time when even Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski admits to being scared, self-censorship can seem like an all too appealing choice. So it’s essential for other journalists to unite to resist unfair restrictions on any journalist, as even Newsmax and Fox News did against Trump’s treatment of AP. Journalists can also highlight the courage of their colleagues to let them know they’re not alone.
Of course, just about all of the above costs money, so my final nudge is not to journalists but to those of us who value good journalism. Support your local and national outlets however you can and, as stakeholders, urge them to do better. For all the deserved criticism of the American media, they remain one of the strongest pillars propping up what’s left of democracy in a time that’s been anything but good for the First Amendment. We can’t afford to let them topple.
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5 Ways Trump's Order to Eliminate NPR and PBS Is an Assault on American Democracy
The president's ongoing attacks on a free press are part of the administration’s concerted efforts to shut down journalism that displeases him.
May 02, 2025
Late Thursday night, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aiming to eliminate federal funding for NPR and PBS. As a rationale for the move, the White House also released a so-called “fact sheet” detailing what it claims is evidence of “left-wing propaganda.”
Even if that were true—and it’s not—any government attempt to silence the press based on viewpoint is plainly unconstitutional. Expect this latest Trump order to face a comprehensive legal challenge, similar to other successful efforts in the courts to block illegal actions from the administration.
Trump’s ongoing attacks on public media are part of the administration’s concerted efforts to shut down journalism that displeases the president. Too often commercial outlets, including those controlled by conglomerates like Disney (ABC) and Paramount (CBS), are caving to official pressure, putting their profits before their democratic principles. This is why an independent, publicly funded noncommercial media system—one that holds power accountable—is essential to healthy democracies around the world.
If we care about democracy, we should spend more—not less—on public media.
Here are five ways this latest Trump order is an assault on democracy in the United States.
1. Serious First Amendment Concerns
The White House made it clear that it’s taking this action based on Trump’s unfounded claims about coverage from NPR and PBS. This most thin-skinned of presidents has made it his job—and that of his lapdog censor at the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Brendan Carr—to threaten and intimidate any news outlet that challenges, or even questions, his 100-day power grab. With this latest move, he’s taking it one step further, pushing to defund and destroy any public media outlet that doesn’t service his authoritarian agenda. Yet the First Amendment very clearly and succinctly prohibits the government from making any laws (and by extension, any executive orders) “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
2. Goes Against the Will of the American People
In poll after poll, people of all political stripes say that federal support for NPR and PBS is taxpayer money “well spent.” In other polling, Americans find PBS to be the most-trusted U.S. institution, with 63 percent of respondents expressing “a great deal of trust” or “some trust” in the network. The same survey found PBS is the “most-trusted news network” in the country. To eliminate funding for these media institutions clearly goes against the will of the majority of Americans—and that's not the way a democracy is supposed to function.
3. Undermines a Democratic Society
“Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the United States impoverishes its public media infrastructures,” writes professor Victor Pickard, co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Media, Inequality, and Change Center (and Free Press' board chair). Pickard should know. In 2021, he co-authored a global survey with Professor Timothy Neff, which found that more robust funding for public media strengthens a given country’s democracy—with deeper public knowledge about civic affairs, more diverse media coverage and lower levels of extremist views. If we care about democracy, we should spend more—not less—on public media.
4. Expands Local “News Deserts,” Cutting Communities Off From Information They Need to Participate in Civic Life
As local newsrooms downsize or outright shut down, public-media stations fill a void. Penny Abernathy, at University of North Carolina's Center for Media Law and Policy, has extensively documented the spread of news deserts across the country. Local newspapers are closing at an exponential rate, and many local radio stations have hollowed out their newsrooms and replaced programming with nationally syndicated talk formats, often hosted by far-right figures. The expansion of news deserts across the country is a democratic issue with profound implications for our communities. Local NPR and PBS stations often provide the only local news in countless communities—and provide lifesaving information during emergencies.
The expansion of news deserts across the country is a democratic issue with profound implications for our communities.
5. An Attempted End-Run Around Congress
Congress—not the president—has the power to craft our federal budget. While the president makes spending proposals, Congress ultimately considers, amends and approves them. The nation’s founderscreated the system in this way to specifically put federal spending outside of this sort of control. With this executive order, Trump is attempting to short-circuit this long-established check against runaway executive power.
With the right-leaning composition of Congress, few expect GOP lawmakers to speak out against Trump's move. But past Republican-led efforts to zero out funding for public broadcasting have met fierce opposition from people across the country who are ready to pick up their phones, call their representatives and senators, and tell them to save public media.
“All of us who care about an independent press, an informed populace, a responsive government and a thriving democracy have a stake in the outcome of this fight,” says my colleague Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press. “If we unite to defend public media—and I believe we can and will prevail—then we might just save our democracy, too.”
He's exactly right.
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Defenders of Public Media Vow Fight Against Trump Assault on 'Cherished' NPR and PBS
"NPR and PBS aren't perfect. But they, and more importantly the hundreds of public stations across the country, are vital to a healthy democracy," wrote on journalist.
Apr 15, 2025
A leader of the advocacy group Free Press Action Fund, the 501(c)(4) arm of Free Press, on Monday denounced a plan by the Trump administration to reportedly ask Congress to take back more than $1 billion in already approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the congressionally funded and created company that supports public media in the United States.
The request to yank CPB funding, which would impact the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), National Public Radio (NPR), and their local member stations across the country, will be part of a broader package to rescind already approved funds and is also expected to impact funding for the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Institute of Peace, according to Politico, which cited an anonymous White House official.
Congress had already approved $535 million in federal spending for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. If Congress agrees to the White House's request, the decrease in funding will tally about two years worth of CPB funding, nearly all of which goes to public broadcasters such as NPR and PBS, according to The New York Times.
The Trump administration plans to submit a rescission request in the coming weeks, according to the Times, which anonymously quoted two people briefed on the plan. According to Politico, to approve the request, the ask would need to clear the House and the Senate, which are both Republican-controlled, by only a simple majority vote.
Free Press Action co-CEO Jessica J. González, reacted to the news in a statement Monday: "The Trump White House may not like public media—and that's no surprise given the president's frequent attacks on any journalism that holds his administration and its cabal of billionaires accountable. But Trump's views are out of step with those of the majority of Americans, who overwhelmingly support federal funding for public media."
According to a Pew Research Center survey from March, Americans are more likely to support rather than oppose continued federal funding for NPR and PBS. Twenty-four percent of U.S. adults say Congress should remove government funding from NPR and PBS, 43% say NPR and PBS should continue receiving federal funding, and 33% say they are unsure.
"President Trump and his loyalists want to take another cherished public service away from the American people," González said. "We will ensure that members of Congress will hear a similar outcry in the coming days and weeks, and encourage people to, in-person, tell their elected representatives and senators to support public broadcasting as they return home to face constituents over spring recess."
According to the Times, PBS gets about 15% of its budget from federal funding. NPR has said only 1% of its funding comes from federal sources, but its individual member stations would be more heavily impacted by a reduction in CPB funding.
PBS and NPR have been in the Trump administration's crosshairs for months. In late January, the Republican Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr launched an investigation into NPR and PBS. In March, leaders from NPR and PBS were summoned to testify before the U.S. House Oversight Committee's Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee. Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who chairs that subcommittee, concluded the hearing by saying that Republicans on the committee will call for the "complete and total defund and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."
On Monday, the Trump White House published an article arguing that taxpayers have been subsidizing NPR and PBS even though the they have been spreading "radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'" The release included examples of the alleged propaganda.
Former "Here and Now" co-host Jeremy Hobson reacted with dismay on Monday to the news that Trump wants to yank funding for the CPB.
"As someone who has worked in public broadcasting since I was a kid, and has always tried to be factual and fair, this makes me sad. NPR and PBS aren't perfect. But they, and more importantly the hundreds of public stations across the country, are vital to a healthy democracy," he wrote on X.
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