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ON MONDAY, AS DONALD TRUMP openly thumbed his nose at the courts over the Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation, he also escalated his war on the First Amendment and the press. The White House defied a federal court order to admit Associated Press reporters and photographers to press events despite the AP’s refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.” (On Tuesday, the AP was admitted to a minor White House event but not allowed into the press pool—a Pyrrhic victory sealed when the White House eliminated, on the same day, the pool’s guaranteed wire-service spot.) Meanwhile, Trump himself posted an unhinged social media rant threatening retribution against CBS for running reports on his Greenland-grabbing ambitions and on the war in Ukraine. He declared, yet again, that “they should lose their license!” He also urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to “impose maximum fines and punishments.”
The tirade was a brazen display of Trump’s nakedly authoritarian mentality and utter contempt for the First Amendment. But it also has a small silver lining: The very fact that Trump is raging on Truth Social shows that he hasn’t been successful in actually bending the mainstream media to his will.
So far.
CBS is an important test case as one of the first media outlets to become a target of Trump’s wrath. Days before the election, on November 1, 2024, Trump sued 60 Minutes for $10 billion—later upped to $20 billion—charging that the program had engaged in fraud and “voter interference” by deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris to conceal her incoherence and boost her campaign. He reiterated this charge in his Truth Social screed, even though the claim is absurd—as we now know for a fact thanks to Trump himself. When CBS released the full transcript of the original interview at his demand, it confirmed that 60 Minutes had engaged in perfectly normal edits and there was no nefarious concealment. Nonetheless, in February, there were reports that CBS was in negotiations to settle, partly because its parent company, Paramount, believes a resolution to the lawsuit would ease FCC approval for a merger with the Skydance entertainment company.
The network’s staff and leadership are said to be firmly opposed to any settlement; in early March, CBS moved to have the lawsuit dismissed, properly arguing that it was “an affront to the First Amendment and . . . without basis in law or fact.” Unfortunately, Paramount, is apparently still seeking mediation, due in part to pressure from controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, who stands to make a windfall from the merger—and who has a friendly relationship with Trump.
The good news: So far, CBS has pulled no punches whatsoever in its coverage of the Trump administration. In addition to the Greenland report that so infuriated Trump and the Ukraine segment that featured an interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, the network has provided extensive and aggressive coverage of the deportations of migrants to El Salvador, including the lawless deportation of Abrego Garcia. For now, at least, there is no sign that Trump’s bullying tactics have had any effect on the network.
THE WASHINGTON POST IS ANOTHER outlet where some of the fears generated by early alarm signals of Trump appeasement have arguably not been borne out. The signals were indeed alarming. In early January, Pulitzer Prize-winning Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after the paper refused to run her cartoon showing tech and media tycoons—including Post owner Jeff Bezos—bringing sacks of money as offerings to an idol of Trump, a reference to the billionaires’ contributions to Trump’s inauguration. For what it’s worth, then-opinions editor Dave Shipley asserted the decision was based on “repetition bias,” since the Post had already run a column on the same subject and planned to run a satirical text item as well.
But less than two months later, on February 26, Shipley himself resigned after Bezos announced a “significant shift” to the paper’s opinion pages: a focus on “personal liberties and free markets” and the exclusion of “viewpoints opposing those pillars.” In another two weeks, Shipley was followed by veteran Post columnist and editor Ruth Marcus, who quit after her column questioning Bezos’s edict was spiked, supposedly because it was too “speculative” about the paper’s future direction.
This is clearly not a great look for the Post, which lost 75,000 digital subscribers in just the first two days after Bezos’s announcement—on top of the 300,000 or so it had lost in 2024 after refusing to make an endorsement in the election. While “personal liberties and free markets” are excellent principles, a directive to exclude “opposing” viewpoints seems like a prescription to shut down dissent, especially since these principles can be broadly and flexibly construed.
But, of course, the real concern has been that Bezos’s directive represented a step toward Trumpification. It’s not that Trumpian populism is so staunchly devoted to personal liberties and free markets (you could make a strong case that the Bezos party line should exclude pieces defending Trump’s tariffs and deportations!); the problem is the implied message that the Post was distancing itself from left-wing viewpoints.
That remains a valid concern. And yet it also bears stating that at least so far, the Washington Post shows no signs of playing nice with Trump. There is certainly no such trend on the opinions pages, as a look at six days’ worth of headlines shows. Nor has the news division backed off hard-hitting scrutiny of the administration. The Post has had excellent coverage of the workings of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” and its bulldozer-like rampage through the federal government. The paper just busted DOGE’s efforts to obtain access to sensitive data and internal systems at the Social Security Administration in circumvention of a court order. It has also exposed the Trump administration’s aggressive moves across federal agencies to use normally protected personal data to track down and harass immigrants—among other things, to move the Social Security numbers of thousands of paroled immigrants into the agency’s “death database” and to kick citizens and permanent residents out of public housing if even one person in their household is an unauthorized immigrant. And it has been no less diligent in covering the administration’s ham-fisted efforts to combat “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” such as the removal of nearly 400 books—including Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings—from the Naval Academy library.
In other words: The fear that the new era announced by Bezos meant that the Post would no longer be living up to its “Democracy Dies in Darkness” motto has not come to pass.
SO CAN WE ALL breathe a sigh of relief? Should the people who sounded the alarm about journalism on bended knee apologize for crying wolf?
Not really. Or at least, not yet.
Bezos’s effort to cultivate a cozy relationship with Trump, for instance, is a known fact—as attested by the surge of Trump content at his flagship company, Amazon. In March, Amazon Prime Video started streaming The Apprentice, the 2000s reality show that enabled Trump’s political rise. (Trump has expressed enthusiasm; in addition to the ego-stroking, he almost certainly gets financial benefits.) Amazon is also making a “behind-the-scenes” Melania Trump documentary to be released later this year, with the First Lady executive-producing and collecting a reported $28 million fee. Who’s to say that this Trump/Bezos coziness won’t eventually result in subtle pressures on the Post to dial down the Trump negativity?
Likewise, CBS is definitely not out of the woods. Even its interest in a settlement is a bad portent, given the virtually universal agreement that Trump’s lawsuit lacks all merit and is unwinnable. Any settlement would come across as an apology for doing normal journalism—and cast a chill on other media. However unlikely it is that Trump can get the FCC to punish a network for what is clearly protected speech, litigation can accomplish what regulation can’t.
There are mixed signals from other corporate media as well. CNN CEO Mark Thompson just told the Financial Times that CNN must cover the government in an “accurate [and] fair-minded” way and shouldn’t shy away from “holding power to account”; however, he also warned journalists against thinking that it’s part of their job to “oppose political forces as such.” (A fine position to take in a normal political environment; but in 2025, is it possible to “hold power to account” without opposing some political forces?) For what it’s worth, Thompson also strongly defended AP in its standoff with Trump.
So far, so good? Maybe. According to a long report by Michael Wolff in New York magazine, CNN’s parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery, has also “reached out to the Trump orbit seeking advice about how the company might advantageously interact with the White House and improve its Trump-age odor.” The response, apparently, was that Don Jr. “might like a hunting and fishing show on the Discovery Channel”—and “CNN could have more pro-Trump voices.” WBD CEO David Zaslav, as profiled by Wolff, is a good liberal who doesn’t particularly look forward to “a face-off with this president” and prefers to spout bien pensant platitudes like “Journalism is fighting for the best version of the truth” while bromancing Elon Musk.
How does the future look? Could Trump eventually bring the press to heel as Vladimir Putin did in Russia, where owners of troublesome media such as the NTV television network were threatened with prosecution for financial malfeasance and strong-armed into selling their assets to the Kremlin’s crony capitalists? That seems unthinkable: Our enfeebled guardrails are still vastly stronger than the ones existing in Russia when Putin took power. But in Trump’s second term, the unthinkable cannot be ruled out. Besides, what outright thuggery accomplished in Russia, mercenary interests and cowardice may accomplish in the United States.
The ultimate outcome of Trump’s war on the mainstream media depends on many things, including how strong Trump is perceived to be. But it also depends on public reaction—especially since it’s probably true that some of the Trump appeasement is probably also driven by the belief that the public is put off by left-wing media bias. Media executives need to see that Americans are even more put off by the spectacle of the press genuflecting to Trump. In particular, if it looks like CBS is prepared to cave and settle its lawsuit, we should see a massive public shaming campaign, including protests outside CBS headquarters. That’s our First Amendment rights, not just theirs, that CBS would be flushing down the toilet.
But public pressure should also be smart. Not everything that looks like a possible media nod to Trump is a betrayal of journalism. Alarm signals such as the ones at the Post must be taken seriously, but we should also wait and see how media organizations actually cover Trump and the Trump administration before accusing them of betrayal and subservience. Even Bill Maher, who certainly deserves to be mocked for being so impressed by the fact that Trump, like many sociopathic con men, can charm people and tell them what they want to hear, also deserves a chance to show that his dinner with Donald hasn’t made him any less willing to go after Trump.
Be vigilant. But don’t freak out, and don’t treat allies like enemies.
Great Job Cathy Young & the Team @ The Bulwark Source link for sharing this story.
