Two days before Donald Trump was re-elected president, he told rallygoers that he wouldn’t mind if somebody shot through a crowd of journalists. Some of his supporters laughed a bit, some cheered. It was typical fare.
The same weekend, Trump called journalists “monsters” and “horrible, horrible, dishonest people.” In the past, he has cheered a journalist shot with a rubber bullet as a “beautiful sight;” he heaped adoration on a candidate who body-slammed a reporter. In 2018, he declared the “fake news” media to be the “enemy of the people.”
Trump—as he has made clear again and again—disdains the press. And that hatred has consequences. He has launched legal challenges against outlets whose coverage he deems unfavorable, mocked journalists, and picked an obsequious Federal Communications Commission nominee ready to help him do as he pleases.
So how should journalists and news consumers prepare for another four years of attacks on the free press from Trump and his administration?
I called media critic and journalist Margaret Sullivan to get her take. Sullivan, who previously worked as the public editor for the New York Times and the media columnist for the Washington Post, writes a weekly column for the Guardian and for her Substack, “American Crisis.” She is also the executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School. We spoke via Zoom at the end of December.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited.
What are the main threats that the press should be worried about as we head toward a second Trump term?
I figured a second term would be worse. A lot of the guardrails are down; he has his own team in place at the FBI and at the Justice Department.
But then it started to look even a little worse. ABC News chose to settle with Trump a defamation suit centered on the E. Jean Carroll case against him. It worries me that ABC—which is owned by Disney—did not mount a strong defense. And we’re seeing the results of this, I think, already: Trump is suing the Des Moines Register for a poll that they did during the campaign that wasn’t favorable to him. But it was a legitimate poll by a very legitimate pollster.
I think one of the things that I really worry about the most is that news organizations are going to self-censor, and they’re going to hurt themselves by not having a strong spine and enough courage to say, “No, we’re going to hold fast here. We’re going to defend our reporters, and we’re going to defend our speech and press rights.”
Given that news organizations typically do not settle defamation suits like that, what do you think is Trump’s intent by filing so many lawsuits against them?
It’s always a dubious proposition to put yourself inside Donald Trump’s head—I haven’t wanted to be there, honestly. But I think it is an effort to intimidate. Certainly, he would love to have one of these cases find its way to the Supreme Court, where there is probably some sympathy for changing the precedent that has protected news organizations for a long time. It’s really hard to successfully sue for defamation against a public figure. In order to win that kind of case, what has to be proved is reckless disregard for the truth or malicious intent. Journalists may make mistakes, and they do make mistakes, but they’re not purposefully telling lies. So that has been a really important protection.
I’ve had a long career in journalism. I started out typing on a manual typewriter. When I became the editor of my hometown paper in Buffalo, New York, we had various lawsuits. People love to sue the press. We never settled a single case. And in the whole time I was editor, which was almost 13 years, we never lost a case. That is because we stood steady. To see that getting diminished, it’s really worrisome.
Billionaires seem to be increasingly wielding control over the free flow of information that’s critical of Trump. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, killed that paper’s editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, for example; Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times, reportedly did the same. What did you make of this—were you surprised by their actions, or do you think that this is what happens when billionaires run news organizations?
I was really surprised. I think it has to do with their billionaire ownership. I don’t think that when the Washington Post was owned by the Graham family that would ever have happened.
As for the LA Times, it’s odd to see Patrick Soon-Shiong’s moves. I mean, he is talking about putting a so-called AI-powered “bias meter” on stories to say this story leans left or right.
If I were a journalist at that paper just trying to write stories or write editorials or do my job, it would be extremely dispiriting to have the owner intruding that way. There’s no other way to put it: This is interfering with editorial independence. It’s really disturbing.
When I was at the Washington Post, which was up until 2022, Bezos really was very hands-off. He allowed the journalists to run the paper. That was great. I think some of that probably had to do with the fact that Marty Baron, the legendary editor of the Post at the time, was a very strong personality. He didn’t really have any problem keeping Bezos at bay. But in this new era, it seems to be a completely different story. I know a lot of people there are really upset. If you could leave and go someplace good, you probably would at this point.
Do you think that Trump is a unique threat to the press, or is there a comparable historic precedent? I thought it was really striking when multiple press freedom groups issued warnings a couple of days after the election. What did you make of that?
He’s one of a kind. I think there are plenty of others who could be problematic for the press, but Trump is particularly worrisome because of his strong personality, because of the way he has this cult-like following. Everyone just seems to sort of accept what he says at face value, and because he has made it a part of his persona—part of his political persona—to pursue the press and to threaten the press. Many years ago now, he told Lesley Stahl of CBS News that the reason he attacks the press is “to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”
I think that he has actually been very successful in turning the public—some sections of the public, a good chunk of it—against the press. Trust is down. It was down anyway, but it’s even further down.
I remember when I was at the Post and I was doing some reporting in a very red district of New York state, I introduced myself to somebody I was trying to interview, and his immediate response was, “Oh, so fake news, right?” I think that’s a very common response now. And I don’t mean to say for one second that I think that you journalists do a perfect job or that they’re completely unbiased—I mean, that’s not the case. But the journalists that I know are really trying to do good work, and they’re really trying to do their job of being the eyes and ears of the public and hold power to account.
Just a couple of days before the election, Trump made a comment at a rally saying that he’d be okay with someone shooting through a crowd of journalists. How should people take those comments? Should we take them literally? And even if not, what kind of damage does he do by seemingly encouraging violence against journalists?
I think that part of what happens when democracies are backsliding—and that is definitely happening in the United States—is that there’s this call to violence, not only against journalists, but in general. You’ve seen a lot of that from Trump, calling for or seeming to support violent acts, and that’s a part of his appeal. It’s strange to say, but it’s absolutely a part of his message. When he talks about shooting journalists, or whatever sort of group he’s going after—and certainly his political rivals, he said similar kinds of things about—it’s really troubling.
I don’t think that you have to take it literally to be worried about it. But then again, you know, Trump himself has been the victim of two assassination attempts. And we’re in a very violent culture—I mean, all these school shootings and all of this gun violence. It’s increasingly unleashed by a president who talks that way. I think it’s very concerning.
How concerned are you about the failure of the PRESS Act to pass this session of Congress, which would have created a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to disclose their sources to the government? Do you think Trump will try to force journalists to reveal confidential sources?
Over the years, I’ve had various feelings about such a law. But I’ve come to feel we really need a federal shield law so that journalists can protect their sources. The fact that it was stopped—basically by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)—is really unfortunate.
I think that there is going to be an effort to have journalists reveal their sources. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the courts—because the courts have in some cases become populated by people who have been appointed by Trump. The PRESS Act would have helped. I don’t think it’s dead. It’s not going to happen right now, but it’s something that we’re going to need.
How concerned are you about the role Elon Musk could play in further undermining trust in, and facilitating attacks on, the media, given that he has promoted “citizen journalism” as “vastly superior to legacy media journalism,” admitted that X limits the reach of posts with links, and allowed election disinformation to run rampant in the so-called “election integrity community” on X?
He’s clearly a problematic figure. He’s almost playing the role of a shadow president. He’s at Trump’s side a lot. He seems to influence him a lot.
But there’s no reason he should be so influential. All you have to do is look at what has happened with Twitter—which, although it had its faults in the past, really did play an important role in terms of being sort of a public square for information. And it’s been very compromised by Elon Musk’s ownership. The squelching of news because posts that have a link to a news story, the way that the algorithm, or whatever it is that’s at work, is elevating the voices of people who lean very far right—in some cases, there’s hate speech; in some cases, there’s white supremacists or even neo-Nazis running rampant.
When he bought Twitter, he was talking about free speech and how he was the ultimate free speech champion. But that has not turned out to be the case. Free speech doesn’t mean that every piece of violence or hateful propaganda should be given a megaphone. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.
Are there other threats to the press in the Trump era that you think people aren’t paying attention to that they should be?
One of the things that’s always on my mind—and this came up in the Obama administration and then again in the Trump administration—is the use of the Espionage Act to go after leaks.
Reality Winner, who leaked an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 election to the Intercept, was not a journalist. She was a source. But she got a very harsh prison sentence because the Trump administration wanted to make an example of somebody who had leaked classified information. The information that she leaked was important, and she did it—I think, it seems—as a patriotic act. Yet she was treated very harshly. I think the use of the Espionage Act is something that worries me a lot. That is a 100-year-old law that was never intended to go after journalists, but it has been used to go after sources. And I worry that it will be used to go after journalists, too. We’ve seen some of that, and I’m afraid that will ramp up.
How can media consumers fight back against Trump’s attempts to undermine trust in the press?
First of all, they should not tune out. There is a really strong urge, I think, among people who believe in democracy and who are concerned to say, “I just can’t take it. I’m going to just watch Netflix and watch sports and concentrate on my family.” And those things are all fine, and I do those, too. But I think it’s really important to not tune the news out—to still find news sources that you find credible and believable.
I think it’s really important for people to support their local news organizations—whether that’s a local nonprofit, whether it’s a radio station, whether it’s their local newspaper. And I know people say, “Oh, my local newspaper is owned by a private equity company, I have no desire to support them.” But there’s a push and pull there, because part of what you’re supporting is the reporters who are at the city council meeting or the school board meeting.
I would say: Stay tuned in, support voices and organizations that you think are doing a good job, try to nurture and support local journalism, and don’t lose heart. Don’t throw up your hands. We have to stay engaged as citizens. It is pretty discouraging right now, but there are ways to fight back. The US has had a lot of tough times in the past and has come through them, and I hope—and I have some level of confidence that our country, our democracy is going to be strong enough to endure these challenges.
