“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Of all the items listed in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson believed a free press was among the most important, because later, as the great news reporter and host of CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite, argued: “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”
Related
Donald Trump threatens to end trans rights on “day one” in terrifying speech
He promised to wipe out trans rights with sweeping orders when he takes office.
In autocracies throughout the world and throughout time, a free and fair press was the first social institution to face the chopping block when it ever existed in the first place.
Dive deeper every day
Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues
Subscribe to our Newsletter today
Author and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus wrote, “A free press can, of course, be both good and bad, but, most certainly, without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”
Thomas Jefferson expressed his views on the topic in several letters, explaining that a truthful free press serves the essential function of a watchdog to inform citizens and keep them involved in government affairs. He clearly understood, though, that this could only occur if the press committed to accuracy in reporting.
In a 1787 letter to Edward Carrington (1748 – 1810), Jefferson wrote that he preferred “newspapers without government” to “government without newspapers.”
Throughout his life, however, his letters and other writings exposed an increasing concern and mistrust in the blatant inaccuracy in some media of his time.
He expressed his frustration in a letter to John Norvell, a newspaper editor and one of the first senators from Michigan, on June 11, 1807: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,” he complained. “Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors.”
Jefferson, though, continued to believe in at least the potential of a free and fair press and its demise within authoritarianism or monarchies. In an 1804 letter to John Tyler, the eventual 10th President of the United States, Jefferson wrote, “The most effectual hitherto found [freedom] is the freedom of the press. it is therefore the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.”
Jefferson could have been staring into a crystal ball, watching the future play out in front of him.
Donald Trump threatened the media during a wide-ranging and often meandering recent press conference held at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump felt emboldened following his victory in settling a defamation lawsuit against ABC News and its parent company, Gannett, in the sum of $15 million toward his presidential foundation.
Trump sued ABC for defamation after anchor George Stephanolopous said that Trump had been “found liable for rape” during a March 10, 2024, on-air interview with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
The jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexual abuse against the writer E. Jean Carroll. The sexual abuse claim included the allegation that Trump forced his fingers inside Carroll against her will. The federal judge who presided over the case later wrote, “The jury implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll.”
ABC, however, decided not to contest the lawsuit against in order to move on.
At the Mar-a-lago press conference, Trump enumerated some of the additional media outlets he would go after. He announced his plans to sue the Des Moines Register, the newspaper of note in Iowa. He accused the pollster J. Ann Selzer of saying he would lose by a few point after other Iowa surveys reported that he would win the state “by 20 points.” He eventually led Harris in Iowa by 13 points.
In a pot calling the kettle moment, Trump asserted: “In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference,” he said, adding, “We’ll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.”
In addition, he charged that “ABC and CNN failed to air my victory speech, and I think they should have their broadcast licenses taken away.”
Trump sued journalist Bob Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster in January 2023, claiming Woodward publicly released interview recordings made for Woodward’s book Rage without Trump’s permission. Trump argued at the press conference that Woodward “didn’t quote me properly from the tapes,” and he claimed Woodward “sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do.”
Trump said he also plans to sue CBS and its 60 Minutes program for its interview with Kamala Harris and its assertions against Trump, as well as the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding the New York Times and The Washington Post in 2018 for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Responding to his current and pending suits against the media, Trump said, “I feel I have to do this,” and added, “It costs a lot of money [for me] to do it but we have to straighten out the press.”
Trump’s litigious actions are notorious in his pressure campaigns to threaten and undermine the financial solvency of institutions. During his first Reich, 2017-2020, Trump sued CNN, The Washington Post and the New York Times numerous times. He employed this practice before and after his presidency, suing journalists, publishers, and major outlets for coverage he didn’t like.
Throughout his business career and into his presidency – while simultaneously vilifying the courts – Trump used lawsuits as a means of intimidation to get his way and to vanquish his opposition. He continually threatens to employ libel laws to sue the “crooked and lying” media. We will most likely see more of these threats emerging from Trump’s newest Ministry of Propaganda (a.k.a. White House Office of Communications).
While the major media outlets have the privilege and ability to stand up to Trump’s coercion, some of the smaller organizations that run on very tight budgets and depend on volunteers have no such privileges. For many of these smaller outlets, even the threat of a harassing lawsuit has resulted in self-censorship or even bankruptcy.
Big lies & strongmen
Even before many of the ballots were counted in the 2018 midterm elections, and a few hours before the Trump White House announced the forced retirement of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump held one of his increasingly rare official press conferences in front of the assembled media.
Though he was willing and relatively able to directly answer some of the reporters’ softball questions, such as his impressions of the results, he rarely, if ever, allowed people to complete their questioning before he interrupted by either diverting into a topic he wished to address or hurling unhinged insults and threats.
And, as per his style, he accused anyone and everyone but himself for all problems. He blamed former President Obama for Russia’s march into and annexation of Crimea and, therefore, seemed to justify his not confronting Putin on the illegal invasion.
Every hour of every day, Trump tosses into the press pool a worthless nugget of sparkling fool’s gold or shiny mica as diversionary and distracting lures to reporters whom he sees as hungry and eager hunters for scoops and meager scraps of breaking news. Often, these lures include attacks on the media itself.
At the press conference (a.k.a. ranting tantrum) on November 7, 2018 , Trump accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of being “a rude, terrible person” for pressing him on why he refers to asylum seeking hundreds of miles from the southern border as “an invasion.”
After NBC’s Peter Alexander defended Acosta, Trump told Alexander, “I’m not a big fan of yours. Just sit down, please.” He also demanded that Urban Radio’s April Ryan sit down when she tried to direct a question.
Yamiche Alcindor, a White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, stood up and asked whether Trump’s frequent embrace of the term “nationalist” was a nod or a dog whistle to “white nationalism,” as many of the President’s detractors claim. Trump erupted once again: “That’s such a racist question,” he charged. “What you just said is so insulting to me. It’s a very terrible thing that you said.”
Trump has constructed a false dichotomy with “nationalist” on one end and “globalist” on the other. Throughout his runs for the White House and up until today, he has been very deliberate when screaming into his bully bullhorn in his adoption of the term “nationalist” over “patriot.” The former term traditionally refers to an extremist form of white national identity or jingoism.
On the right-wing side of the dictatorial strongman’s political spectrum, we find the philosophy and practice of fascism. While also deployed as an epithet by some, fascism developed as a form of radical authoritarian nationalism in early-20th-century Europe in response to liberalism and Marxism on the left.
Philosopher Umberto Eco, who grew up under the fascist Mussolini regime, enumerates the characteristics of what he calls “Ur-Fascism,” or “Eternal Fascism” in 14 “typical” features. He stressed, “These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
Trump fulfills most of Eco’s tenets of fascism. For example, “the cult of tradition” (Make America Great Again), “the rejection of modernism” (globalism), “disagreement is treason” (no comment needed), “fear of difference” (ditto), “obsession with a plot” (“it’s a witch hunt,” “Democrat election fraud”), “machismo,” and others.
Throughout his political campaigns, Donald Trump has energized his base of supporters by consistently blaming and attacking the media as a whole as well as specific outlets.
A very brief sampling includes:
“[Journalists are] among the most dishonest human beings on earth.” He continually calls them “liars” whenever they write stories unflattering to him and his administration.
“The failing New York Times wrote a big, long front-page story yesterday. And it was very much discredited, as you know.”
Trump continued to describe the New York Times as “failing” even though subscriptions for this newspaper of note rose by 2.5 million alone between the November 2016 election and through Trump’s first Reich.
Donald Trump apparently does not understand how his bombastic style of presentation affects his relationships with the media and with his constituents, but he accuses the press of creating a confrontational climate.
“And I’ll tell you what else I see [in the media]. I see tone. You know the word tone [he said sarcastically]. The tone is such hatred. I’m really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is — I do get good ratings, you have to admit that — the tone is such hatred.”
Trump admitted that he actually likes and has been positively energized by his feud with the media. “I will be honest. I sort of enjoy this back and forth, and I have all my life, but I have never seen more dishonest people than frankly the political media.”
Trump’s first White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, had the decency to resign after all his blatant lies, like the inauguration crowd size and the administration’s denial of having met with Russian diplomats before the inauguration, to his factual blunders, like saying Hitler never used chemical weapons on his own people, to his obvious abuse and hatred of the White House press corps.
After Spicer’s resignation, we were stuck with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the mean girl we all had to endure in middle school, who continually violated her vow to uphold her Evangelical Christian beliefs by seriously disobeying the 9th Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” She constantly lied through her teeth.
At press conferences, Trump tells reporters to “sit down” when they ask questions he doesn’t like, and he speaks of a “running war” with the media. He has even accused “freedom of the press” for causing terrorist bombings in the U.S.
His chief political strategist, former editor of the alt-right mouthpiece Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, severely castigated the press by calling it “the opposition party.”
“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” argued Bannon in 2017. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
In October 2016, just before the presidential election and in themidst of this contentious atmosphere in which Trump continually attempted to delegitimize the media, a video went viral showing two Trump supporters shouting “Lügenpresse” (German for “lying press”).
The German author Reinhold Anton coined the term in 1914 primarily in a foreign context to refer to “enemy propaganda.” The Nazis later popularized Lügenpresse to silence opposition to the regime.
Adolf Hitler said: “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.” And also, “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”
Like other authoritarians, Trump (encapsulated in his alt-right, alt-facts, alt-universe) uses Machiavellian tactics to advance his career, enact his policies, and enhance his power. To Trump, the ends certainly justify the means, no matter who gets hurt.
While the United States Constitution created three independent government branches, our “Fourth Estate” stands (or falls) more vulnerable and susceptible than the other three. Our very democracy depends on a free and independent press. Without it, authoritarianism wins, and democracy fails.
Unfortunately, Trump sees his “running war” with the media as a veritable Game of Thrones in which “to the victor goes the spoils.”
But back in 1799, Thomas Jefferson asked us to continue in the pursuit of truth despite the risks.
“To preserve the freedom of the human mind… and freedom of the press,” he wrote, “every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.