Check out any bookseller online. There’s a “how-to” book for everything you might want to imagine, including: how to bake bread, knit socks, draw calligraphy, set up a wood shop or grow food anywhere.
And somewhere, I’m convinced, there’s also a “how-to” book on becoming an autocrat. First step: silence and control the media. It’s the playbook successfully used by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin. And it’s the same playbook used today by Donald Trump.
Trump’s relationship with the media is complicated. He is partly a creation of the media. He wouldn’t be where he is today — he’d be remembered only as a New York developer — had he not first been lionized by New York tabloid society pages, and later awarded by NBC with 14 years on national television as host of “The Apprentice.”
But once he jumped into politics, Trump turned on the very people who made him. As a candidate and as president, he attacked the media as “fake news.” He called them “the enemy of the people.” He attacked reporters covering his campaign rallies to the point where some news outlets provided reporters with security. He blamed the media for not declaring him the winner in 2020. And, as candidate for reelection in 2024, he vowed to get even with those in the media who had not treated him “fairly.” Translation: those who had not repeated his lies.
Promise made, promise kept. Trump has, in effect, declared war on the media. As if that’s not bad enough, he’s also doing so with the help of many leaders inside the media world. Indeed, the media today is under greater attack, from within and without, than at any other time in our history since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
From within, nobody’s done more to undermine the independence of the media than Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post, Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. Even before Trump had taken the oath of office, all three bent the knee to Trump, and are now doing his dirty work for him. Bezos and Soon-Shiong killed editorials endorsing Kamala Harris. Zuckerberg jetted to Mar-a-Lago to dine with Trump, killed Facebook’s fact-checking feature, welcomed Trump back to the platform and handed him a check for $1 million.
With their support, Trump’s moved from merely criticizing the media to clipping their wings. He’s banned Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office because they won’t call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” He seized control of the White House press pool from the White House Correspondents Association and promptly dropped journalists from HuffPost and Reuters because he didn’t like the questions they asked. He even whined about “absolutely terrible” Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. He’s sued CBS News and ABC News for interviews he didn’t like. He ended all news subscriptions by federal agencies, and he tossed major media outlets out of their longtime offices in the Pentagon.
Bizarrely, Trump hasn’t just gone after independent news agencies, he’s also shut down the government’s own media outlets, the Voice of America, the Voice of Free Asia and the Voice of Free Europe. With no reason given, these programs suddenly went silent. And hundreds of millions of people who live in dictatorships where there is no freedom of the press are suddenly deprived of their only source of truth and their only contact with the United States.
President Trump’s war against the media is in full swing. But here’s the worst part: So far, he’s getting away with it. Why? Because most people don’t care. And understandably so. When you just got fired by Elon Musk, or you lost your home to a tornado or wildfire, it’s hard to worry about a White House reporter being banned from the Oval Office.
But people should care because the presence of a media unafraid to speak truth to power is more important today than ever before. What other guardrail is left to stop Trump’s dismantling of democracy? Not the leadership of this Congress. Not his 6-3 majority Supreme Court. The only guardrail left is the media.
America’s media is under attack. Which should concern us all. Because if we lose a free and independent media, we lose everything. Thomas Jefferson said it best: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.” Follow him on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.
