Is the Press Next? - The American Prospect

[justaprogressive]

One of the oddities of America’s slide into dictatorship is that it’s all playing out publicly and bring reported on by a still-free press, often to Trump’s embarrassment. If you look at other despotisms, one of the first thing the dictator does is to shut down the opposition press.

As Trump tries to destroy one free institution after another—universities, law firms, independent public agencies, trade unions—sooner or later he will come for the press. For the moment, his forays against the press have been petulant and feeble rather than systematic.

He has haphazardly tried to restrict access to the White House press room, which isn’t exactly an inalienable right. His vendetta against the Associated Press began with AP’s refusal to accede to his pathetic demand to use his new name for the Gulf of Mexico.

He made a passing swipe at the broadcast license of CBS, for the temerity of having run an interview on 60 Minutes with Ukrainian President Zelensky that was critical of how the U.S. was handling the Russia-Ukraine war. He has threatened public broadcasting, which is mostly supported by listeners and viewers, with loss of public funds.

This is still pretty small beer. But unless Trump’s other efforts at dictatorship are restrained by the courts, he is very likely to come for the press more systematically, and there are several ways he can do this.

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-04-22-press-freedom-censorship-trump/

[JohnSJ]

1. Much of the press has already been moving toward fascism when they started play the

both siderism game, and interspersing opinion when reporting the news, to confuse the viewer with what is news, what is opinion, and worse yet, what is false information and lies.

So if the concern is censorship or banning the press from reporting within certain venues, instead of caving in and bowing down, they should be pushing back.

The Gulf of America farce was a perfect example of most of their compliance, and their silence of support when some news agencies were banned because they refused to bow down to the stupidity of the fowl emperor.

The law firms that caved in are also an example of just how compromised things are and how easily they can be bought off.

Democracy doesn't die in darkness, it dies when there is no resistance to tyranny.

[FirstLight]

2. He can control them

He will never eliminate the press they give him his airtime. His narcissism is too overgrown. He'll never just have one TV channel he likes multiple channels and he likes getting mad at people so I don't think he'll ever completely shut it down

[erronis]

3. This is such a good article. Outlines many ways the regime can curtail public press and information.

One way that wasn't mentioned, at least in this article, is throttling the internet. Many ways to do this that could harm our ability to find out what is happening and to see opinions from many voices.