Trump has long threatened the media. Press freedom groups fear he might make good on it

By Liam Reilly, CNN

New York (CNN) — Press freedom groups sounded the alarm Wednesday on the potential dangers facing journalists under a second Trump administration, denouncing threats from the president-elect and his associates to undermine the news media.

In the hours after Donald Trump’s decisive victory, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Freedom of the Press Foundation and American Sunlight Project called on the president-elect to end his attacks on the news media or altogether curb Trump’s power to prevent a destabilizing onslaught against the press.

“On the campaign trail and during his previous administration, President-elect Donald Trump has frequently deployed violent language and threats against the media. His election to a second term in office marks a dangerous moment for American journalism and global press freedom,” Reporters Without Borders said.

The groups’ fears are not without grounds. In the run-up to Election Day, Trump repeatedly threatened the Fourth Estate, often employing extreme and authoritarian rhetoric. Earlier this week, Trump told a crowd in Pennsylvania that he wouldn’t mind if journalists got shot. He also filed a lawsuit against CBS over its “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and repeatedly threatened to strip broadcasters of their licenses, saying on at least 15 occasions that television networks should have their licenses revoked over news coverage he disapproved of.

Between Sept. 1 and Oct. 24, Reporters Without Borders found that Trump insulted, attacked, or threatened the press at least 108 times across public speeches and remarks, a figure that does not include Trump’s social media posts or comments made by campaign staff.

“Attacking the press is really an attack on American citizens’ right to know,” Clayton Weimers, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders said in a statement, adding that a second Trump administration “can and must change its tune with the media and take concrete steps to protect journalists and develop a climate conducive to a robust and pluralistic news media.”

Trump’s threats against the press are by no means new. He has long called reporters the “enemy of the people” and made “fake news” a signature rallying cry of his campaign. During the first Trump administration, he used the Justice Department to surveil reporters, attempted to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, called for a boycott to force “big changes” at CNN, and banned reporters from White House briefings.

“What we’re really concerned about moving forward is how Trump’s rhetoric from this latest campaign will trickle down into actual actions, both taken by him and his associates at a national level and by politicians and other individuals at a local level,” said Katherine Jacobsen, the Committee to Protect Journalists US, Canada and Caribbean program coordinator. “Having this inflammatory rhetoric come from the highest office in the United States sets up a precarious situation for journalists working in this country.”

Between 2023 and 2024, attacks against journalists in the United States rose by over 50%, according to a CPJ report published last month that found press freedom under “unprecedented pressure” ahead of the election. News publishers are also facing an increasing number of lawsuits aimed at depleting their finances and undermining reporters’ First Amendment rights, in addition to their ability to protect sources.

In the wake of Tuesday’s election, press freedom advocates remain concerned about the longer-term implications of legal threats that journalists could face.

“Trump has spent the last year on the campaign trail calling for more leak investigations, imprisoning journalists, and censoring news outlets he doesn’t like,” Trevor Timm, executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement. “Lawmakers and President Biden must act before it’s too late.”

In his next administration, Trump could attempt to make good on his threats to weaken libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets.

“We’ve seen quite a few libel lawsuits that Donald Trump and his associates have lobbed against members of the media, and that’s a very concerning precedent moving forward,” Jacobsen told CNN. “It’s incredibly concerning that not just Trump, but his associates will be newly emboldened to interact with the media in the way that they previously have.”

During his last administration, Trump repeatedly sought to ban reporters over their probing questions or to revoke their press credentials. On election night, the Trump campaign denied reporters at Politico, Axios, Puck and other outlets credentials to its watch party over their coverage of his campaign.

“Journalists seeking to uncover the inner workings of the second Trump administration will have to face the threat of retribution with resolve, by not shying away from protecting the identity of sources, offering clear-eyed criticism of the president, or engaging in confrontations with immigration officers — even if doing so means enraging the owner of their outlet, greater exposure to civil lawsuits, detention, or jail time,” Kyle Paoletta wrote Wednesday for the Columbia Journalism Review. “This is not, perhaps, the job that many members of the political press thought they were signing up for. But it is the one they’ve got.”

Trump’s ambitions to curb press freedoms echo the crackdowns from strongmen for whom Trump has voiced admiration and affection. After taking office in 2016, Trump publicly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Chinese President Xi Jinping — all of whom have muzzled their nations’ independent news media. On Wednesday, Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán said that he had already spoken to Trump and they had “big plans” for the future.

“Legal persecution, imprisonment, physical violence, and even killings have sadly become familiar threats for journalists across the world,” CPJ said in a statement Wednesday. “They must not now also become commonplace in the United States, where threats of violence and online harassment have in recent years become routine.

Kash Patel, a former adviser on Trump’s National Security Council, previously warned a second Trump administration would target journalists and attempt to “prosecute them for crimes.”

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he told Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top political strategist on his “War Room” podcast.

In a September op-ed, A.G. Sulzberger, The New York Times’ publisher, counseled news outlets to be “prepared for whatever is to come” should Trump win re-election, noting that “the risk is shared by our entire profession, as well as all who depend on it.”

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