A few years after buying The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos said that “certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light,” an idea that inspired the paper’s instantly famous slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Officially introduced in 2017, the slogan had been decided on before Donald Trump took office—serendipitously, given what soon unfolded. But Bezos has since had a change of heart. Last fall, he spiked the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, and in the months that followed, he killed political cartoons and columns critical of him, contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and turned his newspaper’s vaunted opinion page into a platform for celebrating “free markets and individual liberties.” The paper’s old slogan is gone, and its oligarch owner is now liberated from the ill-fitting pretense of caring about democracy.
What’s happening at the Post reflects the contempt that the current Trump regime and its enablers have for press freedoms. In a country that’s supposed to be a model for free expression, journalism is under siege: between the beginning of Trump’s first term and the end of 2024, there were 2,100 incidents of official interference with U.S. news outlets, including arrests of reporters, denial of access to official meetings and proceedings, and equipment searches and seizures. About 1,100 incidents involved alleged criminal assaults on reporters. Yet in December, Senate Republicans blocked a measure aimed at strengthening protections for journalists when the then-president-elect called on them to “kill this bill.”
Trump’s assault on the press has intensified since he returned to office. He has threatened criminal investigations and jail time for reporters. His FBI director, Kash Patel, has promised to “go after the media,” while Elon Musk demanded prison sentences for 60 Minutes staffers who interviewed a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) critic. The administration banned the Associated Press from briefings and other White House events and seized control of the White House press pool. In March, Trump told the Justice Department that no matter what the First Amendment says, it’s illegal for the press to criticize him. This is all reason for alarm. “It’s apparent that the new administration will come after the press in every conceivable way,” former Washington Post editor Martin Baron told NPR. “I do think he will use every tool in his toolbox, and there are a lot of tools.”
That includes undoing New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established the “actual malice” standard for libel suits, which gives journalists and media outlets broad protections. “We’re going to open up those libel laws, folks, and we’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before,” Trump has promised. A growing right-wing movement supports this effort and has already filed numerous petitions with the Supreme Court. It’s not just major media outlets that are at risk. “The rhetoric and actions that Trump and his allies take at a national level are being mimicked across the country at a much smaller level,” says author and New York Times editor David Enrich.
A free and functioning press is especially vital given this administration’s lack of transparency as it dismantles government agencies, destroys federal records, and deletes publicly available information on everything from cancer research to how GDP is calculated. Wired magazine’s recent reporting on the dangerous incompetence and mendacity of DOGE is a good example of how the press can expose the misdeeds of presidents and their appointees to the public. There are many other such examples, and as of now the First Amendment is still in force. Trump and his people are after the press because they hate the light. All the more important, then, that it’s not extinguished.
