Trump's attacks on media test US press freedom rules
From banning reporters from the Oval Office to trying to dismantle VOA, Trump’s moves against the press have sparked legal battles, with experts warning that press freedom — and US democracy itself — is at risk
On 22 April, courts ruled in favour of the US-based broadcaster Voice of America's lawsuit against the White House, in a rebuke to President Donald Trump's targeting of the free press.
From gutting Voice of America (VOA), to barring the Associated Press (AP) from the Oval Office, to threatening to defund publicly-funded media like National Public Radio (NPR), the Trump administration and his allies have had the American press in their crosshairs.
Some of Trump's attacks on the press started even before he won the White House.
Trump sued CBS before the 2024 presidential election for editing an interview with his rival Kamala Harris in a way he deemed unfavourable. He also sued a newspaper in Iowa, the Des Moines Register, and J Ann Selzer, a pollster, for publishing a survey that showed Harris leading Trump in the presidential race in the state. Those cases are ongoing.
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Small wins
But some outlets are fighting back and scoring some wins.
A federal judge ordered the Trump government to restore VOA's funding and reinstate the global broadcaster's employees and contractors. More than 1,000 of them were suspended after the president signed an executive order dismantling VOA's parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
A court also sided with the AP in its lawsuit to get access restored after it was banned from the Oval Office over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America". President Trump has insisted the waterway be referred to as the latter. In an 8 April decision, US district judge Trevor N McFadden ruled that the ban violated the wire service's First Amendment rights. The Trump administration said it will appeal the ruling.
Under the US constitution, the First Amendment provides for the protection of fundamental freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.
But free speech advocates caution that while these freedoms are outlined in the US constitution, Trump's crackdown on the free press shows the First Amendment requires active defence.
Who will speak out?
"No matter how wonderfully protective the First Amendment and Supreme Court decisions upholding the First Amendment are in principle, they are not self-enforcing," said Nadine Strossen, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "It requires lawyers to advocate to courts to uphold and enforce First Amendment rights and when you have law firms being intimidated from locking horns with the Trump administration, because it can put them out of business, that is very scary."
President Trump signed a series of executive orders particularly targeting law firms he deemed "risks," mostly to punish them for employing lawyers involved in investigating past cases against Trump himself or for defending people or causes Trump is ideologically opposed to — such as diversity, equity and inclusion programs. That could potentially thin the ranks of those willing to go toe-to-toe with the Trump administration to stand against free speech violations.
But legal recourse is only going to become more necessary, with Trump signaling more moves against the free press to come.
On 14 April, a White House article appeared to target publicly funded broadcasters. "For years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidising NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news'," it said.
The Trump administration is widely expected to introduce a memo to block federal funding for NPR and CBS in coming weeks.
Controlling the narrative
To NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik, Trump's moves to shutter publicly funded outlets is in line with his wider strategy of ensuring he commands the public narrative.
"The idea that taxpayer money, that government money would go to support a news outlet that is seeking to provide verifiable and independent reporting with its own editorial judgment is an affront to the idea that somehow [Trump] controls every message, he controls every news cycle, he controls every editorial judgment," Folkenflik said.
But press freedom watchdogs say government control over messaging is at odds with the exercise of democracy in society.
"It's a principle that you often find people don't really want to talk about, or they don't quite get why it would relate to them, until they're under threat of targeting or silencing or chilling, and we're in a real anti-free speech and anti-accountability, anti-democratic moment," said Nora Benavidez, who leads democracy initiatives at Free Press, a non-profit dedicated to defending press freedom.
Benavidez warns that the combination of Trump's lack of commitment to facts, and disenfranchisement of media outlets creates additional confusion and room for mis- and disinformation, which threatens overall democratic stability.
VOA is often one of the few sources of uncensored news in countries with repressive governments, such as in Iran, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan and North Korea.
There are also very personal repercussions to the Trump administration's moves.
And non-American staff who had to leave the US after losing their VOA jobs and their working visas could face repercussions once in their home countries, one VOA employee working on a contract basis told DW. He spoke to DW anonymously out of concern for potential retribution.
"There are so many journalists who came to VOA for the promise of practicing freedom of the press in a country where it's constitutionally guaranteed," he said. "Many of those journalists are not citizens, and they're in danger if they have to return to their countries of origin. They face imprisonment or even worse if they have to leave this country."
"My hope is that there are people in high places, and also the average voter, [who] will stand up for constitutionally protected freedom of the press," the VOA contractor said.
Olivia Gilliand is a journalist at Deutsche Welle.
Disclaimer: This article first appeared on DW, and is published by special syndication arrangement.
