Amanpour & Co. host Christiane Amanpour talked to former Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron about Trump’s “massive chilling effect” on the press on Wednesday, and added another metaphor to describe the media supposedly bowing down to Trump’s threats (since when!).
Christiane Amanpour: ….in the United States, the press is facing legal assault from the incoming president, Donald Trump. He's suing the Des Moines Register newspaper over its covering polling which showed Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa days before the election.
She asked Baron how "the next administration can come after" the press:
Amanpour: And ABC News has agreed to a $15 million settlement to Trump over a defamation case he brought against him. This is happening in America, which has constitutional protections for press freedom. Other democracies that are around the world do not and some of them are coming after the press too. It's a trend that deeply concerns my next guest, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, Marty Baron, and he's joining me now from Massachusetts….So lay out how you think the next administration can come after us. I mean, it is us in the big sense. What tools can they use?
Martin Baron: ….I think they are salivating for the opportunity to prosecute journalists for leaks of supposed national security information. I think that they've already threatened to revoke the licenses for stations affiliated with the – with some of the major networks. They are already, as you mentioned, likely to sue a lot of media outlets for supposed defamation and other supposed offenses….
Amanpour ran a clip from President-elect Donald Trump justifying his suit, including "we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt.”
Amanpour: You know, that's a horrible thing to hear, frankly, that our press is very corrupt. Do you think that lands with people?....
The press remained blameless in Baron’s view. He never once stopped to wonder if perhaps the press had made fatal mistakes or engaged in partisan coverage which contributed to the decline in public confidence.
Baron: Well, certainly there's a large segment of the American public who do not have a confidence in the mainstream press, and I understand that. There's been a decline in confidence in all institutions in our country, from the presidency to the Congress to banks to major businesses, the medical community, religious institutions, pretty much everybody, and the press is certainly in there and has suffered a lot. I think the intent here is, as you say, to intimidate the press….
Amanpour responded with a tedious cliché, employed whenever a reporter is challenged by a Republican, quoting partisan Democrat lawyer Marc Elias, never mentioning he's a partisan Democrat.
Amanpour: That's absolutely true, and I wonder whether you think that it's also going to lead to a sort of a mass self-censorship, because presumably it's going to have a massively chilling effect. Look, an elections lawyer, Marc Elias, posted after the ABC settlement for $15 million and an apology by ABC and George Stephanopoulos said, ‘knee bent, ring kissed, another legacy news outlet chooses obedience.’ And just to be clear, Stephanopoulos had said in an interview that Trump was found, quote, "liable for rape in the E. Jean Carroll case." In fact, he was found liable for sexual abuse. Do you think Marc Elias, the election lawyer's characterization is accurate?
Baron: Well, I think it trends in the right direction. I don't know that I would use language quite that strong….ABC News did make a mistake in the way that they characterized it. But he said that in common parlance, it would be considered rape. So, that -- there was a strong defense that ABC News had, and it caved. And it probably caved for a variety of reasons…
None of Baron’s reasons included an obvious one, the discovery process, which would risk uncovering potentially embarrassing internal communications from ABC News that would confirm the news network’s inexorable hostility toward Trump.
Amanpour moved on to another metaphor, the supposed idea of quivering media lickspittles making pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago to kiss King Trump’s ring.
Amanpour: Yes. And we're seeing quite a lot of media and like the tech streaming titans and all the rest of it making, you know, sort of a kiss-the-ring progression to Mar-a-Lago.
She pivoted to the “Pete Hegseth drama,” Hegseth's nomination for Secretary of Defense and the resulting “MAGA swarm [that] came at” the press, and asked Baron:
Amanpour: What do you make of the fact that the right-wing media sphere, as it's described, had disproportionate success during the election campaign, whether it's Fox News, whether it's radio stations, whether it's the right-wing trending podcasters, they had a huge influence and more mainstream or even liberal-leaning ones were left thinking, oh, my gosh, how do we compete with this alternative media sphere?
Baron agreed that in today’s “much more fragmented media environment today….right-wing media has been ascendant.” But he also twice denied the election results were “a referendum on the media,” acknowledging instead “people's concerns about real issues” like inflation.
Amanpour asked about the owner of Baron’s old paper, The Washington Post, which declined to endorse for president in 2024 (again with a Donald the King metaphor): “Did you have a timing issue with it, or do you think it's just, again, bending the knee in this case?”
Baron basically agreed, albeit in less fiery terms than what he told NPR at the time. Since the paper began regular endorsements in 1976, the Post has solely endorsed Democrats for president (Michael Dukakis didn't get one in 1988), and the progressives at the Post were mightily peeved at Bezos's decision.
