The New York Times on Sunday published a front-page editorial – “News Analysis” – headlined “A Sweeping Effort To Stifle Free Speech: Trump Deploys Agencies and Lawsuits.”
The article by Maggie Haberman and Jim Rutenberg had this online headline:
How Trump Is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech
President Trump has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.
“Free speech advocates” is the usual non-ideological hero status that the liberal papers give to President Trump’s adversaries.
The article began with its list of offenses:
The Justice Department has sent F.B.I. agents to reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas and, in at least one case, flashed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has fired the editor and publisher of its traditionally independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and blocked access to other journalists who refused to sign pledges that would limit their reporting.
Regulatory agencies are using their powers to pressure media organizations over their content. The administration has stripped funding from public television and radio. Angry over stories he does not like, President Trump has sued major news organizations and the White House has taken control of the previously independent press pool that tracks the president, deciding which outlets can participate.
Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.
There is, early on, a little balance, noting us and Trump’s access:
To the president and his allies, he is simply demanding accountability for what he casts as biased, unfair and sometimes inaccurate coverage and criticism — an effort that has been welcomed by longtime conservative press critics like those at the Media Research Center.
But that poses MRC as somehow as an opponent of free speech. Several of their examples here demonstrate how liberals expect to take government money (PBS, NPR, Stars and Stripes, VOA) and push their liberal bias, and if anyone pushes back, "free speech" is stifled.
The White House noted Trump’s dramatic access to the press:
In a statement, the White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that “biased reporting from the media is a disservice to the American people.” Pointing to Mr. Trump’s heavy rotation of question and answer sessions with reporters as evidence of “unprecedented access”…
Then they turn to left-wing sources who agree with The Times that Trump should just submit to journalistic torture and fake news:
Screenshot via ABC/SnapStreamFree speech advocates say the president’s intent is apparent: to punish, intimidate and silence dissenters.
“There’s not a week that goes by where they’re not taking a new step to curtail press freedom in the country,” said Clayton Weimers, the executive director of the North America division of Reporters Without Borders. “We have measured a substantial diminishment of press freedoms.”
Reporters Without Borders maintains an index that tracks press freedom in 180 countries, clocking governmental threats, subpoenas and the vindictive use of regulations against journalists. The United States now ranks at its lowest since the organization started the index in 2002 — 64th, just above Panama and just below Botswana. The trend is the same at similar indexes kept by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the V-Dem Institute of Sweden.
These groups are all ardently anti-Trump. Are they really for free speech? In a 2024 interview, Weimers lamented that the Big Tech platforms were backing away from aggressive content moderation -- suppressing views leftists don't like.
Haberman and Rutenberg lamented Trump's agencies probing groups pushing for censorship of conservative media -- Newsguard and Media Matters. They offered a quote from MRC's Dan Schneider:
The F.T.C. ultimately dropped its investigations into both NewsGuard and Media Matters, saying it had achieved its goal of defending free speech through agreements with ad firms. It said it was fulfilling its mission of protecting consumers from anticompetitive behavior that “distorted the marketplace of ideas,” as Mr. Ferguson put it.
Dan Schneider, vice president for free speech at the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center, described the actions by the F.T.C. and the F.C.C. as a correction against abuses under the past two Democratic presidents. “Please, let’s not forget history and rewrite everything that went on before,” Mr. Schneider said.
PS: In 2016, Rutenberg penned a front-page editorial on how dangerous Donald Trump was and how he ruined the notion of objective journalism.
