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    Trump is turning the media into a mouthpiece of the regime | Lawrence Douglas

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    You know we’re in trouble when Fox News emerges as the great defender of freedom of the press. But such was the case when Jacqui Heinrich, a senior political correspondent at Fox, responded to the news that Trump’s White House would now handpick the reporters who get to cover the president in small settings, with the post: “This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House.” Heinrich was specifically responding to press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s Orwellian claim that letting Donald Trump choose who would cover him was designed to restore power “back to the American people”.The fruits of the new policy were richly on display during the sickening scene that unfolded in the Oval Office last week. If the president and JD Vance’s disgraceful treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t bad enough, there was the unprecedented role that the “press” played in the unseemly drama.Here I’m not simply referring to Brian Glenn’s pugnacious demand that the leader of a war-torn nation justify his sartorial decisions – less a question than a provocation that served as a prelude to the pile-on that followed. Trump appeared to wink at Glenn, a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a far-right cable channel freshly included in the press pool, leading to speculation that Glenn’s question had been scripted in advance, a speculation that is both plausible – I mean, why not? – and irrelevant.For whether scripted or not, these are the kinds of questions we should expect when serious journalists are replaced with mouthpieces of the regime, puppets who perform the role of state propagandists in the guise of reportage. Glenn, who dates Majorie Taylor Greene and describes himself as “100% behind President Trump”, claims not to truck in far-right conspiracy theories – while insisting that January 6t was an antifa-instigated inside job and that a vast mechanism of fraud cost Trump the 2020 election.But before Glenn turned on the Ukrainian president, he had directed an earlier question to Trump: “Mr President, [do] you think ultimately your legacy will be the peacemaker and not the president that led this country into another war … ?” This puffball in the guise of a query gave Trump the opportunity to wax poetic: “I hope I’m going to be remembered as a peacemaker … I’m doing this to save lives more than anything else … Thank you, Brian, for that question. It was a nice question.”But we weren’t done with paeans to the great peacemaker. No sooner had Zelenskyy tersely assured Glenn that he would wear a suit once the war had ended, we were greeted with this question: “Keir Starmer … praised your courage and conviction to lead … What gave you the moral courage and conviction to step forward and lead?”In a properly functioning press corps, we might have expected that the question was directed to Zelenskyy, who, with exceptional fortitude and resolve, has led his countryin a war against a ruthless aggressor. But no. The question was directed to Trump, who responded: “Boy, I love this guy. Who are you with?” The answer was One America News, another network that operates to the far right of Fox, trafficking in conspiracy theories and committed to an unwavering support of Maga politics – and also a beneficiary of the White House’s commandeering of its own press pool.Once again, Trump grew almost wistful – “I like the question … it’s a very good question” – before blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel on Joe Biden. From there, as we witnessed, things grew more acrimonious, but lost in the belligerent and belittling treatment of Zelenskyy, particularly at the hands of Vance (“Have you said thank you once, this entire meeting?”) was the Pyongyang-esque quality of Trump’s hand-picked pool reporters using their questions not to challenge or examine, but to burnish and bolster the Great Leader with ever fluffier valentines of adoration.Meanwhile, the Associated Press remained barred from the historic meeting, because it continues to call a body of water that lies almost entirely outside of US jurisdiction by the name it has carried since the 16th century.

    Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law at Amherst College in Massachusetts More

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      Outcry as White House starts dictating which journalists can access Trump

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      The Trump administration announced it will take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.The move has immediately triggered an impassioned response from members of the media – including a Fox News correspondent who called it a “short-sighted decision”.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made the announcement during Tuesday’s press briefing, framing the move as democratizing access to the president.“A group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.“Not any more. Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving the power back to the people.”The announcement upended more than 70 years of protocol of journalists – not government officials – determining which rotating reporters travel with the president on Air Force One and cover events in the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room.“Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team,” Leavitt said. She added that while legacy outlets would still be included, the administration would be “offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility” – notably podcasters and rightwing media.As the media reeled from the attack on the press pool, the three main wire services that routinely report on the US presidency released a joint statement protesting Donald Trump’s decision to bar the Associated Press from official events.Reuters and Bloomberg News joined AP in decrying Trump’s move to restrict AP’s access to the president. The top editors of each of the wires said the unprecedented action had threatened the principle of open reporting and would harm the spread of reliable information to individuals, communities, businesses and global financial markets.“It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press,” the three editors said.The standoff between Trump and AP began on 14 February when the White House announced it was indefinitely barring AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One. Officials said the step had been taken to punish AP for refusing to amend its style guide to change the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump had dictated.AP immediately sued over the restriction, but on Monday a federal judge declined to restore the wire service’s access to presidential events in the short term. Another hearing in the case, which is ongoing, is scheduled for next month.The White House wasted no time implementing the new policy over the composition of the press pool, ejecting a HuffPost reporter from Wednesday’s press pool rotation and removing Reuters from its traditional spot – just one day after the announcement. Also on Wednesday morning, Trump mused on legal action against journalists and publishers in a Truth Social post.“At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these ‘anonymous sources’ even exist,” Trump posted, adding: “maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!”The announcement triggered immediate alarm among journalists who argue that the role of the WHCA is to make sure Americans who use any of the major mediums – including radio, television, print, wires and photography – are able to get the same access to Trump’s world.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House,” posted Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News senior White House correspondent and WHCA board member. “The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps.”Heinrich added: “WHCA has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all those outlets have – such as staffing – in order to get the President’s message out to the largest possible audience, no matter the day or hour.”In a separate missive on X, Heinrich also pointed out the press corps “from across a broad spectrum of tv, radio, print, stills, wires and new media” cover the White House full-time.“This is a short-sighted decision, and it will feel a lot different when a future Democratic administration kicks out conservative-leaning outlets and other critical voices,” she wrote.The WHCA president, Eugene Daniels, said the move “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States” and “suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president”. He noted the White House did not consult with the WHCA before making the announcement.Later on Wednesday, the White House denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.The White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper. More

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      Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ debacle is no joke – this is how authoritarians get started

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      Last week, the Associated Press sued White House officials for violating its free press rights by punishing the organization for defying Donald Trump’s executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”. Unfortunately, on Monday, a federal judge refused to immediately strike down the White House’s retaliatory treatment of the AP. But the case is far from over.Granting access to the White House on the suppressive conditions set by the Trump administration is a blow to the first amendment and the free press. If the retaliation against the AP is allowed to stand, more restrictions on the press are certain to follow, creating Kremlin-like conditions that will affect all Americans who might question, or be suspected of questioning, the Trump party line.This is why a seemingly trivial issue – what to call the Gulf – is freighted with importance. Trump’s renaming of the Gulf unmistakably delivers his “America first” message. He has every right to his message. But he doesn’t have the right to turn the press into his messenger.The controversy began on Trump’s first day back in office, when he issued a unilateral order that an international sea, known for centuries as the Gulf of Mexico, henceforth be named the Gulf of America. Certain organizations, such as Google, immediately complied by changing the Gulf’s name on Google Maps and redirecting searches for “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America”.However, the AP, along with several other news organizations, resisted. Noting that the Trump order had no effect outside the US, the AP made an editorial judgment that its status as an international reporting agency was best served by continuing to refer to the Gulf by the name known to global readers.The Trump administration retaliated by barring AP reporters from the press pool that covers media events at the White House or on Air Force One, and on Tuesday it went further, announcing it would determine which organizations had access to the pool – traditionally the job of the White House Correspondents’ Association. While limited seating capacity may give the White House some discretion about who gets to be in the press pool, the first amendment does not permit that discretion to be used to punish the press or to limit access to outlets favorable to Trump. As the AP stated in its complaint: “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government. The Constitution does not allow the government to control speech” by controlling access.As tempting as it is to follow Shakespeare in shrugging the shoulders at “what’s in a name,” we should turn to history to learn what follows when authoritarian leaders start out with seemingly harmless verbal imperialisms. One of the first actions Hitler took after seizing power in 1933 was to scrub streets and public spaces of names that reflected Jewish influence or Weimar republicanism in favor of tributes to National Socialism. Stalin celebrated his own greatness by changing Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd, to “Stalingrad”. Before Stalingrad, there was the switch from Petrograd to Leningrad. In today’s China, the name “Tibet” has disappeared from Chinese maps in favor of the Mandarin name, “Xizang”.It is hard to know how seriously to take Trump’s flagging of territorial, as well as verbal, imperialism. He has suggested the US reclaim the Panama Canal Zone, buy Greenland from Denmark, incorporate Canada as a 51st state, and take over the Gaza Strip for resort real estate development. Even if these are mere paper ambitions, the disdain Trump shows for international law is already doing irreparable harm.Appealing to his Maga base with the “America first” rhetoric in the Gulf, he is selling out Ukraine to Putin’s Russia in ways reminiscent of the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement of Hitler in 1938 by ceding parts of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Ignoring this lesson of history – in Munich of all places – this month, JD Vance stopped short of endorsing the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party by name, but made clear that the Trump administration would be happy if Europe adopted the same anti-immigrant policies that Trump’s renaming of the Gulf signaled.The ripple effect of Trump commandeering global waters reaches beyond the sea to all Americans. His actions must be considered alongside his other executive orders on his first day back in office, declaring the arrival of immigrants at the southern border an “invasion” and suspending grants of asylum, no matter how dire the situation of refugees. When we let Trump scapegoat vulnerable immigrants for this country’s – and the world’s – problems, we are in fascist territory. That is why Trump’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America is no laughing matter. It expresses a level of disrespect for Mexico that could well be a precursor for how strongmen treat peoples whom they first strip of dignity. Substitute Jew, Catholic, Turk, Armenian, Arab, gay or transgender for Trump’s talk of an invasion of aliens across the Gulf, and you get the point.What the Gulf needs is not more nationalistic power grabs but international cooperation to tackle its most pressing problems – worsening pollution, rising sea levels from the climate crisis, intensifying hurricanes, crumbling infrastructure, and loss of shoreline and habitat. Far from squabbling over what to call the Gulf, the US and Mexico should recognize that no one owns the Gulf; it belongs to nature.In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet made her “what’s in a name” speech to declare love for Romeo even though he bore the family name of her family’s blood enemy. It didn’t turn out well for Juliet, and it won’t turn out well for us if we let Trump intimidate the AP because its editors had the courage to stand up to his bullying.

      Jeffrey Abramson is author of Minerva’s Owl: The Tradition of Western Political Thought. Jack E Davis is the author of The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2018. More

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      The ‘Gulf of America’ feud is about something bigger: Trump wants to control the media | Margaret Sullivan

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      It might seem like a small matter, just a disagreement over whether a body of water should be called one name or another.But it’s really about much bigger things: Trump-style intimidation, a clear violation of the first amendment – and the extent to which news organizations will stick together in each other’s defense, or will comply with the powerful for the sake of their own access.Even more broadly, it is about Donald Trump’s wide-ranging effort to control the media and be able to spread propaganda and interfere with the flow of accurate information.The disagreement started soon after the president decided unilaterally that the Gulf of Mexico was to be called the Gulf of America. The executive order was one more display of Trump’s capricious and imperious way of doing things; his first month has been a relentless exercise in chaos and norm-destruction.After the Associated Press, the global news organization, decided to stick with using the long-established name which makes sense to its international readership, the Trump White House determined that punishment was in order.An AP reporter was barred from a White House press event, and since then, things have only escalated. More AP reporters barred from briefings and from the president’s plane. Access denied.What’s happening is ugly. In the US, the government doesn’t get to dictate the language journalists use in their stories. There’s a little thing called the first amendment to the US constitution that prohibits this. But the Trump administration, as usual, has its own – often unconstitutional and sometimes illegal – ideas.The actions against the AP are “retribution, plain and simple, and a shameful attempt to bully the press into ideological compliance”, said Tim Richardson of PEN America.On Thursday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sent a letter to the White House signed by 30 news organizations, and the White House Correspondents Association is similarly registering its displeasure.But letters – even signed by many and ever so strongly worded – are easy to ignore. The solution, if there is one, will require more forceful measures: lawsuits and journalistic solidarity that might include a widespread boycotting of White House press briefings.After all, compliance is a slippery slope. What happens, for example, when Trump proclaims that Ukraine is no longer Ukraine, but to be simply called Russia? Do news organizations politely accept the rewriting of history?“What do the media do then,” queried the longtime environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, “agree to those terms so they can stay in the briefing room?”Why stop there? How about declaring by fiat that the Washington monument is now to be called the Trump monument? Why not chisel another presidential face onto Mount Rushmore and call it Mount Donald?The great renaming has begun, and George Orwell would understand exactly what’s going on.A few days ago, a media leader I admire – Jim Friedlich, the CEO of the Lenfest Institute, a non-profit organization that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer – proposed a notion that deserves serious consideration. There should be, he wrote, a “NATO for News,” in which every legitimate news organization formally pledges to defend the others. This happens now, from time to time, but Friedlich has something more deliberate in mind, he wrote in the Inquirer.All of this is happening within a larger and quite alarming anti-press context.Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk recently fantasized about a “long prison sentence” for journalists on CBS’s 60 Minutes, which has been under fire for its (normal and conventional) editing of a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.Trump has sued the Pulitzer prize board for statements in defense of its awards to the Washington Post and the New York Times for their coverage of Trump’s relationship with Russia; he’s sued the Des Moines Register over a pre-election public opinion poll. And the Pentagon recently tossed eight traditional news organizations from office spaces to make room for pro-Maga outlets.“The Trump administration has decided that it will actively wield access as a tool to reshape the media landscape in its favor,” Oliver Darcy wrote in his media newsletter, Status. It surely will also use more legal threats and actions.Given that we’re only a month into this brave new world, some unity and stiff-spined resolve are very much in order.That won’t be easy. Getting journalists together is like herding pigeons. And no journalist wants to lose access to sources and to being where news is made. But in this era, it couldn’t be more important to push back hard.The free press may be going down, but if so, we should go down swinging.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      AP excoriates White House barring of reporters as ‘alarming precedent’

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      The executive editor of the Associated Press sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday criticizing its decision to block two of its journalists from attending press events on Tuesday after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America”.“I write on behalf of The Associated Press, an independent global news organization that reaches billions of people every day, to object in the strongest possible terms to the actions taken by the Trump administration against AP yesterday,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in the letter addressed to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.“The issue here is free speech – a fundamental pillar of American democracy and a value of the utmost importance to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion, occupation or industry.”Pace said that on Tuesday, the White House barred AP journalists from attending two press events with Donald Trump, “following an apparent complaint over AP’s editorial decisions regarding the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump renamed the Gulf of America”.The Associated Press said in a January style guide update that they would continuing referring to the body of water that borders both the US and Mexico “by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”.The agency stated that Trump’s order to change the name only carried authority within the US, and that other countries including Mexico did not have to recognize the name change.“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” the AP wrote, adding that “as a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences”.Pace said that during a meeting on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, informed an AP reporter that AP’s access to the “Oval Office would be restricted if AP did not immediately align its editorial standards with President Trump’s executive order”.When AP did not accede to the demands, Pace said, White House staff blocked an AP reporter from attending an executive order signing at the Oval Office and, later, another AP reporter from attending a press event in the Diplomatic Reception Room.“The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech,” Pace wrote. “It is among the most basic tenets for the First Amendment that government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say.”She added: “This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”Pace said that as of Wednesday, it was not clear whether the White House intended to impose these access restrictions against AP reporters on an ongoing basis, and urged the administration to “end this practice”.The “fundamental role of the press is to serve as the public’s eyes and ears”, she said, adding that “when journalists are blocked from doing their job, it is the American public who suffers”.It also sets an “alarming precedent”, she said, that has the potential to affect every news outlet and, in turn, “severely limit the public’s right to know what is happening inside their government”.The AP, she wrote, is “prepared to vigorously defend its constitutional rights and protest the infringement on the public’s right to independent news coverage of their government and elected officials”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Wednesday, Leavitt was asked which White House official made the decision to bar the AP reporters from the events.Leavitt said: “It is a privilege to cover this White House” and “nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given.”“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Leavitt told the press briefing room.“If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable and it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I am not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.“It is very important to this administration that we get that right,” she added.The Guardian has contacted the White House for additional comment. More

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      Trump isn’t a narcissist – he’s a solipsist. And it means a few simple things | John R MacArthur

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      Two weeks into the Trump administration, I’m still being asked by foreigners about the new president’s “political vision”.Some of them, especially the French and the British, might be excused for excessive politeness toward a country that in many respects they still envy and admire. But on most of the news programs and podcasts to which I’ve been invited, I’m still encountering earnest interviewers struggling to understand Trump from a conventional political perspective, no matter how contradictory, irrational, or stupid his statements and actions may be. How can this be and what does it augur?The investigative psychiatrist Robert J Lifton once explained to me that Trump is a solipsist, as distinct from the narcissist that he’s often accused of being.A narcissist, while deeply self-infatuated, nevertheless seeks the approval of others and will occasionally attempt seduction to get what he wants (I think of the French president, Emmanuel Macron). For Trump the solipsist, the only point of reference is himself, so he makes no attempt even at faking interest in other people, since he can’t really see them from his self-centered position.Trump’s absence of external connection is self-evident: his treatment of the “other” – from his own family to his tenants, his political rivals, the victims of the Los Angeles fires or the displaced people of Gaza – displays not only a lack of empathy, but also an emotional blindness. How else could he tease out loud about dating his own daughter, Ivanka? How else could he so cruelly insult former president Biden in his inauguration address, with Biden seated just a short distance away?Trump’s solipsistic character was on full display on 20 January in the Capitol Rotunda. After stating, absurdly, that houses had burned “tragically” in Los Angeles “without even a token of defense”, the president seemed to turn philosophical and then appeared to ad-lib: “Some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country … they don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting.”I suppose it’s better than his reaction to a 2018 fire in Trump Tower that killed a resident, Todd Brassner. Trump’s tweeted response: “Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!” No condolences for the dead man or his family. That’s also interesting.None of this is to say that Trump’s policy directives don’t suggest disturbing political predilections that need to be discussed and challenged. He is the president, after all, not just a coldhearted landlord. His firing of 17 inspectors general, attempt to end birthright citizenship and temporary halt of “all federal financial assistance” are certainly causes for concern, and possibly alarm. So, also, are his threats to slap high tariffs on Canada and Mexico, friendly nations that normally are happy to kowtow to their vastly more powerful neighbor no matter who occupies the White House.But this misses the point of Trump, malevolent though he may be. He delights in being attacked because it keeps him at center stage. What could be better for a solipsist than to be criticized across the full spectrum of America’s limited ideological bandwidth?In an editorial, the New York Times denounced Trump’s “first assertions of executive power” that “blatantly exceed what is legally granted”. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal ridiculed an unprovoked “trade war” that “will qualify as one of the dumbest in history”. Already, Trump has changed the script by “pausing” the tariff increases, but he got the Journal worked up enough to pay him a lot of attention. Federal judges blocked Trump’s two most obviously unconstitutional orders, but the Times still got into a dither about his threats to the constitution.View image in fullscreenOne can’t just ignore Trump’s blathering, but like parents dealing with an ornery child, editors, reporters and columnists need to temper reprimands and raised voices with self-restraint, calmness and even studied indifference. Humor, sarcasm and ridicule can be useful tools, though as we learned from Barack Obama’s famous roast of Trump in 2011, they can also motivate the target to run for president.Covering Trump, like bringing up children, is an art, not a science.Of course, none of Trump’s tariff actions or anti-immigrant edicts will bring factories back from Mexico (the cheap labor and investment protections under our current trade agreement with Mexico and Canada are too good for a rational businessman to pass up). Neither will they quickly raise wages for working-class citizens, since creating a labor shortage through deportations will take much longer to affect pay scales than if Congress simply raised the federal minimum wage, or legalized the “illegals”. Also, ironically, Trump’s tariff threats and military border bluster may backfire and encourage fentanyl production to move to the United States from south of the border.However, it’s a fair bet that Trump the solipsist doesn’t care if his policies fail to help the ordinary people who voted for him, and we anti-Trumpers should fear his supporters’ rage if they conclude that they’ve been duped by their hero. The backlash is more likely to be felt by liberals than by Trump, who will retreat safely to Mar-a-Lago and resume cheating at golf.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile I do tend to mock, rather than fear, Trump’s sound and light show, I don’t mean to make light of his most reckless impulses. There’s always collateral damage when somebody starts a war.On the eve of the inauguration, in the Watergate Hotel, I attended the “Coronation Ball”, where “populist” and royalist rightwingers packed the Moretti Grand Ballroom to drink and dine on French champagne and red wine, as well as Gallic cuisine that included amuse-bouches. I was there at the invitation of an open-minded business consultant, an unfanatical Trump partisan who may not have understood that I wanted to cover the event, though he knows the world of journalism.It was indeed amusing to meet a guy wearing a Gen Douglas MacArthur button. So was hearing Steve Bannon’s rip-roaring speech, which flattered the black-tie and evening dress crowd as the “vanguard of a revolutionary movement” that was “just in the top of the first inning”. Bannon warned his rightwing Jacobins not to “flinch” or “question” Trump’s mission of ending “any of these forever wars” and accomplishing “the deportation of all 15 million illegal aliens”.And when Bannon called for “no mercy, no quarter, no prisoners”, he apparently was including Rupert Murdoch and Fox News: “Murdoch sent a memo: ‘We’re going to make [Trump] a non-person’ … and [Trump] knew it. And he still came back like Cincinnatus from the plough, who saved his country.” (Bannon might have mentioned that the Roman patrician, according to legend, was twice dictator of the Republic, but I quibble.)It wasn’t all amuse-bouches, however. Later in the evening, when the jazz band took a break, the far-right personality Jack Posobiec launched a diatribe against the cliques surrounding the former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden, who, he said, would never return to power “because they’ll have to come through us”. Meanwhile, a lot of political prisoners would be freed, and not just the martyrs of January 6. “Derek Chauvin will be freed!” he declaimed.Two guests in military dress uniforms standing nearby looked at me, laughing with incredulous astonishment. “You’re going to tell us who he is ?” one said. Once I found out from other journalists in the crowd that it was Posobiec – he of “stop the steal” fame and other conspiracy theories dear to Trump and Maga – I could better appreciate the foreign journalists’ difficulty understanding the president. With no political vision, no long-range goals, it’s quite possible that it never occurred to Trump to pardon George Floyd’s murderer. But now that an influential courtier has serviced the monarch with a concrete idea – an idea guaranteed to slake a solipsist’s thirst for attention – we should all be worried about the short-term whims of the king.

      John R MacArthur is president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine More

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      To protect US democracy from tyrants, we must protect the truly free press | Robert Reich

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      Reliable and independent sources of news are now threatened by growing alliances of oligarchs and authoritarians.The mainstream media doesn’t use the term “oligarchy” to describe the billionaires who are using their wealth to enlarge their political power around the world, but that is what is happening.This is why I write for and read the Guardian, and why I’m urgently appealing to you to support it.During the US presidential campaign, legacy mainstream media – who mostly answer to corporate or billionaire ownership – refrained from reporting how incoherent and bizarre Donald Trump was becoming, normalizing and “sanewashing” his increasingly wild utterances even as it reported every minor slip by Joe Biden.The New York Times headlined its report on the September 2024 presidential debate between the president-elect and Kamala Harris – in which Trump issued conspiracy theories about stolen elections, crowd sizes, and Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs – as: Harris and Trump bet on their own sharply contrasting views of America.Trump also used virulent rhetoric towards journalists. He has called the free press “scum” and the “enemy within”. During his campaign, he called for revoking the licenses of television networks and jailing journalists who won’t reveal their anonymous sources.Come 20 January, Trump and his toadies – including billionaires such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – will have total control over the executive branch of the United States government. Trump’s Maga Republicans will be in charge of both chambers of Congress as well.Most members of the US supreme court, some of whom have been beneficiaries of billionaire gifts, have already signaled their willingness to consolidate even more power in Trump’s hands, immunize him from criminal liability for anything he does, and further open the floodgates of big money into US politics.All of this is sending a message from the United States that liberalism’s core tenets, including the rule of law and freedom of the press, are up for grabs.Elsewhere around the world, alliances of economic elites and authoritarians similarly threaten public access to the truth, without which democracy cannot thrive.It’s a vicious cycle: citizens have grown cynical about democracy because decision-making has become dominated by economic elites, and that cynicism has ushered in authoritarians who are even more solicitous of such elites.Trump and his lapdogs have lionized Victor Orbán and Hungary’s Fidesz party, which transformed a once-vibrant democracy into a one-party state, muzzling the media and rewarding the wealthy.Trump’s success will likely encourage other authoritarians, such as Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party in France; Alternative in Germany, or AfD; Italy’s far-right Giorgia Meloni; and radical rightwing parties in the Netherlands and Austria.Trump’s triumph will embolden Russia’s Vladimir Putin – the world’s most dangerous authoritarian oligarch – not only in Ukraine and potentially eastern Europe but also in his worldwide campaign of disinformation seeking to undermine democracies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEvidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents used Musk’s X platform to disrupt the US presidential campaign in favor of Trump. Musk did little to stop them.During the campaign, Musk himself reposted to his 200 million followers a faked version of Harris’s first campaign video with an altered voice track sounding like the vice-president and saying she “does not know the first thing about running the country” and is the “ultimate diversity hire”. Musk tagged the video “amazing”. It received hundreds of millions of views.According to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk posted at least 50 false election claims on X, which garnered a total of at least 1.2bn views. None had a “community note” from X’s supposed fact-checking system.Rupert Murdoch, another oligarch who champions authoritarianism, has turned his Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post into outlets of rightwing propaganda, which have amplified Trump’s lies.Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, prohibited the newspaper from endorsing Kamala Harris. Evidently, he didn’t want to raise Trump’s ire because Bezos’s other businesses depend on government contracts and his largest – Amazon – is already the target of a federal antitrust suit.Bezos’s decision demonstrated that even the possibility of a Trump presidency could force what had been one of the most courageous newspapers in the US to censor itself. Marty Baron, former editor of the Post, called the move “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty”.Citizens concerned about democracy must monitor those in power, act as watchdogs against abuses of power, challenge those abuses, organize and litigate, and sound the alarm about wrongdoing and wrongful policies.But not even the most responsible of citizens can do these things without reliable sources of information. The public doesn’t know what stories have been censored, muted, judged out of bounds, or preemptively not covered by journalists who’d rather not take the risk.In the final weeks before the election, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked his newspaper’s planned endorsement of Harris, prompting the head of the paper’s editorial board to resign. Mariel Garza said she was “not OK with us being silent”, adding: “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”Honest people standing up is precisely what resisting authoritarianism and protecting democracy require. Americans and the citizens of other countries must have access to the truth if we have any hope of standing up to tyranny.The Guardian remains a reliable and trustworthy source of news because it is truly independent. That’s why I’m writing this, and why you’re reading it.Unlike other US media organizations, the Guardian cannot be co-opted by the growing alliances of oligarchs and authoritarians. It does not depend for its existence on billionaires or the good graces of a demagogue; it depends on us.Please support the Guardian today. More

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      Trump’s wild threats put press freedom in the crosshairs in second term

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      Donald Trump could have an easier time limiting press freedom in his second term in the White House after a campaign marked by virulent rhetoric towards journalists and calls for punishing television networks and prosecuting journalists and their sources, legal scholars and journalism advocacy groups warn.Aside from worries about Trump’s demonization of the press inciting violence against journalists, free press advocates appear to be most alarmed by Trump’s call for the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke TV networks’ broadcast licenses and talk of jailing journalists who refuse to reveal anonymous sources.Still, despite a conservative majority on the supreme court and likely Republican control of the House and Senate, those same people also say that America’s robust first amendment protections and a legislative proposal and technology to protect sources mean that a diminished press under Trump is not a certainty.“My big-picture concern is that Trump is going to do exactly what he has been telling us that he wants to do, which is that he is going to punish his critics,” said Heidi Kitrosser, a Northwestern University law professor.Kitrosser added: “He is going to punish people who dissent from his approach to things, people who criticize him and also, perhaps more importantly, investigative journalists and their sources who are not offering opinions but are exposing facts that he finds embarrassing or inconvenient.”Trump has long said journalists deliver “fake news” and are the “enemy of the people”, but since leaving office in 2021 he has used more violent language. At a 2022 rally in Texas, Trump suggested that the threat of rape in prison could compel a journalist to reveal their sources.“When this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that was,’” Trump said.At a recent campaign rally, Trump also said that given where the press was located at the event, if someone were to try to assassinate him, the person “would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much”.Kash Patel, who could be appointed as acting attorney general or head of the CIA, frequently talks of the “deep state” and told the far-right Trump ally Steve Bannon in a podcast interview: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media … We’re going to come after you.”Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said it was “entirely possible that [Trump] is just bloviating”.In his earlier campaigns and first term in office, Trump “was on the campaign trail calling them names and riling up crowds, but he was not actively saying, ‘I want to throw them in jail,’” Timm said.Trump also posted on Twitter during his first term about revoking broadcasters’ licenses when they put out “fake news”.After the tweets, Ajit Pai, then the FCC chair appointed by Trump, said: “I believe in the first amendment.”View image in fullscreen“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on a particular newscast,” Pai explained.But Trump and his supporters talked more about revoking the licenses during his second run for the White House. CNN reported in October that Trump had over the last two years said at least 15 times that the government should take such actions.After a 60 Minutes interview in October that contained an answer from Kamala Harris about the war in Gaza that differed from her response in a trailer for the interview, Trump called CBS a “threat to democracy” and said its license should be revoked.An FCC commissioner appointed by Trump recently also said that NBC could lose its license for having Harris appear on Saturday Night Live before the election and not giving equal time to Trump.Another Trump-appointed FCC commissioner said it “would not be inappropriate for the commission” to investigate the complaint about the 60 Minutes interview.“That is even more disturbing, because it means that it’s not just Trump wildly spewing off the cuff. It means that two of the five current FCC chairs might be amenable to this argument,” Timm said.Still, it is unlikely that the FCC would be able to revoke a broadcaster’s license before the end of Trump’s term, according to Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe commission only revokes a license when a broadcaster goes off the air, Schwartzman said. The government agency could then take back the spectrum licensed to the station in case someone else would like to use it.The commission could deny a license renewal, but none are up for renewal until June 2028, and the commission would not be able to even decide to hold a hearing on a renewal before the end of Trump’s second term in office, Schwartzman said.As to cracking down on whistleblowers and journalists, Trump could use the Espionage Act, which allows the government to pursue people who share information with journalists related to national security, Kitrosser said.Barack Obama was also aggressive in his use of the law to prosecute whistleblowers during his presidency.Kitrosser said she was “very, very disturbed” by Obama’s crackdown on media sources.But the difference between the Obama administration’s effort and Trump’s call for prosecuting journalists and sources who leak information is that Trump has repeatedly said: “He does not think that criticism of him, criticism of judges that he appoints, criticism of his policies … should be protected,” Kitrosser said. “Not to protect national security, but to protect himself, and I think that is really the fundamental difference between Obama and Trump.”The Trump administration will probably have an easier time pursuing sources than journalists.“I think courts will be more receptive to the argument that the first amendment bars media prosecutions of journalists under the Espionage Act than they have been receptive to those claims by media sources,” Kitrosser said.To protect sources, journalists could also start to rely more on encryption communication tools like Signal in a second Trump term. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has urged journalists to start using such technology.The organization is also lobbying for the passage of the Press Act, which would prohibit the federal government from compelling journalists to disclose certain protected information, except in limited circumstances such as to prevent terrorism or imminent violence, and from spying on journalists through their technology providers.The House passed the bill unanimously. Three Republican senators have also sponsored the legislation, but it has stalled in committee because of a small group of Republicans, including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who argued the bill would “open a floodgate of leaks damaging to law enforcement and our nation’s security”.“Too many journalists are little more than leftwing activists who are, at best, ambivalent about America and who are cavalier about our security and the truth,” Cotton wrote in a statement explaining his opposition.Timm, of the Press Foundation, said he was unsure whether the Senate would pass the legislation before Joe Biden leaves office.“The Democrats in the lame duck session are really going to have to prioritize it because when the Senate changes hands and the White House changes hands, there is probably little to no chance that this bill would pass,” Timm said. “It’s now or never for protecting journalists’ rights.” More

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      Washington Post cancellations hit 250,000 – 10% of subscribers

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      Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.The Washington Post has not commented on the reported numbers.The famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said on Tuesday he disagreed with the paper’s decision, adding that the outlet was “an institution reporting about Donald Trump and what he’s done and supported by the editorial page”.Bezos framed the decision as an effort to support journalists and journalism, noting that in “surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress”.But in this election year, he noted, the press had fallen below Congress, according to a Gallup poll.“We have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote.A survey published by the New York Times over the weekend found that the mainstream media were trusted less than social media and 55% of poll respondents thought the media bad for democracy.The Washington Post’s decision to forgo a presidential endorsement follows a growing trend in the newspaper business, which has mostly been hemorrhaging revenue and readership.Gannett-owned USA Today, with the fifth-largest print and fourth-largest digital subscriber circulation, said on Tuesday that neither it nor more than 200 local papers under its umbrella would endorse a candidate.“Why are we doing this? Because we believe America’s future is decided locally – one race at a time,” a USA Today spokesperson, Lark-Marie Antón, said in a statement to Politico. “Our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”The non-endorsing papers have said they still plan to make political recommendations at local and state levels.Bezos wrote in defense of the Post’s decision that “presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election … what presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.” More