Journalists expect renewed hostility to their work under the new Trump administration

NEW YORK – For the press going into the second Trump administration, there is a balance between preparedness and fear.

The return to power of Donald Trump, who has called journalists the enemy and talked about retaliating against those he believes have wronged him, is unnerving news executives. The perceived threats are numerous: lawsuits of all kinds, attempts to expose anonymous sources, physical danger and intimidation, attacks on public media and defamation protection, everyday demonization.

In a closely watched case settled over the weekend, ABC decided to settle down a defamation lawsuit filed by the president-elect over an inaccurate statement by George Stephanopoulos, who agreed to pay $15 million to the Trump presidential library.

“The media is going into the next administration with its eyes wide open,” said Bruce Brown, executive director of the Journalists’ Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“Some challenges to a free press may be overt, others more subtle,” Brown said. “We must be prepared for quick responses as well as long-term campaigns to protect our rights — and remember that our most important audience is the courts and the public.”

One prominent editor warned against war with an administration that had not yet taken office. “This may be a moment to cry wolf,” said Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of the nonprofit news publication ProPublica. “But I don’t think we got there.”

A second chance, a third chance — but not a fourth

Speaking on Fox News two weeks after his election, Trump said he owes it to the American people to be open and available to the press — as long as he is treated fairly.

“I’m not looking for retribution or glory or taking down people who have treated me very unfairly or even unreasonably badly,” he told Fox. “I always want to give a second or even a third chance, but I never want to give a fourth chance. That’s where I draw the line.”

News organizations enter the second Trump era weak both financially and in public respect. Trump to a great extent bypassed outdated media during his campaign for podcasters, but still had time for specific jabs at ABC, CBS and NBC.

The Trump team knows that many of its followers despise the investigative press, and stoking that anger has political advantages. Two examples from the campaign to nominate Trump nominee Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense show how routine reporting can be characterized as an attack.

When The New York Times learned of an email Hegset’s mother had once sent him criticizing his treatment of women, she called her for comment. Penelope Hegseth later told Fox News that she took it as a threatalthough this allowed the newspaper to report that she quickly apologized for sending the email and says she no longer feels the same way about him.

Pete Hegseth also took to social media to say that ProPublica — what he called a “left-wing hacker group” — had deliberately set out to publish a false report that he had been rejected from West Point decades ago. The news site contacted him after military academy officials denied Hegseth’s application for acceptance. Hegseth provided evidence that those officials were wrong, and ProPublica never published a single article.

“This is journalism,” noted ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger. But the narrative stuck: “ProPublica Ruined Pete Hegseth Smear,” New York Post called it in the title.

Follow how the work of journalists is covered

During the Trump presidential campaign sued CBS News for how it is edited the interview with rival Kamala Harris; suggested ABC News lose your broadcasting license for fact-checking his lone dispute with Harris; and successfully invoked equal time on NBC after Harris appeared on Saturday Night Live. In Stephanopoulos’s trial, the ABC anchor said Trump was “convicted of rape” during the civil trial of writer E. Gene Carroll, although he didn’t.

Trump talks to the mainstream media — he gave informational interview this month on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” but journalists must be careful about how their work is portrayed.

Trump’s appointments and what they said about journalists were alarming.

Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to head the FBIsaid on a podcast last year that “we’re going to go after people in the media who lied about American citizens.” Two appointees who have expressed hostility to the mass media will be able to influence the work of journalists: Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Lake Kari as director of Voice of America.

News organizations are worried that a Justice Department policy that has generally barred prosecutors from seizing journalists’ records to investigate leaks will be overturned, and are already urging journalists to protect their jobs. “If you have something that you don’t want to share with a wider audience, don’t put it in the cloud,” ProPublica’s Engelberg said.

During the first Trump administration, some journalists covering immigration issues were removed for background checks and questioning. The Reporters Committee is wondering whether this could happen again — and whether similar practices could extend to reports of pending deportations.

Literary and human rights organization PEN America is concerned about journalists facing physical danger and digital hostility. To some of his supporters, it may have seemed like a flippant remark when, months after the assassination attempt, Trump said at the rally that he wouldn’t mind if someone had to “shoot through fake news” to get to him. But it was not for the people standing on the media ladder.

“It’s important that the president act responsibly to reduce, not encourage, physical violence against the press,” said Victoria Wilk, PEN America’s program director for digital security and free speech.

Senator John F. Kennedy of Louisiana recently introduced a bill it would end taxpayer funding of public radio and television, a longtime goal of many Republicans that could gain momentum with the party’s return to power. Some US Supreme Court justices are eager review legal precedent which made it difficult to prove defamation against news organizations.

It’s clear the new administration will go after the press in every way possible, former Washington Post editor Martin Baron said recently on NPR. “I really think he’s going to use every tool in his toolbox,” Baron said, “and there are a lot of tools.”

Hungary’s experience inspires pessimism—but perhaps a glimmer of hope

In the most pessimistic moments, defenders of the press look at what happened in Hungary under the control of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Since Orbán took control in 2010, he and his supporters have taken control of most of the media and turned it into a propaganda unit.

Don’t think it can’t happen in the United States, warns András Peto, a Hungarian investigative journalist who left a news website when pressured to suppress his work and founded the investigative journalism center Direkt36.

Despite the repression, there is still a market for independent journalism in Hungary, he said. Earlier this year, two Hungarian officials resigned after outrage when it emerged they had pardoned a man who forced children to drop sexual abuse allegations against the headmaster of a state institution.

Peto said it was important for journalists not to impersonate any resistance because that would make it easier for the government to release them. Instead, they should just do the work.

“Frankly, we all have to accept and admit that our power as a media has declined,” said Peto, who participated in the Nieman Fellowship for Journalists at Harvard University. “Our stories don’t have the same impact as they did ten years ago. But I also wouldn’t underestimate the power of the media.”

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David Bauder writes about the media for the AP. Follow him on and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.