A free and independent press is one of democracy’s last lines of defense. It’s where power is questioned, facts are verified, and the public gains its understanding of the world. But under President Trump’s leadership – particularly in his second term – the media has been steadily undermined, attacked, and manipulated into submission.
From the earliest days of his political rise, Trump branded the press “the enemy of the people.” At the time, it sounded like theatre – one of his many outrageous slogans designed to rile up the crowd. But over time, it became policy. Journalists were banned from briefings. Reporters were publicly harassed at rallies. Entire news organisations were delegitimised as “fake news” unless they offered praise. What started as rhetoric turned into a campaign of disinformation and intimidation.
This erosion of media independence has happened in two key ways: by silencing critical voices, and by co-opting sympathetic ones.
Independent journalists now work under constant threat. Legal pressure, license challenges, defamation suits, and even surveillance have become tools to muzzle dissent. Whistleblowers are prosecuted, not protected. Major networks once known for tough questions now pull their punches – or are simply locked out.
At the same time, pro-Trump media outlets have risen in influence, often indistinguishable from state-run propaganda. Whether it’s Fox News personalities given cabinet positions, or social media influencers granted White House access in exchange for loyalty, the lines between journalism and political theatre have blurred.
These outlets don’t challenge power – they amplify it. They repeat Trump’s talking points uncritically, flood the zone with outrage and distraction, and vilify any journalist who dares to question the narrative. The result is an information landscape where truth becomes tribal, and lies travel faster than facts.
Why does this matter? Because a democracy without a free press cannot stay democratic for long. When citizens no longer trust what they see or hear – when news becomes just another weapon of the powerful – then accountability dies, and corruption thrives.
Some journalists continue to fight. They fact-check, investigate, and shine light where it’s needed most. But their space is shrinking, and their safety increasingly uncertain. In many ways, the press has not just been pushed to the sidelines – it’s been made part of the battlefield.
History teaches us that authoritarian regimes always start by silencing the press. What’s unfolding in America is no exception. We may still have newspapers, networks, and headlines – but when truth itself is up for debate, freedom is already slipping through our fingers.
See also:
The Loyalty Trap: Why Truth No Longer Matters in Trump’s America
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From the 1730’s, Franklin and Zenger fought for press freedom to seek and publish truth and a jury eventually supported Zenger. It had great import. Wilkes had to fight, and many smaller causes faced big proprietary wilful domineering. What is the record stretching back? We have had the Harmsworths, Rothermeres, Northcliffes, Hearst, Streicher, Beaverbrook, Black, Maxwell, and stinker ne plus ultra, R. Murdoch. Now, commercial shitheads intrude, Bezosified, so the USA papers are perverted and corrupted. T. V. media, said to be the thinking man’s onanism, sickens. There is no light, honesty, reality, just Trumpery.
It’s interesting that Netanyahu has adopted the same practices by barring access to Gaza by any journalists or TV media which allows him to constantly say there is no shortage of food and other essential supplies in Gaza and that stories of famine and starvation are malicious antisemitic conspiracies.
And the misinformation and denial of facts is working : a family friend when discussing the Gaza situation said quite seriously that people in Gaza should just pack up and move elsewhere, “that’s what I would do” she said quite earnestly.
When I pointed out to her that the Palestinian people are confined within Gaza with all border crossings controlled by the IDF and that they cannot leave even if there were somewhere to go, she couldn’t believe that was the case and told me that “Israel had no right to restrict people’s movement like that”.
Hello! I thought, Netanyahu is winning at least with some of the people. “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” seems to be the Israeli mantra.
Incidentally the aerial coverage of the decimated Gaza in the last few days was taken from a Jordanian aircraft dropping relief to the starving population: Israel has now threatened to stop any further relief flights.
We must demand that our free press survives this onslaught : support AIMN !
Thank you Michael Taylor, for a very necessary story- even though, on reflection, this process should be obvious to all. But it isn’t. And there are parallel stories that make it so much worse. There’s the distortion and corruption of words. The best example is the term “anti-semitism” – now being used to discredit anyone who dares criticise Israel. Another subtle but so damaging process is the down-grading in the education world, of foreign languages. People become reliant on the English language – so we find that the Trumpian, and Starmerian propaganda is regurgitated across the anglophone world
Thank you, Noel. Appreciated.
Once I put up with feeling irritated by reported political stupidity and bias. And I thought Americans had some sort of social disease causing blitheness and Ken & Barbie infantilization, and the Brits, self-congratulatory pomposity.
But that irritation turned to fury as the ‘war on facts and truth’ became more brazen, and even pronounced. After retirement, I realized my fury was perhaps just another ‘designer effect’ of the entire caboodle of mainstream media, and the politicians, think-tanks and corporations pumping it. So I turned my research skills to digging deep behind the stories, seeking ‘facts’ and ‘histories’ and what I might be able to ascertain as reasoned ’cause and effect truths’.
After a while, my research led me into ‘histories’ of religion, politics (of kings et al), conquest and war. Again and again I found that these aspects of humanity were welded into a scheme focused on power and supremacy to achieve unbridled wealth. And that their main tools were corruption and propaganda.
So what of the Fourth Estate? Did it ever really get to the unalloyed truth? Was it always subject to the guile and secrets of those who wielded power? Maybe, to certain extent, given that its ability to investigate and understand the far-flung reaches of those in power, and those fighting against them.
Over time, it would appear that the proximity of the Fourth Estate to those wielding power increased its bias against the ‘other’, and ultimately to an increasing corruption of the Fourth Estate, and it becoming a commercialized power unto itself. And so, imperialism reigned supreme.
It appears that only the networked accumulation of filth and destruction became so great that the relationship of the Estates became meaningless. Yet the dominated ordinary citizens, busy trying to slake their endless hope, had little alternative but to receive the gumph and sensation cast at them.
In Oz, historians such as Raphael Carbonni, Henry Reynolds, Rebe Taylor, et al broke ranks, and with them our novelists such as Franklin, White, Carey, Malouf, Keneally, Grenville, Flanagan et al, revealed to us the guile and wiles of the imperialist regime we had long been subject to.
As communications across the world became increasingly electronified and digitized, so too, the ability to mine the ‘facts and truths’, eg: Wikipedia and ‘the Commons’. And along came the odd-ball Oz, Assange, and Wikileaks. Soon the floodgates of deception were cast aside, and ‘facts and truths’ issued forth in depths never before plumbed.
Social media, indeed, all media changed. The Fifth Estate was formed from all previous media, gossip, conspiracies, Chinese walls, and the bush telegraph. The gouging olde guarde fought back, ‘flooding the zone with shit’, maximizing discombobulation – alternative facts and truths, misinformation, disinformation, linguistic strangulations, and out-and-out lies.
The charlatan-in-chief, T-Rump, missing the spotlight of his third-rate TV popularity, latched onto it, and the olde garde corporate and political powerhouses attached their strings and wires to him. And along for the ride came T-Rump’s various political flunkies, and the techbros of social media and the Alphabet soup of power-brokers of the digital world.
But it’s gone awry. In front of the world they are eating one another alive. They have bound one another in their tangled web, driven by competition, unable to fashion a consistent separate reality.
Along with the modern historians and novelists, the proliferation of Independent Media is bringing them down. With the ubiquity of smart phones and home / desktop computers, ordinary citizens increasingly have access to information with the veils of deception drawn aside.
The most nervous would now have to be the clerics, the politicians and the corporate heads, whose secrets, dogmas, and diplomacies teeter on the imbalances of their flooded zones.
Because of this, quite rightly, the status quo of democracies are being severely tested. It appears that the people will lead, and the the leaders will follow – as servants to fairness and equity, not hubris.
Now I hope that the nervous power-children of the world’s sandpit will revert to a functional detente, rather than overwhelm themselves into pressing the wrong buttons at the wrong time.
Priceless comment from Terry mills.