Trump Versus The Press

Today, The New York Times reported that CBS News president Wendy McMahon was forced out of her job, a lingering side effect of the “60 Minutes” debacle. The Times attributes the situation to the “ongoing showdown involving President Trump, CBS and its parent company, Paramount,” which is trying to settle Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit accusing “60 Minutes” of “deceptively editing” and interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign.

The scales of justice, in the entrance to the Boston Public Library.

The lawsuit is fanciful, the stuff of motions to dismiss, not settlements, but there is reporting that Paramount’s controlling shareholder wants to resolve it to facilitate government approval for a high-stakes corporate transaction she is in the middle of. In a memo to her staff, McMahon wrote, “it’s become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”

In April, Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” resigned. He expressed concerns about journalistic independence. McMahon backed Owens at the time, saying publicly that “standing behind” him had been an “easy decision” for her—apparently leading to her ultimate separation from CBS.

On January 16, 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Edward Carrington, a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress from Virginia, advocating for the importance of a free press: “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. but I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.”

Those words take on enhanced meaning in an era of rampant misinformation and disinformation, some of it deliberately being pushed out for political purposes. “The basis for our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right.” It has never been more important to keep and support a free press than now.

Trump went on the attack against the press even before his January 2025 inauguration. In December 2024, ABC paid him $15 million to settle allegations that George Stephanopolous defamed Trump by saying on air that he had been held liable for raping E. Jean Carroll, when in fact, the jury had found, under New York law, that there had been a sexual assault. Under New York law, digital penetration is deemed sexual assault, not rape, although it is often publicly equated with, and treated by other states’ legal systems as the latter. The Law Journal editorial board concluded that a voluntary payment of such a high amount was questionable:

“While at first glance the settlement resembles more the capitulation of a huge entertainment company facing the specter of the incoming administration’s threats to undermine the media than it does an effort to provide compensation for true reputational damage, a closer look reveals that, while it may have avoided significant risk for Disney, it also provides compensation far beyond any actual reputational damages for Trump: it creates a bad precedent in uncertain times for a tattered and beaten news media under attack from many quarters.”

It’s unlikely the settlement would have taken place on these terms if Trump had lost the election.

Also in December, Trump sued Iowa pollster Ann Selzer for consumer fraud, alleging she rigged an Iowa poll to influence the 2024 election. Trump attacked Selzer, saying, “In my opinion, it was fraud, and it was election interference. You know, she's got me right always. She's a very good pollster. She knows what she was doing.” Selzer, a highly reputed pollster, thought Harris was up on the eve of the election. Trump attacked the press over 100 times during the campaign. Newspapers like The Washington Post and L.A. Times embarrassed themselves by bending the knee. After assuming office, he shut out the AP from Oval Office and Air Force One coverage because they had the temerity to refuse to follow Trump’s dictate that the Gulf of Mexico should henceforth be known as the Gulf of America.

The press should not go hat in hand to a president to settle lawsuits or beg for access. A president shouldn’t expect that. But Trump does, and it puts an ever more serious onus on the press to live up, despite the peril to their access they need to cover the news, to journalistic standards. It is their job to report on what happens, not what the president or anyone else wants them to. And although they have taken a lot of hits in the time of Trump, some of them well deserved, they are still essential to the national well-being.

This country relies on a free and independent press; it’s built on it. The Founding Fathers knew that. That’s why the first thing would-be dictators do is go after a free press, if it exists in their country. That’s what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who by early 2018 was being labeled a “soft” autocrat, did. At CPAC in 2022 he told American conservatives “Have your own media,” claiming Western media presented a “leftist” viewpoint. Tucker Carlson praised Orban’s Hungary in a video that was played at the summit as a roadmap for the U.S. The Guardian reported that “Journalists from international media outlets, including the New Yorker, Vox Media, Vice News, Rolling Stone, and the Associated Press, were denied access to the event despite months of requests.” The AP captioned its 2024 report on the state of the press in Hungary like this, “How Hungary’s Orbán uses control of the media to escape scrutiny and keep the public in the dark.” Orbán is the last man who should be giving an American president advice, but Trump continues to praise him.

Julian E. Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton, has written about another time in our history where newspaper owners stood up to a president: “We have seen this struggle play out before. During the early 1970s, another president, Richard Nixon, brought his institutional muscle down to bear on the press. In his case, the outcome became a vital moment that ensured, for decades, that news coverage of elected officials remained vigilant and free.” The press did that by publishing The Pentagon Papers. As Nixon tried to prevent further publications, the case reached the Supreme Court. Justice Hugo Black wrote that only “a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.” Professor Zelizer’s full piece is good reading on this topic.

The need for clear-eyed reporting has never been greater, and the threat of deception of Americans is far from over. Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, said on a 2023 podcast with Steve Bannon that if he had the power to, he would “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton argued in No. 84 that freedom of the press is essential for holding power accountable. He believed the press would provide such a strong check against government abuse that a bill of rights containing the First Amendment was unnecessary. Fortunately, he was outvoted in that regard, and the First Amendment continues to guarantee important rights in the face of a president who would otherwise opt to restrict many of them.

When the press gets attacked, it’s the people who lose. Making sure Americans have access to truthful information and thoughtful analysis so they can make up their own minds on the issues is essential in this moment. We’re doing some of the heavy lifting on that here, and I’m grateful you’re with me.

We’re in this together,

Joyce