President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Garden earlier than boarding Marine One and … Extra
The newly introduced $16 million settlement between CBS Information and President Trump — over an edited 60 Minutes section with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed was deceptive — would possibly appear like yet one more media skirmish involving a president who’s made press intimidation an indicator of his playbook.
However whereas it’s straightforward to wring one’s palms over what seems to be like yet one more erosion of the free press courtesy of Trump, it’s vital to recollect: He’s not the primary president to wage struggle on the media. And he positively received’t be the final.
Principally, it’s value protecting in thoughts some perspective right here.
Now in his second time period, Trump is actually utilizing the levers of federal energy to reshape the media, sideline crucial voices, and strain newsrooms via lawsuits and regulatory threats. As The Wall Road Journal editorial board put it: “The President is utilizing authorities to intimidate information retailers that publish tales he doesn’t like. It’s a low transfer in a free nation with a free press.”
Trump’s struggle on the press is nothing new
CBS says its Harris section was edited for time, a typical business observe. However Trump had leverage and determined to make use of it: The case landed simply as CBS’s father or mother firm, Paramount, was searching for authorities approval for its merger with Skydance. Trump bought his pound of flesh, whereas CBS was basically pressured to pay a tax to pave the best way for its merger.
As unsettling as this second could really feel, although, it’s really not with out precedent — presidents have lengthy clashed with the press each time protection has lower too near the bone. And a few have gone a lot farther than Trump.
Thomas Jefferson, for instance, was as soon as a free press champion earlier than newspapers of the time turned towards him. He used political affect to assist libel prosecutions towards unfriendly editors, steered authorities printing contracts to sympathetic newspapers, and privately derided the press as a “polluted automobile” of falsehoods. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,” he wrote in 1807.
In the course of the Civil Struggle, in the meantime, Abraham Lincoln licensed the suspension of habeas corpus and allowed navy authorities to arrest civilians together with journalists with out trial. His administration additionally shut down newspapers crucial of the Union struggle effort and detained editors who had been seen as sympathetic to the Confederacy.
Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act, which might later be weaponized to punish too-critical journalism, whereas Richard Nixon used federal businesses to spy on and discredit reporters. Even President Obama, broadly seen as media-friendly, clashed with the press in his personal approach.
The Obama administration aggressively pursued leakers, seized journalists’ telephone information, and labeled one Fox Information reporter a “co-conspirator” in a leak investigation. Whereas Obama averted Trump’s bombastic type of media bashing, his White Home nonetheless used institutional energy alongside these strains to the fullest diploma.
Trump, against this, doesn’t appear to have any curiosity in priority or subtlety. He’s rewritten the foundations of presidential-media engagement — changing conventional White Home briefings with podcast interviews, settled lawsuits on political phrases, and known as for pushing out community executives who don’t play ball. The CBS settlement, which coincided with a really explicit regulatory dependency, highlights how Trump isn’t just preventing the media — he’s reshaping the incentives that govern it.
The WSJ was proper to name this a “low transfer.” However it’s not an unprecedented one. Presidents like Trump will all the time battle the press. The extra attention-grabbing query is who’s nonetheless keen to push again.
