The Washington Post Opinion How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America Some foreign leaders have ruthlessly curtailed journalism. U.S. politicians could draw from their playbook. (Brian Stauffer for The Washington Post) By A.G. Sulzberger September 5, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT A.G. Sulzberger is the publisher of the New York Times.

 

The Washington Post 

Opinion  How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America

Some foreign leaders have ruthlessly curtailed journalism. U.S. politicians could draw from their playbook.

(Brian Stauffer for The Washington Post)

23 min

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By A.G. Sulzberger

September 5, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

A.G. Sulzberger is the publisher of the New York Times.

After several years out of power, the former leader is returned to office on a populist platform. He blames the news media’s coverage of his previous government for costing him reelection. As he sees it, tolerating the independent press, with its focus on truth-telling and accountability, weakened his ability to steer public opinion. This time, he resolves not to make the same mistake.

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His country is a democracy, so he can’t simply close newspapers or imprison journalists. Instead, he sets about undermining independent news organizations in subtler ways — using bureaucratic tools such as tax law, broadcast licensing and government contracting. Meanwhile, he rewards news outlets that toe the party line — shoring them up with state advertising revenue, tax exemptions and other government subsidies — and helps friendly businesspeople buy up other weakened news outlets at cut rates to turn them into government mouthpieces.

Within a few years, only pockets of independence remain in the country’s news media, freeing the leader from perhaps the most challenging obstacle to his increasingly authoritarian rule. Instead, the nightly news and broadsheet headlines unskeptically parrot his claims, often unmoored from the truth, flattering his accomplishments while demonizing and discrediting his critics. “Whoever controls a country’s media,” the leader’s political director openly asserts, “controls that country’s mindset and through that the country itself.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a gathering of European leaders in Woodstock, England, in July. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

This is the short version of how Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, effectively dismantled the news media in his country. This effort was a central pillar of Orban’s broader project to remake his country as an “illiberal democracy.” A weakened press made it easier for him to keep secrets, to rewrite reality, to undermine political rivals, to act with impunity — and, ultimately, to consolidate unchecked power in ways that left the nation and its people worse off. It is a story that is being repeated in eroding democracies all around the world.

Over the past year, I’ve been asked with increasing frequency whether The New York Times, where I serve as publisher, is prepared for the possibility that a similar campaign against the free press could be embraced here in the United States, despite our country’s proud tradition of recognizing the essential role journalism plays in supporting a strong democracy and a free people.

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It’s not a crazy question. As they seek a return to the White House, former president Donald Trump and his allies have declared their intention to increase their attacks on a press he has long derided as “the enemy of the people.” Trump pledged last year: “The LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.” A senior Trump aide, Kash Patel, made the threat even more explicit: “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” There is already evidence that Trump and his team mean what they say. By the end of his first term, Trump’s anti-press rhetoric — which contributed to a surge in anti-press sentiment in this country and around the world — had quietly shifted into anti-press action.

If Trump follows through on promises to continue that campaign in a second term, his efforts would likely be informed by his open admiration for the ruthlessly effective playbook of authoritarians such as Orban, whom Trump recently met with at Mar-a-Lago and praised as “a smart, strong, and compassionate leader.” Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, recently voiced similar praise of Orban: “He’s made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States.” One of the intellectual architects of the Republican agenda, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, asserted that Orban’s Hungary was “not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model.” To loud applause from attendees of a Republican political conference held in Budapest in 2022, Orban himself left little doubt over what his model calls for. “Dear friends: We must have our own media.”

To ensure we are prepared for whatever is to come, my colleagues and I have spent months studying how press freedom has been attacked in Hungary — as well as in other democracies such as India and Brazil. The political and media environments in each country are different, and the campaigns have seen varying tactics and levels of success, but the pattern of anti-press action reveals common threads.

A wall painted with the likenesses of President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seen in Ahmadabad, India, in February 2020. (Ajit Solanki/AP)

These new would-be strongmen have developed a style more subtle than their counterparts in totalitarian states such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, who systematically censor, jail or kill journalists. For those trying to undercut independent journalism in democracies, the attacks typically exploit banal — and often nominally legal — weaknesses in a nation’s systems of governance. This playbook generally has five parts.

Create a climate hospitable to crackdowns on the media by sowing public distrust in independent journalism and normalizing the harassment of the people who produce it.

Manipulate legal and regulatory authority — such as taxation, immigration enforcement and privacy protections — to punish offending journalists and news organizations.

Exploit the courts, most often through civil litigation, to effectively impose additional logistical and financial penalties on disfavored journalism, even in cases without legal merit.

Increase the scale of attacks on journalists and their employers by encouraging powerful supporters in other parts of the public and private sector to adopt versions of these tactics.

Use the levers of power not just to punish independent journalists but also to reward those who demonstrate fealty to their leadership. This includes helping supporters of the ruling party gain control of news organizations financially weakened by all the aforementioned efforts.

As that list makes clear, these leaders have realized that crackdowns on the press are most effective when they’re at their least dramatic — not the stuff of thrillers but a movie so plodding and complicated that no one wants to watch it.

As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence, I have no interest in wading into politics. I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection. It is beyond shortsighted to give up journalistic independence out of fear that it might later be taken away. At The Times, we are committed to following the facts and presenting a full, fair and accurate picture of November’s election and the candidates and issues shaping it. Our democratic model asks different institutions to play different roles; this is ours.

At the same time, as the steward of one of the country’s leading news organizations, I feel compelled to speak out about threats to the free press, as my predecessors and I have done to leaders of both parties. I am doing so here, in the pages of an esteemed competitor, because I believe the risk is shared by our entire profession, as well as all who depend on it. In highlighting this campaign, I am not advising people how to vote. There are countless issues on the ballot that are closer to voters’ hearts than protections for my broadly unpopular profession. But the weakening of a free and independent press matters, whatever your party or politics. The flow of trustworthy news and information is critical to a free, secure and prosperous nation. This is why defense of the free press has been a point of rare bipartisan consensus throughout the nation’s history. As President Ronald Reagan put it: “There is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong, and independent press to our continued success in what the Founding Fathers called our ‘noble experiment’ in self-government.”

That consensus has broken. A new model is being crafted that aims to undermine the ability of journalists to freely gather and report the news. It’s worth getting to know what this model looks like in action.

Indo-Tibetan Border Police stand guard outside the offices of the BBC in New Delhi in February 2023, after Indian tax authorities raided the building. (Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images)

On a Tuesday morning in 2023, more than a dozen Indian officials swept into the BBC’s New Delhi and Mumbai offices. They told startled reporters and editors to step away from their computers and to hand over their cellphones. For the next three days, the journalists were barred from entering their own offices, allowing the government to scrutinize their electronics and rifle through their files. Even more surprising than the raid itself was that these officials identified themselves not as law enforcement agents but as tax auditors.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has a history of carrying out these “tax surveys,” as authorities called them, against independent Indian news organizations whose reporting has incurred his regime’s wrath. Given the timing, it wasn’t difficult to discern what triggered the government raid. The previous month, the BBC had released a documentary that reexamined allegations that Modi had played a role in deadly sectarian riots, a topic the prime minister has tried to keep from public view.

Members of the media are seen outside the Mumbai offices of the BBC, after a raid there by tax authorities in February 2023. (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images)

The government argued that its raid on the BBC offices had nothing to do with the documentary. It was simply a mundane act of good government — auditing the books of a corporation to ensure compliance with India’s notoriously complex tax code. But the raid gave the authorities three days of access to the computers and phones of journalists and editors. This risked the disclosure of confidential sources and sent an unmistakable warning to any future whistleblowers who might think to challenge Modi by exposing misconduct: Talk to journalists and we will find you. Many such dissidents have been fired, ostracized, harassed and arrested.

The raid of one of the world’s best known and regarded news organizations woke the rest of the international community to what was already an ever-present reality for Indian journalists. “You never know what story will trigger what kind of response. That’s what makes it so dangerous,” said Siddharth Varadarajan, a founding editor of the Wire, a respected Indian news outlet. Police have raided the Wire’s newsroom and the homes of its staff, and have repeatedly filed charges against its journalists, following reporting that angered the Modi government. “There’s a method in the madness,” Varadarajan explained. “Its ad hoc nature is part of the intimidation.”

A country’s immigration system, similarly opaque and centralized, is another bureaucratic lever that can be abused to put pressure on journalists. In India, Modi’s government has recently begun to impose stricter visa rules on journalists and has stripped foreign-born reporters of their right to remain in the country. One result is growing journalistic tentativeness. Vanessa Dougnac, a French journalist, described this dynamic after the Indian government revoked her work permit and she was forced to leave the country, even though she had reported freely in the country for more than 20 years and her husband and son are both Indian citizens. “Under the increasing yoke of visa acquisitions and access restrictions, foreign correspondents knew they were next on the list,” she wrote in May. “A precautionary paranoia took hold of everyone.”

Even laws designed to support a healthy information ecosystem can be twisted. In Hungary, Orban’s government has sought to manipulate the European Union’s digital privacy rules to block standard investigative reporting practices, such as drawing on public-records databases.

Americans might be used to thinking of the courts as guarantors of rights and liberties — such as freedom of the press — against these types of abuses and contortions of laws. But the lessons from abroad remind us that the court system can also be misused to make it harder and more expensive for journalists to do their work.

In India, for example, a respected financial journalist has spent the past seven years in court defending himself against defamation cases brought over his reporting on alleged misconduct at the companies of a multibillionaire close to Modi. The Wire has spent even longer fighting a defamation claim from a lawmaker in Modi’s party demanding the removal of two news articles about his business interests. “I’d be lying if I said it’s not a drain on our resources,” Varadarajan said. At other news organizations, journalists say colleagues have avoided pursuing important stories about powerful people — let alone publishing them — for fear of legal reprisal. In this way, court cases targeting the press need not be legally sound to succeed. Even when the case fails, the cost and stress of litigation can be enough to silence a reporter or encourage another to self-censor.

In Brazil, frequent abuses of the court system by former president Jair Bolsonaro and his allies were dubbed “judicial harassment.” Practitioners filed lawsuits before judges they knew to be skeptical of the press. They overwhelmed journalists with superfluous court filings to drive up their legal bills. They sued in several far-flung courts at once, presenting journalists with the proposition of defending themselves on multiple fronts. The governor of one rural state, a vocal Bolsonaro ally, has used such tactics to go after more than a dozen local journalists for reporting on him, his family and his political backers — often requesting criminal investigations into his allegations as well. Police named a recent one “Operation Fake News.”

Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, at a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Camboriu, Brazil, in July. (Pedro H. Tesch/Getty Images)

“Bolsonaro opened the door for hatred toward journalism, and that path is now open to businessmen, lawyers, governors, [nongovernmental organizations] and others,” said Cristina Tardáguila, founder of Agência Lupa, a Brazilian fact-checking outlet. “The No. 1 plaintiff moving legal actions against journalists is a businessman — a big fan of Bolsonaro — who’s brought more than 50 lawsuits against journalists recently.”

All these anti-press efforts have benefited from the seeds of distrust that leaders have sown against independent journalism. As we’ve seen in our own country, accusations levied against the press by leaders of political parties, identity groups or ideological movements can quickly become articles of faith among their supporters. Today, trust in the news media sits at historic lows in much of the world — a decline helped along by the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories, propaganda and clickbait unleashed on social media. Meanwhile, trustworthy journalists — already shrinking in number as news organizations struggle financially — face surging harassment and threats for reporting unpopular truths. The combination of public distrust, weakened institutions and widespread harassment is a formula for undermining independent reporting. Szabolcs Panyi, a respected investigative journalist for the Hungarian news outlet Direkt36, explained how the constant attacks on the work and motivations of reporters like him have successfully undercut the trust he depends on: “My best friend’s mother one time asked me if I’m a spy working for a foreign country.”

President Donald Trump stops to talk to reporters on his way to board Marine One outside the White House in October 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

It has been only eight years since Donald Trump popularized the term “fake news” as a cudgel to dismiss and attack journalism that challenged him.

That phrase, from the president of the United States, was all the encouragement many would-be authoritarians needed. In the following years, around 70 countries on six continents have enacted “fake news” laws. Nominally aimed at stamping out disinformation, many primarily serve to allow governments to punish independent journalism. Under these laws, journalists have faced fines, arrest and censorship for reporting on a separatist conflict in Cameroon, documenting Cambodian sex-trafficking rings, chronicling the covid-19 pandemic in Russia, and questioning Egyptian economic policy. Trump has effectively championed this effort, as he did when he told Bolsonaro at a joint news conference, “I’m very proud to hear the president use the term ‘fake news.’”

Protesters are seen outside the Supreme Court building in D.C. in April. (Andrew Thomas/Sipa USA/AP)

Things have come full circle. Now, it is Trump and his allies who are looking abroad to Bolsonaro and his ilk for inspiration, studying the anti-press techniques they’ve honed in the intervening years. The effectiveness of this playbook should not be underestimated. In Hungary, Orban allies now control upward of 80 percent of the country’s news outlets. In India, Modi has so successfully subverted independent reporting — blocking reports on everything from mass protests against his economic policy to mistreatment of the country’s Muslim minority — that much of the mainstream press is now derided as “godi media,” generally translated as “lapdog media.” It is wrong to imagine that this is a problem for journalists alone. The repercussions of a weakened media reverberate throughout society, masking corruption, obscuring risks to public health and safety, restricting minority rights and distorting the electoral process. Democracy itself, though still intact — as gains by opposition parties in the recent Indian election underscored — is viewed as more tenuous and conditional.

The free press was envisioned as a central check against democratic backsliding in the United States.

Make no mistake, no American political leader likes the scrutiny of the media or has a perfect record on press freedom. Every president since the country’s founding has complained about the pesky questions of reporters who seek to keep the public informed. This includes President Joe Biden, who spoke glowingly about the importance of the free press but whose systematic avoidance of unscripted encounters with independent journalists has defied long-standing precedent and allowed him to evade questions about his age and fitness. But even with an imperfect record, both Republican and Democratic presidents, lawmakers and jurists have consistently defended and expanded protections for journalists. Over the past century in the United States, Trump stands out for his aggressive and sustained efforts to undermine the free press.

If you need evidence that Trump was just getting warmed up, look no further than the waning days of his first term, when his Justice Department secretly seized the phone logs of reporters of three of his least favorite news organizations — The Times, The Washington Post and CNN. They had played leading roles in revealing the sorts of things he preferred to keep hidden, from his tax returns to his business and charitable misconduct to his ties with foreign governments to his role in schemes to overturn the 2020 election. Yet, as in Hungary, Brazil and India, many of the most pernicious threats to press freedom in the United States are likely to take a more prosaic form: an environment of harassment, financially punitive litigation, weaponized bureaucracy, allies mounting copycat attacks — all aimed at further diminishing a news media weakened by years of financial struggle. This list is neither alarmist nor speculative.

For years, Trump has expressed interest in using federal funding and the tax code to punish institutions he doesn’t approve of, including public media such as PBS and NPR. His Department of Homeland Security proposed strict caps on foreign-journalist visas, with extensions potentially depending on whether immigration officers approved of a reporter’s work. His serial displeasure with The Post led him to threaten owner Jeff Bezos’s other business interests, attempting to upend Amazon’s shipping arrangement with the U.S. Postal Service and impede its defense contracting. Likewise, furious with CNN’s coverage, he sought to influence the Justice Department’s review of a merger involving the news outlet’s parent company. More recently, he suggested that NBC and MSNBC ought to lose their broadcast licenses over their coverage of his presidency.

Attendees turn to boo members of the media as former president Donald Trump speaks in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Aug. 17. (Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg News/Getty Images)

And then, of course, there is Trump’s use of the courts. He has repeatedly sued The Times, The Post, CNN, and a host of other independent outlets. In Trump’s most recent case against my organization, the judge deemed the allegations frivolous enough that he ordered the former president to send The Times a check for nearly $400,000 to cover its litigation costs. But Trump recognizes that even a losing lawsuit can help his cause. Musing in 2016 on his failed libel lawsuit against a Times journalist a decade earlier, he said: “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

Crucially, these efforts have been embraced by his supporters and ideological allies around the country. His lawsuits against the media have inspired similar efforts by his backers, many sharing the same lawyers. Influential conservative jurists, including two Supreme Court justices, have expressed an interest in making it easier to win lawsuits against journalists — an effort consistent with Trump’s desire to “open up libel laws.” These legal tactics appear to have emboldened state officials, judges and others to take their own steps to undercut journalism they don’t like. In 2023, the Freedom of the Press Foundation found that courts had issued 11 gag orders censoring journalists from Democratic and Republican officials alike. At the local level, officials are taking aggressive anti-press actions. In Kansas last year, sheriff deputies raided a local newspaper’s offices on the preposterous grounds that relying on public records in its reporting constituted identity theft. In Mississippi, a former governor is pursuing a lawsuit against a nonprofit newsroom that the editor says is intended to impede its award-winning reporting into wrongful spending by the state’s welfare system. “If we’re forced to spend our limited resources on legal fees to defend a meritless lawsuit,” Adam Ganucheau, the editor in chief of the nonprofit Mississippi Today, wrote recently, “That’s less money we can devote to the costly investigative journalism that often is the only way taxpayers and voters learn about how their leaders truly behave when they believe no one is watching.”

Those cheering on such attacks against the media would do well to remember why press freedom is not a Democratic or Republican ideal but an American one. The Founders understood that it provided an essential check against government overreach, no matter who held office. Abuses of power by one set of partisans, after all, have a tendency to boomerang when the political tide turns. In Brazil, Bolsonaro was unable to fully undercut the country’s checks and balances and was voted out of office. Though much of the damage he caused to democratic traditions has been reversed, the norms around the free press and free expression remain weakened. Since Bolsonaro left office, federal prosecutors have sued to cancel broadcast licenses held by a network aligned with the former president. A Brazilian Supreme Court justice has censored thousands of social media posts and dozens of largely right-wing social media accounts, including those belonging to conservative journalists, on sometimes dubious grounds. That effort escalated last week when the justice ordered the social media platform X blocked altogether.

The story of the anti-press efforts around the world underscores the foundational importance of press freedom to democracy. Access to trustworthy news doesn’t just leave the public better informed. It strengthens businesses. It makes nations more secure. In place of distrust and alienation, it instills mutual understanding and civic engagement. It unearths corruption and incompetence to ensure that the good of the nation is placed above the self-interest of any given leader. This is what gets compromised when the free and independent press is weakened.

Fortunately, we in the press aren’t powerless against attacks such as the ones our colleagues abroad have faced. At The Times, we already report every day from countries where the safety and freedom of the press are not a given. We are taking active steps to prepare ourselves for a more difficult environment at home, as well: Ensuring our reporters and editors know how to protect their sources and themselves. Preparing for legal fights, from budgeting for increased expenses to understanding how outside vendors will respond if federal agents make secret demands for phone logs or emails. Maintaining pristine business practices — news-related or not — to minimize exposure to abusive tax or regulatory enforcement. Preparing colleagues to remain resilient in the face of harassment campaigns and offering them robust institutional support in those moments. Pushing to formalize foundational protections for journalism, such as the right to keep sources confidential and protections against frivolous lawsuits. Contesting campaigns to instill distrust in media organizations by telling the story of what independent journalism is and why it matters. And, through it all, treating the journalistic imperative to promote truth and understanding as a north star — while refusing to be baited into opposing or championing any particular side. “No matter how well-intentioned,” Joel Simon, the former head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote last month on what he’s learned studying attacks on press freedom, “such undertakings can often help populist and authoritarian leaders rally their own supporters against ‘entrenched elites’ and justify a subsequent crackdown on the media.”

As we take these steps, I have in my mind a final lesson from our brave colleagues in places like Hungary, India and Brazil. The journalistic mission to follow the facts and deliver the truth must persist, whatever the pressure or the obstacles. Even in the face of relentless efforts to undermine and punish their work, there are those who fight back by continuing to bring the public the news and information it needs. I hope our nation, with protections for a free press explicitly enshrined in the First Amendment, will maintain its distinctively open path, regardless of the outcome of this election or any other. No matter what happens, we must be ready to continue to bring the truth to the public without fear or favor.