Well, folks,
It was a rough week for the news biz.
The president ramped up his attack on news outlets that challenge him, and one of his lackeys got Jimmy Kimmel booted off the air.
Meanwhile, bajillionaires are venturing off their mega-yachts to buy up the biggest news outlets in the country.
Next up, CNN, the main news source for many older Americans. And TikTok, the social media platform where younger people get their news.
It sucks. And we’re terrified about what comes next. For us as reporters, and for you as citizens.
If you’re looking for a way to help the free press, click that button.
The most powerful man in the world threw a tantrum this week.
He wants everybody to know that it hurts his feelings if you say somebody else would be a better president than him.
If you do, he’ll sue you for a ludicrous amount of money.
That’s what the New York Times found out on Monday when President Donald Trump sued the company for $15 billion — far more than the entire Times company is worth.
The Times’ editorial broad had the gall to write an editorial last year saying Kamala Harris was a better fit for the presidency than Trump. On top of that, a Times’ reporter implied Trump wasn’t the sole reason The Apprentice was a hit show, which prompted Trump’s lawyers to write dozens of pages explaining that their boss was the most “magnificent” businessman and politician in the history of the world.
If it weren’t such a terrifying development, we would call his lawsuit hilariously ridiculous.
The over-the-top praise for Trump actually makes for a fun game, if you’re in the mood: Search the lawsuit for your favorite obsequious adjective. “Mega-celebrity” is in there three times. “Charisma” makes eight appearances. “Successful”? 18 times. “Historic”? 10 times.
But before you laugh at Trump about it, be forewarned: Laughing at the president is not allowed.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel offended the president during his monologue on Monday night, and by Wednesday he was off the air.
His crime? Saying the MAGA crowd was doing everything they could to separate themselves from the man who shot and killed Charlie Kirk.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said in his Monday night monologue.
Kimmel also showed a clip of Trump being asked “how are you holding up?” in the wake of the murder. It was a gracious, sincere question from a reporter. But instead of a heartfelt statement about the loss of his friend, Trump said he was doing good and quickly pivoted to praising the construction of a new ballroom at the White House.
The Kimmel audience laughed at the clip. Trump didn’t (really, have you ever seen him laugh?).
Instead, Trump’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, came to his aid, warning ABC and its parent company, Disney, that their broadcast license would be in jeopardy if they continued airing the late-night comedian.
"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr told a conservative podcast. "These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."
So ABC decided to suspend Kimmel indefinitely.
Those are just this week’s examples of Trump’s authoritarian crackdown on freedom of speech.
There’s plenty more where that came from.
In July, CBS caved to pressure from Trump and said Stephen Colbert’s show, where he mercilessly plucked Trump’s feathers for the past decade, would go off the air next year.
And don’t forget that Trump and his allies gutted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which meant outlets like NPR and PBS lost virtually all their public funding.
Muzzling everybody
Trump’s not just going after his critics in the press. It’s any institution that tells the public inconvenient truths.
Trump forced the Smithsonian to temporarily remove, then permanently downgrade, him from their exhibit on impeachments (where he holds the record for the most impeachments by a president).
Trump bullied Columbia University into paying a $221 million settlement, and he’s trying to do the same with dozens of other universities.
Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like a jobs report that suggested his policies were wrecking the economy.
Now, Trump’s trying to install one of his White House lackeys on the Federal Reserve board, which could silence an agency that was designed to be independent of the White House.
The list goes on and on.
And that list is just going to get longer. Remember, folks, we are just one-sixth of the way through Trump’s presidency.
Pressuring the corporate bosses
In Trump’s war on the free press, winning the legal argument in court isn’t the point.
It’s not even necessary, as we’ve seen in recent lawsuits he filed against CBS and ABC.
Trump sued CBS over the way journalists at “60 Minutes” edited an interview with Kamala Harris, which is 100% the discretion of any news outlet.
The thing is, CBS was owned by Paramount, where executives were working hard on a merger with Skydance Media. Paramount executives needed FCC regulators to sign off on the merger, so they appeased the president with a $16 million payout, throwing their flagship news program under the bus in the process.
When Colbert called the deal “a big fat bribe” Paramount officials cancelled his show.
A few days later, Trump’s FCC approved the merger.
Likewise, Trump sued ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos said Trump “raped” a woman, when in fact a jury found him civilly liable for “sexually abusing” her.
ABC News’ parent company, the Walt Disney Co., paid $16 million, rather than go toe-to-toe with the president (Disney executives are the ones who suspended Kimmel this week).
Now, Trump is using these “legal victories” in his lawsuit against the Times.
In the filing, he called them “highly meritorious” cases that showed legacy media unjustly attacks him.
He didn’t mention that the jury ordered him to pay $88 million to the woman he sexually abused and defamed.
But it won’t stop there
Now, Trump is using those cases to intimidate individual reporters.
During a press gaggle on Tuesday, Trump threatened to use the ABC settlement as a cudgel when a reporter asked about Attorney General Pam Bondi going after what she considers hate speech.
“They’ll probably go after people like you,” Trump told the reporter. “Because you treat me so unfairly. You have a lot of hate in your heart … ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hatred.”
Trump also sued the Wall Street Journal in July for writing about a lewd birthday note Trump reportedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein. The Journal — owned by his old pal, billionaire Rupert Murdoch — said they’re gearing up for a fight.
We’re hoping the New York Times does the same. So far, they’re showing some backbone.
“This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting,” a Times spokesperson said. “The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
The Times has massive resources — it can withstand a bullshit legal assault from Trump.
And unlike most major news companies, the Times is not owned by a multinational corporation with other business interests that are far more profitable than news.
Meaning it can’t be cowed as easily as ABC, CBS or Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post.
But Trump doesn’t just go after the biggest fish.
He also sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll before election day that showed him trailing Harris in Iowa.
And small, local newsrooms — even institutions like the Register — will have a much harder time marshaling the resources they’ll need to defend themselves against the power of the presidency.
Silencing leads to self-silencing
Our heart goes out to the reporters in Arizona, and across the country, who work for corporate news organizations.
They’ve surely been watching as Trump bullies the biggest news outlets in the world — and as the owners of those companies cave to his pressure.
And when journalists don’t feel their bosses have their backs, it will inevitably lead to self-censorship.
To see that in action, look no further than CBS News.
Since they settled with Trump and the merger went through, CBS News has taken a pro-Trump turn.
CBS executives created an ombudsman position and assigned it to a man Trump nominated to be ambassador to Japan.
After Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem complained about how CBS edited an interview, the widely viewed and highly regarded Sunday show, “Face the Nation,” announced it will broadcast unedited.
That means wily politicians can pull the oldest trick in the book: Dodge questions and blather on about whatever they want as they run out the clock.
And CBS is considering giving a high-level editorial position to Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor who founded The Free Press several years ago to play the card of anti-woke liberal fighting left-wing excess.
It Trump can bully the Times the way he’s bullied ABC, he won’t need to silence everyone else.
News organizations will start silencing themselves.
Next up, CNN and TikTok
Get ready for CNN and TikTok to look a whole lot like Elon Musk’s Twitter.
The names you need to know here are billionaire Larry Ellison and his son David. They own “Paramount Skydance” as it’s known after the merger that Paramount executives threw “60 Minutes” and Colbert under the bus for.
Fun fact: These guys are so rich they bought fighter jets so they could do mock-dogfights over the Pacific Ocean. They even own one of the Hawaiian islands. And the elder Ellison also is a close friend of Trump.
Their next big move is to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the media conglomerate that owns CNN.
Guess who needs to sign off on that deal? That’s right, federal regulators working for Trump.
As bad as all this is, it could get far worse.
While the Ellisons and Trump take a wrecking ball to legacy news media, they’re also setting their sights on TikTok, the social media platform where young people actually get their news.
This week, the Trump administration announced they were close to a deal on the future of TikTok.
Larry Ellison is at the top of the list of potential buyers.
What can we do?
The understandable urge among news outlets is to tread lightly around Trump, his allies and his ego.
We have no intention of doing that.
Luckily, we’re not a broadcaster that depends on FCC licensing. And we’re not owned by a conglomerate that needs federal approval for its next merger.
We’re a small, independent news outlet that exists solely to do good journalism.
That means we have a responsibility to say the things others can’t.
It also means that, like a lot of the news organizations you rely on, we’re at risk.
After just a few months in power, Trump’s unprecedented war on the press has already reached astounding lows.
Using federal regulators to extract legal concessions from his perceived political enemies — the journalistic institutions of America — is an assault on our nation’s ideals.
Trump doesn’t care. The billionaires that own the mainstream news industry don’t care.
But if you do care, here’s how you can help.
Donate to your local NPR station or a local nonprofit news outlet you trust, or subscribe to a local news organization that would rather go out of business than cower. (Ahem…)
And if you’re wondering where you’ll get the money to pay for it, you can always cancel your subscription to Disney, Paramount or any of the corporate news organizations that would rather roll over than defend free speech.