Free Press, Democracy, and the Threat of Trump’s Illiberal Regime

Since his inauguration, Donald Trump and his administration have aggressively campaigned against press freedom. Throughout his political career, Trump has routinely dismissed unfavorable coverage as “fake news” and labeled journalists the “enemy of the people.” However, his confrontational stance toward the press has escalated significantly during his second term.

The White House, for instance, recently sought to control which journalists and media outlets could participate in press pools covering the presidency—a tactic that journalists warn mirrors those used by authoritarian regimes. As The New York Times chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker noted, “Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign, [the Trump White House’s pool takeover] reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access.”

These escalating attacks on the press are not isolated incidents but part of the authoritarian playbook.

The Trump administration also barred AP reporters from White House events, accusing the agency of spreading misinformation after it refused to exclusively use the term “Gulf of America” instead of Gulf of Mexico, and threatened to sue authors who cited anonymous sources in books about him or his allies, branding their work as defamatory and dishonest. And just this week, via executive order, Trump effectively dismantled the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe, and other global networks known for championing democracy and press freedom worldwide.

These escalating attacks on the press are not isolated incidents but part of the authoritarian playbook, which seeks to discredit independent journalism to control information, evade accountability, and consolidate power. As the fourth estate, a free press is a critical check on power. As one VOA staffer told The Hill after the network was ordered to stop work, “Dictators around the world are celebrating this and laughing at us.”

Journalists and scholars have sounded alarms since 2016, warning that Trump and the far right are working to delegitimize the media by portraying the press as the “enemy.” In “Enemy Construction and the Press,” legal scholars RonNell Andersen Jones and Lisa Grow Sun ominously argue that future “potential limitations on press freedoms and access will impede the press’s ability to serve important societal functions and thus will directly damage democracy.”

The Erosion of a Free Press and Authoritarian Capture

Even before Trump’s presidency, the US media landscape was vulnerable to authoritarian capture due to extreme consolidation. Only six corporations—AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Disney, News Corp, and Viacom—control 90 percent of American media.

“[I]f you can purchase media, you can then control the messages that are going to be sent out by it,” Daniel Villarreal, senior editor of LGBTQ Nation, told NPQ.

Research shows that media consolidation has pushed stations across the board toward a rightward slant, in part leading to the right-wing media ecosystem—led by Fox News, Newsmax, and The Daily Wire, among others—dominating a significant portion of the information landscape.

Despite Trump’s long-standing hostility toward the press, this corporate control and consolidation of media may have played a key role in his rise. Specifically, Trump received an estimated $5 billion in free media coverage during his campaign, far surpassing any other candidate.

“In an age where all attention is good attention, especially for a media spectacle like Trump,” Villarreal commented, “it does end up reinforcing this idea of kind of a juggernaut who’s unstoppable.”

At the same time, the media may have also normalized Trump and his far-right politics—a practice known as “sanewashing,” where mainstream coverage downplays or legitimizes problematic statements by public figures.

“The media has, I think, been so worried about not appearing partisan that it…treat[ed] him as if he’s a normal candidate,” Villarreal said.

“You’re never going to see that reporting [critical of billionaires while] billionaires own the goddamn publication.”

The political impact of media consolidation and its rightward shift have become increasingly evident. For instance, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post and contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, may have influenced the paper to drop an editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump.

Then, in January, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after The Washington Post refused to publish a cartoon critical of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Disney. Bezos later directed the publication’s opinion section to prioritize content promoting personal freedoms and the “free market” while sidelining opposing perspectives.

“With Trump’s efforts to criminalize 501c3s he thinks are seditious, and right-wing takeovers of news outlets such as with Jeff Bezos’s recent gutting of The Washington Post opinion section, the options ahead seem…bleak,” S. Baum, a contributor to the Substack blog Erin in the Morning, told NPQ.

Villareal concurred: “You’re never going to see that reporting [critical of billionaires while] billionaires own the goddamn publication.”

The Media as a Greater Check on Power Than Courts or Legislatures

Media concentration and corporate influence not only amplified Trump’s messages but also made mainstream media increasingly hesitant to challenge him, weakening the press’s role as a watchdog over power. For example, in December, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit he filed by issuing a formal apology and agreeing to donate $15 million to his planned presidential foundation and museum.

The media’s deference to the Trump administration has grown to the extent that Fox News’s Emily Compagno recently suggested that the “legacy media” should cover Trump’s presidency by simply reposting his press releases:

And the fact that the media can’t keep up A) doesn’t matter because we’re not looking to them for the news anyway; and B) guess what President Trump is doing? His office of comms is directly emailing and putting it out on Truth Social, and putting it on the websites—every day, all day—all exactly what they’re doing. So all you have to do, legacy media, is simply repeat, retweet, repost; and that’s the news and that’s the facts.

Compagno’s suggestion that the media republish press releases is eerily similar to the Peruvian experience in the 1990s. Despite democratic safeguards—a constitution, opposition parties, regular elections, judicial independence, and a free press—Peru was then effectively ruled by President Alberto Fujimori’s secret police chief, Vladimiro Montesinos Torres.

“Fujimori helped trailblaze the right-wing populist playbook that Donald Trump now uses,” professors Stephanie McNulty and Sarah Chartock wrote for Time. During this period, the regime closed Congress and suspended the constitution. Even after elections resumed in 1995, Fujimori persuaded Congress to override the constitution’s term limits, and the election was widely regarded as rigged.

Montesinos systematically bribed judges, politicians, and media executives. But importantly, he spent more on media control than on bribing officials. He claimed that media executives were “all lined up,” stating that “every day I have a meeting with them and we plan what is going to come out in the nightly news shows.”

If Trump is borrowing tactics from Fujimori’s 1990s playbook for authoritarian censorship and control, a free and robust media becomes even more crucial. It empowers people to stay informed, protest, and challenge oppressive regimes. As Montesinos’s staffer bluntly stated in a 1999 meeting, “If we do not control the television we do not do anything.”

“The real question is, will the media be the one merely to report on [authoritarian capture] after it’s happened, or will they take a leadership stance of helping foment and solidify that resistance against it?” Villarreal asked. “That remains to be seen. And I fear it’s not going to be a good answer.”

Media Control in Illiberal Democracies

Since taking office this second term, Trump has appointed far-right media figures like Dan Bongino, a conservative podcaster, as deputy director of the FBI; Pete Hegseth, a Fox News contributor, as secretary of defense; Sean Duffy, a former Fox News commentator, as secretary of transportation; and Tammy Bruce, a conservative radio host, as State Department spokesperson.

This growing entanglement between Trump’s administration and right-wing media figures, along with his allies’ acquisitions of media companies, raises serious concerns about democratic integrity and press independence and follows a familiar authoritarian playbook: Autocrats consolidate media ownership and blur the line between journalism and state power to control public discourse—a strategy exemplified by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Since 2010, Orbán’s government has systematically restricted press freedom. Early in his tenure, the administration under the Fidesz party introduced the New Press and Media Act, which imposed fines on media outlets for “unbalanced coverage” and established a “media control body” staffed by Fidesz appointees.

Today, 90 percent of Hungarian media is controlled by the government or its allies. The administration actively steers media narratives, discrediting independent journalists and promoting pro-government content.

“[W]e know from history that media monopolies tend to uphold certain narratives, ones which come at rhetorical expense of marginalized groups,” Baum said. In fact, on top of undermining media independence, the Fidesz government has also targeted LGBTQ+ people and the Roma ethnic minority.

The Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom has classified Hungary’s “protection of right to information” and the “independence and effectiveness of the media authority” as high risk, noting that regulatory safeguards have largely failed. In 2016, the country’s largest independent daily newspaper, Népszabadság, was shut down, and in 2020, Hungary’s Media Council revoked the license of the country’s largest independent radio station, forcing it off-air in 2021.

So far, Trump has similarly weaponized the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate National Public Radio and other media outlets in an attempt to muzzle the press. The FCC also reopened long-dismissed complaints against the major networks, such as CBS, ABC, and NBC, accusing them of bias in reporting.

As one of Orbán’s political advisors said: “Whoever controls a country’s media controls that country’s mindset and through that the country itself.”

Flooding the Zone: Overwhelm the Public with Misinformation and Distraction

Trump has also adopted the authoritarian tactic of “flooding the zone,” a strategy often associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rather than just suppressing dissent, this tactic involves creating widespread confusion by saturating the information space with distracting and conflicting messages.

According to scholars Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, modern Russian propaganda draws on Soviet-era Cold War tactics, focusing on obfuscation and influencing people to act in ways that benefit the propagandist—often without their awareness. Its methods have expanded to include digital platforms, such as social media, online news, and professional and citizen journalism. As one analyst put it, contemporary Russian propaganda is designed to “entertain, confuse, and overwhelm” its audience.

“We need as many voices as possibl[e] so that together, as a society, we…get just a little bit closer to that thing we all call truth.”

By “flooding the zone” with disinformation, authoritarians can drown out critical reporting. As journalist Masha Gessen notes in Surviving Autocracy, “The end result is not a controlled communications sphere where reality is dictated from above, but a weak one, where nothing can be known, no reality is tangible.”

Notably, Steve Bannon, who served as the White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President during the initial seven months of Trump’s first term and recently made headlines for making what appeared to be a Nazi salute at Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has said, “The Democrats don’t matter…the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

A few years later, in a PBS Frontline interview, Bannon reiterated the tactic: “Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

The media has, in fact, seemed to struggle to keep up with the Trump administration’s relentless pace. As NPR has reported, in just over a month, executive orders have been issued in rapid succession, Elon Musk has played a central role in efforts to reshape the federal government, key cabinet nominees have been confirmed, certain tariffs have been implemented while others remain on hold, deportations have escalated, the administration has intensified its targeting of transgender people, and Trump has made an “unprecedented power grab” over executive branch agencies.

Meanwhile, tensions have risen as Trump has issued threats against multiple countries, including Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Ukraine.

So much is going on that even White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that the media “can’t keep up.”

“That’s right,” Leavitt said, “there is so much good news, so much winning out of the Trump White House right now that the mainstream legacy media can’t keep up with it.”

Trump and the Future of Press Freedom in America

If Trump is drawing from the authoritarian playbooks of Fujimori, Orbán, and Putin to censor and control the media, journalists must respond with noncompliance, resistance to self-censorship, and funding models that break free from capitalist consolidation.

But beyond this resistance, there’s the growing fear of exposing sources to potential harm in an increasingly violent landscape.

“I know many people who have been doxxed and SWATted while covering these topics. It’s not uncommon,” Baum said. “Reporting on these issues requires preparing for the potential that you or your family can be targeted at any moment.”

Journalists, themselves, are increasingly facing threats, including police attacks, online harassment, violence, and legal challenges, according to a report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In one recent incident, a Colorado man assaulted a TV news reporter while questioning his citizenship, declaring, “This is Trump’s America now.”

In November, the Freedom of the Press Foundation reported 75 assaults on journalists since January 1, 2024—a 70 percent increase compared to 2023. Meanwhile, a recent survey of journalists participating in safety training by the International Women’s Media Foundation found that 36 percent had faced threats or physical violence, while 28 percent reported experiencing legal threats or actions against them.

“It can feel daunting trying to keep everyone safe while also doing the job, which is to further everyone’s collective safety by spreading information. That’s journalism,” Baum said. “It’s a trade-off, one that feels impossible sometimes to navigate. There’s constant risk.”

Compounding these threats is the growing financial precarity of journalism. Investigative reporting—once a pillar of accountability—has declined due to budget cuts, falling ad revenue, and widespread newsroom layoffs.

“So, to a certain degree [we need to] find out some sort of funding structure…robust enough to handle [journalism].…Essentially [we are] fighting a 21st-century battle with 1990s style tools,” Villarreal told NPQ.

There’s the growing fear of exposing sources to potential harm in an increasingly violent landscape.

In 2023 alone, over 21,000 media jobs were lost—a staggering 467 percent increase from the previous year—followed by nearly 15,000 more cuts in 2024. Investigative and local journalism remain especially vulnerable.

“Now, more than ever, rigorous local reportage, coming from people within the communities they cover, is withering,” Baum said. “Local news jobs are often unstable and have low pay. As a result, there are a lot of news deserts, and a lot of local newsrooms may not have the budget to, say, hire a new staffer who is trans, who can better cover that community.”

As legal scholar Erin C. Carroll has cautioned, “This combination of news deserts, consolidation, and worker exhaustion all prime the American news ecosystem and the people that populate it for authoritarian capture.”

To resist this, media outlets must reject the passive regurgitation of government press releases and refuse to self-censor to appease Trump. Instead, they must prioritize investigative journalism and explore alternative funding models—reader-supported journalism, nonprofit financing, and worker-owned cooperatives—to achieve editorial independence.

“I would say we need a diversity of tactics, and those tactics must have [diverse] revenue streams. Any one institution may fail,” Baum said. “We need as many voices as possibl[e] so that together, as a society, we can write and talk and read and get just a little bit closer to that thing we all call truth.”