Journalists anticipate a renewed hostility toward their work under the incoming Trump administration

NEW YORK– For the press facing a second Trump administration, there is a balancing act between being prepared and being afraid.

The return to power of Donald Trump, who has called journalists enemies and spoken of retaliation against those he believes have wronged them, is making journalists nervous. The perceived threats are numerous: lawsuits of all kinds, attempts to unmask anonymous sources, physical danger and intimidation, attacks on public media and protection against defamation, daily demonization.

In a closely watched case settled last weekend, ABC chose to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by the president-elect over an inaccurate statement made by George Stephanopoulos in agreeing to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library.

“The news media is going into this next administration with their eyes wide open,” said Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press.

“Some challenges to the free press may be overt, others may be more subtle,” Brown said. “We must be prepared for a rapid response and for long campaigns to protect our rights – and we must remember that our most important audience is the courts and the public.”

A prominent editor warned against going to war with a government that has not yet taken office. “There may be a moment to cry wolf here,” said Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of the nonprofit news outlet ProPublica. “But I don’t think we’ve achieved it.”

Speaking to Fox News two weeks after his election, Trump said he owed it to the American people to be open and available to the press — if he is treated fairly.

“I am not looking for retribution, grandeur or destroying people who have treated me very unfairly or even incomprehensibly,” he told Fox. “I’m always looking for a second or even a third chance, but I’m never willing to give a fourth chance. That’s where I hold the line.”

News organizations are entering the second Trump era, both financially and in terms of public esteem. To a large extent Trump old media bypassed outlets during his campaign in favor of podcasters, but still had time for specific statements against ABC, CBS and NBC.

The Trump team knows that many of its followers despise a deep press, and stoking that anger has political benefits. Two examples in the campaign to appoint Trump nominee Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense show how routine reporting activities can be characterized as an attack.

When The New York Times was tipped off about an email Hegseth’s mother once sent him criticizing his treatment of women, she was asked for comment. Penelope Hegseth later told Fox News that she experience this as a threateven though it allowed the newspaper to report that she quickly apologized for sending the email and says she doesn’t feel that way about him now.

Pete Hegseth also took to social media to say that ProPublica – he called it a “left-wing hacking group” – was about to knowingly publish a false report that he had not been admitted to West Point decades ago. The news site had contacted him after military academy officials disputed Hegseth’s claim of acceptance. Hegseth provided evidence that those officials were mistaken, and ProPublica never published a story.

“That’s journalism,” ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger noted. But a story had emerged: “ProPublica’s botched Pete Hegseth smear,” according to the New York Post mentioned it in a headline.

During the presidential campaign, Trump CBS News sued for the way edited an interview with opponent Kamala Harris; suggested ABC News loses his broadcasting license for checking him out during his only debate with Harris; and successfully summoned equal time on NBC after Harris appeared on “Saturday Night Live.” In the Stephanopoulos lawsuit, the ABC anchor said Trump was “found responsible for rape” in the civil trial of writer E. Jean Carroll, when that was not the case.

Trump engages with the mainstream media – he gave a news-making interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this month – but journalists need to be alert to how their work will be portrayed.

Trump’s appointments and what they have said about journalists have raised alarms.

Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to lead the FBIsaid on a podcast last year that “we are going after people in the media who have lied about American citizens.” Two appointees who have expressed hostility toward the media will be in a position to influence the work of journalists: Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Kari Lake as director of Voice of America.

News organizations are concerned that a Justice Department policy that has generally banned prosecutors from seizing journalists’ data to investigate leaks will be reversed, and are already urging journalists to protect their work. “If you have something you don’t want to share with a broader audience, don’t put it in the cloud,” says ProPublica’s Engelberg.

During the first Trump administration, some journalists reporting on immigration issues were pulled aside for screening and questioning. The Reporter’s Committee wonders whether this could happen again – and whether similar practices could extend to reporting on expected deportations.

The literary and human rights organization PEN America is concerned about journalists facing physical danger and digital hostility. It may have seemed like a lighthearted remark to some of his supporters when, months after an attempt on his life, Trump said at a meeting that he wouldn’t mind if someone had to “shoot through the fake news” to get him. But it wasn’t for people who were on media risers.

“It is important that the president takes responsibility for reducing physical violence against the press, rather than encouraging it,” said Viktorya Vilk, PEN America program director for digital security and free expression.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana recently submitted a bill that would end taxpayer funding of public radio and television, a goal that many Republicans have pursued for years and that may gain momentum as the party returns to power. Some U.S. Supreme Court justices would like that revisiting a legal precedent That has made it difficult to prove defamation against news organizations.

It’s clear that the new administration will come after the press in every conceivable way, former Washington Post editor Martin Baron said recently on NPR. “I really think he’ll use every tool in his toolbox,” Baron said, “and there are a lot of tools.”

In their most pessimistic moments, press advocates look at what happened in Hungary under the control of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Since Orban took power in 2010, he and his supporters have taken control of most media outlets and turned them into a propaganda arm.

Don’t think that can’t happen in the United States, warns Andras Petho, an investigative journalist in Hungary who left a news website when it was pressured to suppress his work and founded the investigative journalism center Direkt36.

Despite the repression, there is still a market for independent journalism in Hungary, he said. Earlier this year, two Hungarian officials resigned following protests when it was announced they had pardoned a man who forced children to drop sex abuse allegations against the director of a government-run institution.

Petho said it is important that journalists do not portray themselves as any form of resistance because that makes it easier for the government to fire them. Instead, they should just do the work.

“Frankly, we all have to accept and admit that our power as media has diminished,” said Petho, who participated in the Nieman fellowship for journalists at Harvard University. “Our stories no longer have the same impact as they did ten years ago. But I wouldn’t underestimate the power of the news media either.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him up http://x.com/dbauder And https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.