Trump's War With The Media Should Not End in Surrender. Fight On!

on Feb 27, 2025

SAN DIEGO -- U.S. politicians tend to overuse the word "crisis." Some insist there is a crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border. Public health advocates warn of a health care crisis. Through executive overreach, President Donald Trump might be forcing a constitutional crisis. And we've long been told there's a crisis in our schools.

You know what's in crisis? American journalism. Part of that is our doing. My colleagues and I made a lot of mistakes in covering Trump's first term. We climbed into the arena. We wore our biases on our sleeves.

The New York Times even ran an anonymous op-ed criticizing Trump. That's a no-no.

Once those of us who were not Trump fans decided that he was a threat to the Republic, it was easy to convince ourselves that the end justified the means. It doesn't.

Now in Trump II, the president is also hell-bent on freezing out his critics and denying access to those news agencies that he believes treated him unfairly in the past.

Journalists would much rather cover the news than be the news. No such luck.

There's the story about the Trump White House banning the Associated Press from directly covering presidential events until the AP agrees to change its stylebook so the Gulf of Mexico is hereafter referred to as the "Gulf of America." The AP sued, claiming the ban is retaliation for critical coverage of the Trump administration and that it violates the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden declined this week to temporarily restore the AP's access to POTUS, saying that he was not convinced the news agency had suffered "irreparable harm" because of the ban. McFadden scheduled a hearing for March 20 to hear arguments in response to the AP's request for a preliminary injunction.

And that flap was just an appetizer.

There's also that broadside by the White House, which declared that it alone "will determine" which news outlets can cover Trump up close at White House events or on Air Force One. For more than a century, the tradition has been that a pool of independently chosen news organizations go where the chief executive does. No more.

Trump isn't the first president to pull a stunt like this, attempting to control news coverage by deciding which journalists get access and which ones get frozen out. Here, Trump might be on firm ground. Any White House has the power to make decisions about coverage.

Democrats know this. Former presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all tried to isolate reporters who they thought were unfair to them. Ironically, up to now, Trump has made media accessibility one of the hallmarks of his first weeks in office. He should stop trying to pick the referees and focus on playing the game better.

Clearly, Trump and other members of his administration have long memories about how badly they were treated the first time around. So now they're on a war footing with the media.

This isn't news. In fact, it was totally foreseeable. First, the Trump White House went after the federal workforce. Then, he dismissed the oversight authority of the judiciary.

Now, the chaos has found its way to our doorstep.

At MSNBC and NBC News, it seems the surest path to the unemployment line is to be critical of Trump.

Veteran newsman Lester Holt is stepping down as anchor of NBC Nightly News, and Joy Reid lost her job as a host at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow, the brightest star at MSNBC, used part of one of her shows this week to rip into the network's management for letting Reid walk.

Meanwhile, at The Washington Post -- my former employer of 24 years -- owner Jeff Bezos this week announced a major shift to the newspaper's opinion section. Bezos said the paper will advocate for "personal liberties and free markets" and not bother with publishing different views on those topics.

This may help keep The Post, and Bezos, from getting crossways with Trump. But it's not what newspapers are supposed to do. Our job is to hold the powerful accountable, explain a complicated world and present readers with a variety of opinions. That's how it used to be.

The media may lose this battle, but it doesn't have to be so quick to surrender. It's time to show some courage, folks. There is always another job. But, once you lose your soul, that's not so easy to replace.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.