'Death by a thousand cuts': How experts warn Trump could use an authoritarian plan to crack down on the media

new York
CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to crack down on much of the media in his second term, threatening to jail journalists, revoke broadcast licenses and target broadcasters with a barrage of lawsuits. It's a playbook he's already threatened to use.

During his first term in the White House, Trump regularly clashed with journalists, calling the press the “enemy of the people” and banning reporters from attending official briefings. In recent months, Trump has attacked the media on the campaign trail with dark and violent rhetoric – he told a crowd this week that he wouldn't mind if journalists were shot – and stoked fears that he would try to pit the government against the free Using the press as a weapon.

Experts on authoritarian leadership in Europe say Trump in a second term, enabled by more loyalists and fewer protections around him, could do significant damage to press freedom in the United States. A look at some countries in Europe where democracy is “going backwards” shows how this can happen.

Sharon Moshavi, president of the International Center for Journalists, said that in countries where the free press has been dismantled, “it's not about one thing – it's not about us putting journalists in prison.”

Governments around the world controlled by authoritarians and strongmen, including Russia, Hungary, India and, until recently, Poland, have moved to muzzle the free press and stifle dissent, she said. Trump has praised the leaders of many of these nations, particularly Hungary's far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“It is death by a thousand cuts. They are attacks from multiple angles,” she said.

These aspects include attacking journalists, discrediting their reporting, pressuring media owners to self-censor, taking legal action, and using wealthy allies to buy up media companies and turn them into government mouthpieces.

Much of this pressure is indirect, Moshavi said, as business owners seek to protect their access and interests.

“You see that a lot of owners, a lot of big business owners, who have other interests, are directly or indirectly putting pressure on their own employees and not going that far (in their reporting),” Moshavi said.

Olga Kamenchuk, a professor at Northwestern University, said recent decisions by the billionaire owners of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times to halt planned endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to be an example of indirect pressure and self-censorship. Both owners have denied that their business interests were behind their decisions.

“'Democracy dies in the darkness' – and some of the media that refused to support Harris, in my opinion, contributed to and unfortunately contributed to dimming that light,” Kamenschuk said, referring to the slogan of the Washington Post. “The owners are considering how they will live for the next four years and whether they will have access to management.”

Anne Applebaum, a contributor to The Atlantic and a historian who has reported extensively on the rise of authoritarian regimes in Europe, said that in Hungary and Poland, leaders who sought to undermine the free press did so “not through direct censorship or closure, but rather “through money” and influence,” Applebaum said.

“A billionaire close to Orbán would, for example, buy a newspaper and then change the way it reported the news,” Applebaum said. “Or in Poland, advertisers could be spooked by the government because they fear they could lose business if they appear to support an independent newspaper.”

Applebaum said governments like Orbán had taken advantage of the precarious financial situation of many media companies “to simply take them down.”

Anna Wójcik, an assistant professor at Kozminski University in Poland, said that Orbán had not only turned state-funded public broadcasters “into platforms for party propaganda,” but his close allies had also bought private television and radio stations to convert them into pro-government channels, a process known as media capture.

These outlets were then centralized in the powerful Media conglomerate, the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA). Wójcik said that this hub now controls around 500 media outlets and “consolidates the majority of government-affiliated media into a single entity.”

The few remaining independent media companies that continue to operate in the country “face challenges, including legal obstacles and denial of broadcast licenses,” Wójcik said.

These costly legal challenges can deprive media organizations and their journalists of resources. Often the lawsuits or investigations have nothing to do with journalism itself, but instead focus on alleged violations, such as tax violations, with the intended effect of jeopardizing the financial sustainability of media companies.

“Journalists, especially investigative reporters, face harassment, intimidation and costly legal proceedings, including libel suits and other legal actions, often based on technical issues such as data protection,” Wójcik said.

Trump has already filed lawsuits against it the press. Last month, he sued CBS, seeking $10 billion in damages over the network's “60 Minutes” interview with Harris. Even if the lawsuit is ultimately dismissed, the network must devote resources, time and money to fighting the claims in court.

Mikhail Zygar, a “Spiegel” columnist and former Russian journalist, recently wrote in his newsletter “The Last Pioneer” that when Vladimir Putin abolished the free press in Russia, he “didn't even have to get his hands dirty.”

“Putin did not pass draconian laws, close newsrooms, jail journalists or have anyone killed. Media laws remained as liberal as ever and censorship continued to be banned in the constitution,” he said. “It just so happened that Putin got a little help from his oligarch friends.”

These threats are not just theoretical snippets from around the world. New York Times publisher AG Sulzberger and a team at the newspaper recently examined how American lawmakers might use this very playbook to suppress the press.

Would-be power men around the world “have realized that crackdowns on the press are most effective when they are at least the least dramatic—not like a thriller, but a movie so ponderous and complicated that no one wants to see it.” , Sulzberger wrote in a Washington Post editorial.

Yet most experts still believe that American institutions will remain strong under pressure. Applebaum noted that the U.S. media market, with its enormous size and editorial diversity, differs from countries like Poland and Hungary.

“The main difference between them and us is that they are very small. This allows you to do more damage, faster. “But it’s also the case that the media business model no longer works for everyone and you can put a lot of pressure on it,” said Applebaum.

Kamenchuk also expressed optimism that the “levers and limits” of the executive branch are enshrined in U.S. law will work to protect the free press.

“I am moderately optimistic that democratic forces, including the power of the media, will not be quite as limited as we have seen in other countries where there have been right-wing leaders recently,” she said. “But these probably won’t be the best of times.”

Despite it, Moshavi said Trump's lasting damage to the news media may be his rhetorical attacks on “fake news,” which have fueled deep distrust among his supporters.

“In many circles there is absolute contempt and hatred for independent journalism, a lack of trust, a lack of belief and a willingness to attack journalists,” she said. “This damage is permanent.”