Trump Thrives in The Dark

Like all dictators, he's trying to destroy the press

With a sterling reputation, the TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes has been a paragon of hard-hitting, independent journalism for fifty years. Today, as its parent company, Paramount, runs scared from Donald Trump, it has lost its longtime executive producer, Bill Owens, and the program is in crisis.

Paramount has been shaken by a $20 billion Trump lawsuit that baselessly alleges it damaged him by interfering in the 2024 election on Kamala Harris’s behalf. The suit has no real chance of success, but it has stalled Paramount’s pursuit of a valuable merger. As it seeks a settlement, the company is now looking over the shoulders of the 60 Minutes journalists. Owens quit in protest. To say the rest of the staff is outraged is an understatement.

As Trump attacked 60 Minutes, he went beyond his old method of denigrating the press as "purveyors of “fake news” and trying to humiliate individual reporters. Moving beyond mere words, using his office and his political standing to interfere with journalists’ ability to function. In the case of 60 Minutes he went after a weak spot in the journalism industry, namely, the bottom line. Almost all of the news in this country is delivered by businesses run by executives charged with making a profit. In almost every case, the nervous execs have the last word and journalists start to pull their punches.

In addition to picking a fight with Paramount, Trump has attacked the Associated Press wire service. His pretense is that the AP stuck with its stylebook, refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico by the name Trump prefers, the “Gulf of America.” Trump’s tactic? To block the AP’s long-standing access to Oval Office events and Air Force One.

The AP, which delivers reports on events worldwide to thousands of news outlets, is perhaps the most venerated news source in the world. Founded in 1846, it is also a nonprofit, and here is where Trump may have miscalculated. With no bean counters to answer to, AP journalists refused to back down. They managed to work around the restrictions and then sued to regain access. The suit is pending. The struggle goes on. But in the meantime, less powerful news outlets are left to wonder, “What will we do if he comes after us?”

Meanwhile, Trump has seized control of the groups of reporters, called press pools, who cover events in smaller settings like the Oval Office. For nearly twenty years, the pools have been assembled by the independent White House Correspondents Association. Now, Trump, who prefers to see friendly faces in these pools, picks and chooses. Recently, he barred two big traditional wire services in favor of reporters from fringe pro-Trump outlets Newsmax and Blaze Media.

Finally, Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general/sycophant, recently announced that she would no longer honor a Justice Department policy that bars the government from using court orders, warrants, and subpoenas to obtain journalists’ notes and phone records in order to identify sources who have given them confidential information. Administration officials have been frustrated in their efforts to chase down these “leakers.” Bondi said that reporters who use leaked information harm the nation, so she’s ready to go after them.

With mainstream journalists on their heels, Trump and his people are also favoring friendly internet celebrities like Kambree Nelson who is an “influencer” best known for her astronomical claim that the moon had been “missing” for week in October. “Has anyone seen the moon lately? I’ve been looking for 7 days.” Of course, the moon wasn’t missing. It was just in a phase that made it hard to spot.

To say Nelson was out of her element when she recently appeared at a White House press briefing is to be kind. When given a chance to ask a question, she summoned her courage and asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “What direction do you advise me to go in?” A delighted Leavitt replied, “I wish there were people in the legacy media that were like you.”

I mention Moon Woman only because sometimes we need to laugh at the absurdity of it all. But of course, Trump’s anti-press stance is no laughing matter. Freedom of the press was deliberately enshrined in the Constitution because, as Thomas Jefferson said, “As long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light."

Trump prefers the darkness. Too bad the light can’t be extinguished!