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The Press Was Never Free. Trump is Simply Taking Advantage

  • Tyler Steffy
  • May 12
  • 4 min read

In 1917, amid the hysteria of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act. A sweeping law that criminalized dissent against U.S. involvement in the war, the act, still on the books today, was designed to muzzle opposition. In practice, it did just that, particularly targeting socialists, anti-war activists, and left-wing journalists. A century later, the government no longer needs such explicit crackdowns to control the press. All it needs is the normalcy of capitalism.

Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who was forcibly taken by ICE for protesting Israel's actions. The Cut
Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who was forcibly taken by ICE for protesting Israel's actions. The Cut

It is terrifying working as a journalist while Donald Trump wrongly imprisons student activists simply for disagreeing with him. It’s fascism, plain and simple. But we must face the uncomfortable reality that Trump did not single-handedly design this system, and merely waiting four years until the end of his term cannot be our solution.


The biggest threat to journalism in the United States isn’t Donald Trump and his government censorship. It’s a profit-driven system that has slowly hollowed out the unbiased newsroom, replacing watchdogs with clickbait and investigative reporters with fame-chasing pundits. The decay of American journalism is a bipartisan failure rooted in neoliberal policy, corporate consolidation, and the monetization of misinformation.


It’s easy—way too easy—to pin the collapse of press freedom solely on Trump’s fascist tendencies. While he certainly accelerated the decline by vilifying the press as “the enemy of the people” and elevating conspiracy theorists to prime-time relevance, the erosion began long before he descended the golden escalator. 


Barack Obama waged a quiet but aggressive war on whistleblowers, prosecuting more under the Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined. Across party lines, presidents have treated the press not as a pillar of democracy, but as a threat to be managed.


And it wasn’t Trump who destroyed the modern structural backbone of journalism. It was Bill Clinton. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, hailed at the time as modernization, set off a wave of media consolidation that turned local outlets into corporate shells. Twenty years later, we’re left with a media landscape where six corporations control 90% of what Americans watch, read, and hear. It’s no coincidence that one-third of local newspapers have shut down in the past 20 years, leaving behind vast “news deserts” where communities are starved for reliable information. To fill the vacuum, right-wing media swept in, blurring the lines between news, entertainment, and propaganda. 


Trump didn’t break the system, he mastered its decay. His bombastic persona was perfect for an increasingly capitalist and right-wing industry that prioritizes engagement over truth. He gave cable news networks a villain and a spectacle, and in return, they gave him more free coverage than he could’ve ever dreamed of. Even his worst press was still good for business.


Modern outlets aren’t incentivized to educate or inform—they’re incentivized to profit. As a result, media companies cater to what sells: outrage, division, and spectacle. The system is working exactly as it was designed.


And while liberal America wrings its hands over Trump’s attacks on journalists, they often forget that freedom of the press has rarely existed for everyone. Leftist media, Black newspapers, and labor publications have long been targeted by a media industry and U.S. government controlled almost exclusively by rich, white men. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program infiltrated and disrupted Black newspapers and radical publications to neutralize dissent. Independent media that challenged the state or capitalism were treated as threats to national security.


What liberals consider “free press” in the U.S. has always been conditioned and reserved for the white, wealthy, and obedient. When MSNBC features ex-CIA officials as national security experts while ignoring the voices of whistleblowers, we must ask whose freedom does the press really protect?


The American press, in many ways, serves the same function as Trump, just with more civility. Corporate media normalizes endless war, mass surveillance, austerity, and inequality, all while presenting themselves as neutral arbiters. They lecture us on what's realistic and what’s radical. 


Ironically, Trump’s constant fascism-coded bickering of “fake news” might actually be our solution, just not the way he means it. His attacks resonate with working-class people because they do feel lied to. They see news anchors making millions to tell them the economy is booming, while they can’t afford groceries. They remember weapons of mass destruction in Iraq being sold as fact. They see billionaires like Jeff Bezos stripping down the freedom of speech for opinion writers at The Washington Post and wonder who they can trust.


Historically, this distrust leads to fringe, alt-right media. But if it instead leads to supporting a new wave of independent, local, grassroots journalism, we might just stand a chance. Countless local start-ups are keeping real journalism alive, often on shoestring budgets and in hostile environments. We have to support them now more than ever.


The solution to our media crisis isn’t to simply defeat Trump or wait for Democrats to save us. It’s to build a new model for journalism free from both state repression and corporate control, where truth isn’t a commodity and journalists aren’t PR agents for the powerful.

The real enemy of the people isn’t a narcissistic president with a Twitter addiction. It’s the system that put him in power and profits from our ignorance.



Photo Credit:

[Header]: Getty Images

[Embedded 1]: The Cut


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