The press in the US should be under no illusions. It faces an administration hellbent on controlling it. The White House is intent on suppressing and intimidating critical voices, prioritising access for those outlets that praise them at the expense of those that don’t and generally browbeating the press into submission.
The intent and direction of travel is clear and if the press is not to be steamrollered, it needs to take a stand.
The good news is that there are signs that it is doing just that.
President Trump’s recent decision to exclude CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, produced a strong collective response, when the four news organisations – ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News – that along with CNN make up the White House TV pool, said that until CNN was reinstated, they would not be providing TV pool coverage of the president.
At the time of going to press, it looks like this action along with, crucially, a federal judge’s ruling in favour of the banned outlets, has forced the White House to back down.
It’s important that a stand is made because the administration is waging a war of attrition against the press and won’t stop until it has the control it wants.
Global media freedom bodies knew the importance of this moment. In a joint statement, they said: “Press freedom will not be lost in one dramatic act. It is weakened over time by people in power making choices in pursuit of more control. That’s why the decision to ban media outlets from the White House matters for all of us.”
Arguably, the stand should have been made sooner.
Whilst the ban on CNN et al was over-the-top unconstitutional, so a no-brainer in terms of prompting a collective response, so too, to my mind, was the ban last year on Associated Press for not following an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’ in its editorial style guide.
If a stand had been made then, the media in the US would probably be in a stronger position now… but better late than never.
The press is going to need that fighting spirit because as the mid-term elections approach, there has been speculation that the president could declare a state of emergency if the elections go badly for him. And history shows us what can happen when unscrupulous regimes declare states of emergency…
And to those who say what happens in the US is not relevant to the UK, witness the multiple instances of Reform UK banning individual journalists and media outlets, such as the Nottingham Post.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
