The Crisis Year for Journalism Is Here

We are under no professional obligation to treat with even-handedness the would-be architects of our demise. I suspect that a lot of people were not aware that Project 2025, the authoritarian blueprint for the second Trump administration, laid out a plethora of ideas geared specifically toward destroying the news media; many, like the destruction of the Voice Of America system and making it easier for the DOJ to subpoena journalists, have already been put into effect. This was right alongside planks to target academia and the administrative state, but while many news organizations covered the latter, I suspect that they focused less on their own targeting out of the sense that this would be somehow improper, making themselves part of the story, a deep fear of a lot of institutional journalism.

Unfortunately, putting your hands down in a fight doesn’t make you the referee. As increasingly emboldened interests amp up efforts to buy, sue, steal from, and use official power to coerce the news media into submission, we have to embrace a self-defense posture that won’t interfere with our news gathering but will acknowledge that we can’t continue news gathering if we’ve been knocked over by the powers we’re meant to hold accountable.

We are going to have to punch back, and that will mean refusing, when possible, to provide an unchecked platform to the people involved in these efforts. It also means adopting a position of reflexive hostility and open opposition against them, and maintaining a consistent, forceful, and unified message in favor of our ability to do our jobs. Don’t let an on-the-record conversation with, say, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr end without a forceful denunciation of his efforts. Don’t leave audiences to forget these specific threats. Instead, allow them to understand how each would threaten their own ability—their right—to learn more about the world around them via a robust news media. Don’t treat our responsibilities as self-evident; convey to audiences why we do what we do and how it affects their lives. If we’re “making ourselves the story” in this instance, well, it’s because hostile entities are intent on making us a cautionary tale. If it is biased to be instinctively in favor of the First Amendment and news gathering as a principle and practice that must be actively fought for, then it is our duty to be biased.