Always 'the enemy': Trump steps up media assault in first 100 days

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before signing a proclamation renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America aboard Air Force One enroute to New Orleans, Louisiana on Febrary 09, 2025. [AFP] With lawsuits and tirades about "the enemy of the people" Donald Trump has launched a frontal assault on the mainstream media, while empowering conservative bloggers and podcasters to get his radical agenda across. The president has stepped up his long-established hostility towards TV news channels like CNN and newspapers such as The New York Times, but even the respected Associated Press news agency has been under intense fire. The AP has become a test case for editorial independence after it was barred from the Oval Office and Air Force One over its decision to refer to the "Gulf of Mexico" -- and not the "Gulf of America" as decreed by Trump. As well as his fiery rhetoric against the press, Trump has sued private channel CBS, regional newspaper The Des Moines Register, and pressured ABC which paid $15 million when threatened with a defamation lawsuit. "The White House's moves to curtail journalists' abilities to do their jobs and document what's happening is unprecedented," said Katherine Jacobsen, the Committee to Protect Journalists' US program director. "This attempt to control the narrative threatens both freedom of the press, and American democratic values." The Trump administration has moved fast -- pressing to dismantle US overseas outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, and threatening to starve NPR, public radio and PBS television of federal funds. Trump's cheerleader and dismantler-in-chief, Elon Musk, has even said the team behind CBS's flagship "60 Minutes" show deserves prison. "Wielding the power of the government to stifle free speech and to threaten news organisations, I think we're in a new territory," said NYU journalism professor Reece Peck. The Federal Communications Commission -- headed by a Trump ally -- has launched probes into CBS, ABC and NBC, alongside NPR and PBS, he said as an example. The United States fell from 45th to 55th place in 2024 in the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). It is unclear how far Trump can go in a country that has a rich tradition of investigative reporting and where freedom of speech is protected by the Constitution's First Amendment. "His ability is limited," said Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy. "He can try to find some targets here and there, but he certainly hasn't been able to do anything about The New York Times, which has been doing excellent reporting on the chaos of the Trump administration." But Kennedy warned Trump was seeking to design a media system where the Times "will simply be ignored by everybody, except their core audience." Suspicious of media Trump is drawing on mounting suspicion and disregard for traditional media among ordinary Americans. Just 31 percent of people surveyed by Gallup in 2024 said they trusted the mainstream media to provide complete, accurate and unbiased information -- a figure that was above 50 percent in the 2000s. In its first 100 days, the White House has welcomed influencers, podcasters, and commentators aligned with his agenda and on whom Trump relied during the election campaign, not known for speaking truth to power. One such figure, Real America Voice's Brian Glenn, joined the official pile-on against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he visited Washington. "Why don't you wear a suit? You're at the highest level in this country's office and you refuse to wear a suit. A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the office," Glenn said to the wartime leader, parroting White House talking points. "Trump cultivated relationships with independent, alternative right-wing media way, way back in 2015 and 2016," said Peck, a move born of necessity because Fox News, with its conservative viewership, had yet to support the then-candidate. Trump has continued the successful "flood the zone" strategy to dominate the news cycle, which his one-time adviser, Steve Bannon, pioneered. As the news becomes increasingly hectic and difficult to cover, Kennedy said the question now is whether any outlets are "big enough to cover everything that's happening."

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