Media in peril if Trump playbook falls open here

Observe carefully how American President Donald J. Trump systematically weakens the ability of journalists to hold him to account. He is creating a playbook for others to follow.

It would be easy to tut-tut, shake one’s head, and utter statements about “poor America”. Yes, the United States will be much the poorer through the actions of the most undemocratic president it its history. However, our concern should be driven as much by self-interest as concern for the good people in the country formerly known as Land of the Free.

Trump’s assault on media could be replicated in New Zealand. Perhaps not by our current government, but by the politicians we have yet to meet.

For that reason, we need to develop a Trump filter and ensure we develop safeguards that prevent the misuse of power we are seeing played out in Washington. The protections will need to be robust. Who would have imagined that the Constitution of the United States and the First Amendment would have proved impotent in the face of presidential assault?

Trump has employed multiple levers to weaken and intimidate his country’s news media: De-funding, withdrawal of accreditation, intimidation, and ‘lawfare’ (the use of legal strategies to harass and silence news media).

His Big Beautiful Bill, passed last week by a subservient Republican majority, cut $US1.1 billion in funding from public broadcasting over the next two years. The action completely cut off federal support to National Public Radio (NPR), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and about 1400 local tv and radio stations. Trump’s executive order labelled them ‘biased media’. As one station manager put it last week, the cut-off will be “pretty close to catastrophic”. Another said it would “result in immediate and serious cuts to stations’ local services and in some cases the total closure of stations, particularly in rural communities”. In addition to these cuts, the Trump Administration also plans the permanent defunding of international broadcaster Voice of America, a move the editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-backed RT channel described as “an awesome decision”.

Early in his second term, Trump used White House Press Corp accreditation as a weapon. He barred the Associated Press from attending media events in the White House, on Air Force One, and at Mar-a-Lago. His staff dubbed those areas as the president’s “private workspaces”.  The ban followed AP’s refusal to use ‘Gulf of America’ in its reports in place of ‘Gulf of Mexico’.  Last week a federal judge ordered the White House to restore AP’s accreditation but the signals were clear: where the Press Corp had once handled access, the Oval Office would now call the shots.

Intimidation of news media is nothing new to Donald Trump. His first term was routinely punctuated by the phrase ‘fake news’ and denigration of named reporters. The tempo has increased in his second term, particularly through his favoured channel – his personal social media platform Truth Social. Last month he demanded the firing of CNN Pentagon correspondent Natasha Bertrand for (correctly) calling out his triumphant verdict on the US strikes on Iraqi nuclear facilities. Earlier this month, in response to a question over the adequacy of alerts in the Texas floods, he replied: “Only an evil person would ask a question like that.” His clear intention is to both intimidate journalists and to undermine their credibility.

Yet it is in his use of the legal system that Trump is at his most daunting. For years he has been a serial litigant but now the courts have become a powerful weapon to wage war on the media. Only weeks before it found itself squarely in the crosshairs, the Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial that Trump was using threats of prosecution to stifle news coverage. He has used such threats in a effort to stop news outlets covering the migrant-hunting activities of his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. He has hinted at the use of the courts to force journalists to reveal the sources of stories such as the assessment of the Iraqi raids being overly optimistic. He has also extracted lucrative settlements, such as a $16 million settlement from Paramount after accusing CBS 60 Minutes of distorting an interview with his presidential rival Kamala Harris. The $US20 billion suit was widely seen as meritless and there is now speculation that the settlement had less to do with justice and more to do with shoring up Paramount’s $US8 billion dollar merger with Skydance Media which requires federal approval. However, it was not the only settlement. Before Trump’s second inauguration, ABC agreed to donate $US 15 million to his presidential library over defamation allegations involving rape. Now Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal over revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein saga. He does not win them all. On the same day his team filed suit against the WSJ’s publisher, he lost another case in which he claimed copyright over interview recordings that were the basis of Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s 2022 audiobook The Trump Tapes that sold more than two million copies. Even a win, however, carries with it significant legal expenses.

Trump is not the first politician to wage war on the media. Academic Adam Klein from New York’s Pace University has compared his actions to those of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who has reshaped his country’s media over the past 15 years to suit his wishes. There are many parallels.

Orbán fits a common East European mould for autocratic rule. What sets Trump apart is that he has employed similar approaches in what has been held up as a model democratic nation. And therein lies the danger for all of us.

How well protected would New Zealand media be if a Trump-like figure backed by a willing government came to power here?

Could RNZ be crippled or brought to heel by funding cuts? There is nothing in the Radio New Zealand Act under which it is established that stipulates a level of funding or a requirement on the Crown to fund a particular level of the services it is to provide. In fact, the latest Budget cut its annual funds.

Is there any over-arching legislation that requires the Government to fund media? No, there is not. Section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act guarantees the freedom “to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form” but is understandably silent on who should provide it. There is no obligation on the State to do so.

Do news organisations control who gets to sit in the Parliamentary Press Gallery? No, membership is granted by the Speaker of the House who approves the rules under which membership is granted. That system has worked satisfactorily for years but is it strong enough to survive the Trump Filter? Perhaps not, if the politicians we have yet to meet upend the constitutional conventions we now follow.

Our journalists enjoy no special privileges against intimidation apart from a provision in the Evidence Act allowing them to keep anonymous sources confidential. Even that provision can be set aside by a judge under a public interest exemption. Our journalists have been subjected to forms of intimidation since Prime Minister Robert Muldoon ejected Tom Scott from a 1982 news conference. Both deputy prime ministers in the current coalition have openly criticised named journalists, including questioning their professional abilities. So far, they have been batted away. However, intimidation becomes harder to resist when financial and social headwinds weaken the power and resolve of news media organisations and an increasing number of journalists are forced into the isolation of freelance livelihoods.

Litigation has always been expensive, for defendant as much as plaintiff. In the past, however, news media organisations were profitable enough to withstand the slings and arrows in contestable suits. They continue to do so when necessary but the diminished fortunes of the industry put media under pressure. The politicians we have yet to meet could exploit such perceived weaknesses to either intimidate into silence or gain from settlements. High cost, multiplied by the appellant processes of our court system, gives an advantage to those with deep pockets. The politician we have yet to meet could be backed by very deep pockets.

The events unfolding in the United States on a weekly basis strongly suggest we need to institute safeguards to ensure that the civic and democratic functions of our news media are protected from attack by politicians we have yet to meet – people who seek personal powers beyond anything contemplated or condoned by a truly democratic nation. Before the Trump playbook has a chance to fall open here, we need add to our right to free expression, and enshrine in constitutional law the protection of principled civic journalism.