Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this editorial do not represent the Minnesota Daily’s newsroom and are not necessarily representative of any individual on the Opinions Desk. This piece has been agreed upon for publication by a majority vote of all members of the Daily’s Opinions Desk.
A free press is a cornerstone of democracy, especially when government leaders seek to dismantle the systems that make the government democratic.
President Donald Trump is not a fan of this free press because it exposes and criticizes his actions. The White House’s decision to control which news organizations will be included in the White House Press Pool is a dangerous step away from democratic values and puts press freedom and the media’s ability to act as a check on the president on an unclear path.
Before this change reversed decades of precedent, the White House Correspondents’ Association managed the rotating pool of journalists who traveled with and covered the president. This group, including representatives from print, radio, television, wire services and photography organizations, is now selected by the White House.
This comes after the White House barred the Associated Press in February for not changing its style for the Gulf of Mexico after Trump ordered it to be renamed the Gulf of America.
Jane Kirtley, the Silha Professor of media ethics and law at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Minnesota, said Trump’s attacks on the media chip away at the reliability of an independent press.
“Whether the nonpartisan, independent media are going to have an opportunity to fully and fairly cover the Trump administration going forward is a real question,” Kirtley said. “President Trump and his advisors are savvy enough to know that they can’t just unilaterally declare nobody’s allowed to cover this administration. There would be pushback from that, not only by the news organizations themselves but by their readers, by their viewers and maybe even Congress.”
It is important to realize Trump likely won’t stop at this.
“But to do it incrementally,” Kirtley said. “Drip by drip by drip, you suddenly end up with a situation where you really don’t have a non-affiliated, independent press that is there to provide the public information.”
With Trump in control of the press pool, journalists may be discouraged from asking tough questions as they could be removed from the pool at any time. This does not only hurt news organizations; it hurts the people the most.
Lorenzo Fabbri, an associate professor in the French and Italian department who specializes in visual culture under fascism at the University, said the free press is an essential part of democracy because it enables the people to access information from which to base their opinions.
With limited abilities to cover Trump, journalists will no longer be able to provide the same level of explanatory journalism that highlights the effects of Trump’s actions, Fabbri said. Important questions about the impacts of tariffs, for example, cannot be covered in as much detail when press freedom is limited.
“You can cover Trump and you can get access to the press conference as long as you are liked by the President,” Fabbri said. “That doesn’t seem to be in alignment with what a free press should look like.”
The ease at which journalists’ access to Trump has been restricted should also make us question how stable the systems that uphold our democracy’s values are. We should not take the free press and access to credible critique of the government for granted.
“It also shows how frail is the U.S. democracy,” Fabbri said. “There is one person that is deciding who is admitted to the White House.”
Christopher Terry, associate professor and Cowles Fellow of journalism, law and policy at the Hubbard School, said an antagonistic relationship between the White House and the press — to some extent — is expected and reflective of precedent.
“It’s not just Trump,” Terry said. “Every government that we’ve ever had has had a both hostile and symbiotic relationship with the press. Just happens to be more hostile than symbiotic right now.”
Terry said Trump has taken this antagonism to another level, and the recent White House decision reflects a greater pattern that promotes and elevates Trumpian media outlets and publications.
“I think the thing that people are forgetting is they did the same thing at the Pentagon, right?” Terry said. “They moved out legacy media organizations in favor of OWN and Newsmax and others that are reasonably friendly to the Trump side of the equation.”
Terry said this isn’t just problematic for the First Amendment, it’s problematic for democracy in general.
Troubling developments in journalism are not limited to the White House. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos announced the paper’s opinion section would now support “personal liberties and free markets” and exclude opposing perspectives. The Post’s Opinions Editor David Shipley resigned following the announcement.
What matters now is how the press and the people respond.
“Suppose the University of Minnesota administration decided to stop speaking to the MN Daily and only communicate with the Star Tribune,” Fabbri wrote in an email to the Minnesota Daily. “How would you feel about this? How should the U of M community react to such a choice?”
With the freedom of the press and accessibility of credible information under threat, it is of utmost importance that citizens remain diligent in demanding transparency from an administration attempting to operate behind closed doors.
