Trump and his administration are winning a war against the media 

“I think that to some extent, we won’t know whether we’ve lost the free press until it’s gone,” Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters said. 

Donald Trump has made it his political agenda to silence the media organizations that paint him in perceived biases. Using his close allies carefully installed, his attacks on press freedom has escalated, leading to threats to remove TV broadcast licenses and the normalization of media distrust.  

Since his re-election as president of the United States in early 2025, Donald Trump has made it clear that he loathes journalists and the media. “Bloodsuckers” and the “enemy of people” are phrases Trump has commonly used to describe the media. From lawsuits to plain verbal harassment, the media is bending to the will of the Trump administration. 

Notably, CBS pulled a 60 Minutes documentary on Venezuelan deportees mere hours before it was set to be aired in late December of 2025. The CBS documentary that was briefly aired in Canada on Global TV, detailed the abuse and harsh conditions suffered by the Venezuelans deported to The Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. According to CBC, the deportees sent to the CECOT were not gang members but were charged of non-violent crimes. This raises the question of Trump’s authority to deport and invoke the Alien Enemies Act despite lack of sufficient evidence of a criminal gang sent by the Venezuelan government.  

According to Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent of the story, the documentary had been fully fact checked. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a memo. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” 

Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS, claims she made the decision to pull the documentary from air because she wanted more voices from the Trump administration to be featured for more coverage of diverse perspectives. “We need to push much harder to get these principals on the record,” Weiss wrote in a letter.  

However, the appointment of Weiss as editor in chief on October 6, 2025, by Paramount’s CEO, David Ellison, has caused controversy within employees of CBS. Weiss has a background as an opinion journalist, often challenging liberal views and making polarizing arguments, yet no experience in broadcast news. David Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison, are both Trump allies who have made conservative changes to the media and endorsing Trump. Weiss’s role in the CBS is a strategic decision to infiltrate the media with Trump friendly faces and narrow press freedoms according to The Guardian This type of censorship is commonly seen in authoritative countries such as in Hungary, where independent journalists and outlets are banned and Trump is a close ally of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.  

In October of 2025, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, imposed new media policies in the Pentagon which now significantly narrow the press access journalist have within the facility. The Pentagon, located in Virginia, is a headquarter used for the US Department of Defense (DoD), serving as the centre for U.S. military forces such as the Army, Navy, and Air force, as well as ensuring national security.  

The newly implemented policy forces journalist to sign a 21-page pledge, detailing the restrictions they must comply with. Previously, journalists were allowed to be unescorted throughout most parts of the Pentagon. However, the recent policies now deem most of the Pentagon off limits without an escort. Additionally, all information must be pre-approved by the Department of War before it can be publicly released, whether it is classified or not. Numerous journalists who refused to sign the pledge, lost their press passes to enter the Pentagon. 

Tom Bowman, a journalist that has held a Pentagon press pass for 28 years, said “that [the] policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable.” 

One America News (OANN) is the only news outlet that has agreed to comply with the media rules while all other news outlets, including major publications like The New York Times, CNN, The Atlantic, and even Fox News, have rejected it. OANN is known as a pro-Trump and conservative new channel, often promoting conspiracy theories and political propaganda. Trump himself has personally praised them, saying that they’re “great news, not fake news.”  

Alongside other Trump allies installed into the media, Brendan Carr was personally selected by Trump in early 2025 to be the chair of the Federal Communicator Commission (FCC). “Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech,” Trump said in a letter.   

The FCC is responsible for regulating interstate and international communication and manages what US citizens see and hear in the news. Brendan Carr has become an active voice and right-hand man to Trump. He was credited as the one responsible for removing Jimmy Kimmel Live! from air. In a senate hearing on December 17, 2025, Democratic senators questioned Carr about his controversial statement toward the ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel.  

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said to right-wing Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”  

They reasoned that Carr was politically motivated to censor free speech and whether he was taking instructions from the president. Carr did not directly answer the question. Still, Carr has used the agency’s power to go after media outlets that have a perceived liberal bias and has supported cutting federal funding for public media. While democrats have criticized Carr and called for his resignation, Trump has praised him as a “great patriot.” 

“I don’t know if Trump himself has a ‘game plan’ per se, but it is clear that the overall picture is of an Administration that disdains a free press,” Rebecca Hamilton, a law professor at American University, said in an email. “Their view — and this is evident from Trump’s rhetoric, his prior lawsuits, the Pentagon office space memo, and the FCC investigations — is that any media outlets that don’t align themselves with Trump’s agenda are the enemy. This reflects a fundamental disrespect for the principles underlying a democratic commitment to a free press.” 

Cover Image: Joachim Schnürle, Pexels