If you’ve been on any major national news website in the past month, you’ve probably found yourself drowning in dozens of articles about President Donald Trump’s latest provocative move. Whether it’s the tariffs whose implementation remains uncertain, his unprecedented immigration policies, or his recent proposal for the Gaza ‘Riviera,’ the press is dedicating substantial resources to ensuring that all his actions are meticulously covered.
It is widely documented by news outlets how the Trump administration has affected businesses across the country and even internationally. But, perhaps ironically, its effect on the journalism industry has gone under the radar.
Since Trump won the election in November, federal politics have essentially cannibalized headlines across the country.
As a journalist and citizen who deeply appreciates muckraking journalism, I am in no way saying that the press has handled Trump’s presidency unprofessionally. In times of such political turmoil, the press has a responsibility to inform the public about the actions of our federal government and their far-reaching effects.
That being said, the engagement with authentic and unique storytelling journalism has been stifled since federal policy articles have run wild in the papers. The surge in federal policy coverage has crowded out space for the in-depth, creative stories that have traditionally been cherished in journalism.
This shift in focus is evident in the coverage of recent events—take the American Airlines plane that crashed into a U.S. Army helicopter earlier this year, for example. Typically, avoidable catastrophes like this get covered in a sensitive way that still requires investigative work to figure out what went wrong and why. But, in this case, many of the nation’s top news agencies ran just as many—if not more—articles about Trump’s DEI commentary as they did about the crash itself, with headlines inevitably steering the conversation back to him.
It is necessary for these outlets to expose the bigoted behavior of Trump and his insensitive and unfounded comments on the catastrophe, but this is just another example of Trump trickling into headlines when they, at first glance, have little to do with him. Normally, years of complaints from pilots about low-flying helicopters in these areas would have dominated the news, with no connection to the President.
The coverage of the crash speaks volumes about the state of journalism today.
But that’s not the only way that Trump has affected the industry. Political tensions have led to major changes in most national publications’ operations.
Ultra-conservative White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the Trump administration was taking over the press pool from the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), a non-partisan independent group, which had managed presidential press conferences since the 1950s, ensuring a wide variety of reporters had access to the President. As part of this power shift, the administration barred the Associated Press (AP) from the press pool entirely, citing the outlet’s continued use of “Gulf of Mexico” instead of the administration’s preferred term, “Gulf of America.”.
“The White House Correspondents Association has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the President of the United States in these most intimate spaces. Not anymore,” Leavitt declared to the public.
As Eric Lutz of Vanity Fair put it, the White House press conferences have now become a “MAGA echo chamber,” filled with reporters who amplify Trump’s radical views while neglecting to ask the critical questions that most Americans want answered. Many are calling this an attack on the First Amendment, drawing comparisons to Putin’s crackdown on free speech in Russia.
However, it isn’t just Trump and his administration that are affecting the landscape. It’s also his billionaire friends.
Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos recently announced a drastic shift in the organization’s direction, creating controversy. He stated that their opinion section would focus exclusively on writing about “personal liberties and free markets,” effectively ostracizing other liberal ideologies from the opinion section. Shortly after, Washington Post Opinion Editor David Shipley resigned, and former Post editor Marty Baron called it “a betrayal of free expression.”
This wasn’t the first time Bezos faced criticism, though. During the election, he refused to let The Post endorse Kamala Harris, ending a decades-long tradition of the agency backing the Democratic candidate in the Presidential election.
Moving to MSNBC, newly appointed president Rebecca Kutler sparked controversy last month after a flurry of changes in the company. She has canceled several shows across the network, including the shows of Katie Phang, Alex Wagner, José Díaz-Balart, and Joy Reid—all four of whom are people of color. Reid—the first Black woman to ever host a prime-time cable-news show—is the only one being fully fired, while the others will remain with the company in different roles.
“It is unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows… and that feels indefensible, and I do not defend it,” remarked fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow during a four-minute monologue on her show following the changes.
While Kutler is not a billionaire nor an avid Trump supporter, these moves are emblematic of the general trend that is happening in journalism right now. Trump has affected many facets of life in his first couple of months in office, and the press is no exception.
As long as Trump remains in power, journalism remains under siege.
