One year since President Trump's second inauguration, writers and activists are drawing attention to the authoritarian climate in the US, including the impacts on news media and culture.
"We still have independent media. But taking stock of how much the media landscape has changed is sobering," NYT opinion columnist M. Gessen wrote in this essay timed to the one-year mark, citing changes at the Washington Post, CBS and other media mainstays.
"Autocrats destroy the free press in at least two ways: by cracking down, as Trump has done through lawsuits and regulatory pressure, and by reapportioning access to information," Gessen wrote, arguing that "the media, like civil society, is much diminished compared with what it was a year ago."
Now, I'm a natural-born optimist. While talking on CNN about Trump's lawsuits against news outlets and the Pentagon's restrictions on reporting and last week's FBI seizure of a Washington Post reporter's devices, I always try to emphasize that the work is still getting done. The news is still getting out.
But glass-half-full guys sometimes wind up with an entirely empty glass if they don't listen to the more pessimistic people around them.
"Ask any people who have lived in a country that became an autocracy, and they will tell you some version of a story about walls closing in on them, about space getting smaller and smaller," Gessen wrote. "The space they are talking about is freedom."
Amnesty International warned of that "narrowing" in a new report this morning. "The attack on civic space and the rule of law and the erosion of human rights in the United States mirrors the global pattern Amnesty has seen and warned about for decades," said Paul O'Brien, the org's executive director.
He said the Trump administration's actions are "increasing the risk for journalists and people who speak out or dissent, including protestors, lawyers, students, and human rights defenders." And yet... like I said... the work continues!
