A Risk Assessment of America Right Now

During his first term, Donald Trump cast journalists as unreliable (“fake news”) and treacherous (“the enemy of the people”). In his second, he has equated members of the media with terrorists. After Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and media star, was shot and killed, Trump condemned the rhetoric of the “radical left” and vowed to go after “those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.” He didn’t mention the press explicitly—and yet it’s clear the administration views some news organizations as part of that complex. This new rhetorical framing, which is spreading online, poses a heightened challenge for journalists and media outlets.

The rhetorical escalation is happening amid a growing risk of targeted violence. In the days after Kirk’s death, there were two attacks on newsrooms: On September 12, an incendiary device was found under a news truck belonging to the local Fox affiliate in Salt Lake City. Two suspects are under arrest. On September 19, a day after a public rally in support of Jimmy Kimmel, at least three shots were fired into the offices of the ABC affiliate in Sacramento. A single suspect was arrested. The motives in these cases are not yet known. But security experts at several news organizations told me they are increasingly concerned about the risk of physical harm. Last week, at an event in New York, A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, declared, “We spend nearly ten times more today than we did a decade ago to protect the safety, security, and legal rights of our journalists.”