Two of the worst outrages of another horrid week

Now that the 100-day mark has passed, I’ve become almost hardened to how tragically awful Donald Trump’s second term has been.

It’s difficult to take in the daily shocks — the tariff madness, the casual incompetence of top officials like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the cruel deportations, the corruption involved in Trump’s ongoing grift, and so much more. Last week’s effort to defund public media is one of the many horrors, and I wrote about it in the Guardian as I looked at how Trump is trying to control the message by destroying our sources of fact and truth.

 

 

Because it’s so unrelenting, I sometimes find I have to look away, as I mostly did with Trump’s offensive social media posts about becoming the next pope. As someone steeped in a Catholic upbringing and Jesuit education, and as an admirer of the social justice orientation of Pope Francis, I’m disgusted. But I recognize what Trump did — and mostly dismiss it — as another part of the endless distraction and chaos game.

Still, two recent events have broken through. I think they’re worth briefly delving into here because they may not be on your radar and you should know.

First, the news that Oklahoma schools will begin teaching schoolchildren to doubt the validity of the 2020 election. As Judd Legum, who writes the Popular Information newsletter here, laid out, “Next school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to learn about Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud. The lessons will not be part of a course on conspiracy theories, but an official component of the new social studies curriculum.”

Philip Bump of the Washington Post had an excellent response with his article, “Hey, Oklahoma students. Here’s your real ‘election fraud’ primer.”

I hope some Oklahoma parents will get Bump’s points across to their kids as they’re being brainwashed in school. His detailed piece (gift link here) includes this line: “We should start with the most obvious rejoinder to suggestions that the election was stolen: No evidence has emerged of even small-scale efforts to steal votes.”

My second item is how the war on journalists — and especially investigative journalism — took a particularly diabolical turn as the Justice Department reinstated a rule that allows federal investigators to go after journalists’ records in leak investigations.

Attorney General Pam Bondi thus has dismantled important protections for journalists that were established under her Biden-era predecessor, Merrick Garland. This opens the door to harshly punishing journalists who resist giving up their sources or confidential information.

Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote: “The rescission of the Garland regulation … gives the Justice Department greater powers to hunt for leakers of both classified and unclassified information,” and noted that, “by their nature, leak investigations chill news gathering and reporting in the public interest.”

He noted that the new ruling leaves in place some earlier guidelines that state that prosecutors must make “all reasonable attempts” to secure information from non-media sources. But will they? Consider this passage from Rottman, and think about what it could mean for journalists who are trying to dig below the glossy surface to tell us the truth:

“It is notable that the memo and revised regulation appear to contemplate criminal investigations and prosecutions for the unauthorized disclosure of information that is not classified but could be perceived as unfavorable to the administration. It is additionally troubling to see the memo quote President Trump’s presidential memorandum referring to certain leaks as “treasonous,” given that “treason” is one of the most severe crimes in the U.S. Code.”

Bottom line: We need a national shield law in the U.S., similar to the ones that exist in every state except Wyoming. These laws give reporters protections, in state courts, against being forced to disclose confidential sources or leaked information. Without one on the national level, as Rottman writes, the recent action “poses a serious threat to public-interest news gathering and the ability of the press to serve its watchdog role.”

Tell your senators and members of Congress to support a national shield law so that journalists can do their jobs.

I’ll also share some new national data from the University of Florida’s Collier Prize for State Government Accountability that documents the greater difficulty journalists are having in getting the information they need to do their work. Increasingly, reporters are getting stonewalled, public record requests are being denied or delayed, and officials are refusing to be interviewed. The real loser, of course, is the public.

“It feels like the folks we’re trying to hold accountable are taking advantage of the weaknesses of the (news) industry,” Richard Hirsch, former managing editor of the Miami Herald and now the Collier Prize director, told me in an interview. Newsroom staffs are smaller, lawsuits to fight the delays are expensive, and journalists sometimes have to move on to another story rather than keep pushing.

But the watchdog work really matters, as the annual awards show. First place this year went to the Associated Press for its two-year investigation that exposed how deeply the U.S. supply chain depends on prison labor, with often deplorable conditions for workers. The investigation resulted in several large companies, including Trader Joe’s, McDonald’s and Home Depot, changing their practices or launching internal investigations. Read the study results here.

Readers, thank you for caring about these issues, as I do. Hang onto the truth, which is under siege in so many ways. Knowing the truth — and rejecting pervasive lies — is one of the keys to surviving this mess. In practical terms, that means supporting good journalism in whatever ways you can; it means communicating forcefully to your elected representatives; and, when the time comes, voting for candidates who stand for decency, good government, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

Finally, I’m looking for two quick pieces of feedback from you. I generally write once a week here on American Crisis. Is that about right? Speaking for myself, I find that I’m overwhelmed with newsletters or posts that come multiple times a day, or even just daily. It’s too much; often I don’t even open them. But there’s a lot going on, so frequency may be a good idea. (I may not be able to increase much right now because of my academic and other responsibilities but I do want to know your preferences, especially since some of you are paid subscribers.)

Also, are you mostly interested in media-criticism posts from me (for example, a recent one about the glancing coverage of last month’s public demonstrations, titled “Big protests — but not big news”) or do you appreciate more general commentary such as today’s post about the truth under siege?

 

 

Please let me know in the comments. And thanks very much for being here, as I explore the relationship between journalism and democracy, and try to hold the media accountable. Your support means a lot.

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