Media leadership unity in defying Trump’s assault on Free speech: standing tall against historic comparisons

Jeff Sonnenfeld leads a group including Jeff Bewkes, Kay Koplovitz and Tom Glocer in congratulating media leaders for their remarkable unity.

Benjamin Franklin said in his first newspaper in 1722, “without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”

Similarly, this week, New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger warned political and business leaders to launch urgent defenses of independent journalism.

On this 250th anniversary of America’s founding, there is no right more deeply cherished and foundational than the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which is unambiguous: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” As we see massive assaults on the media play out every day, we should be proud of our media leaders for standing up for the First Amendment — and increasingly having each other’s backs. 

Over the last week alone, secret DOJ subpoenas have surfaced targeting reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal while simultaneously, Trump himself has threatened fresh lawsuits against ABC for its coverage of the Reflecting Pool fiasco, including new revelations suggesting the inadvertent poisoning of baby ducks, while ludicrously accusing ABC’s Jonathan Karl of “trying to rip rubber off surface” of the Reflecting Pool. 

This adds to a rapidly growing list of unprecedented attacks, including Trump slapping a $15 billion defamation lawsuit on The New York Times, signaling out renowned New York Times correspondents as treasonous for asking questions,  weaponizing the FCC to threaten broadcast licenses at networks over “unpatriotic” coverage, and the FBI physically raiding a Post reporter’s home, handing the DOJ Wall Street Journal articles flagged with “Treason” sticky notes to spark leak hunts, and threatening major book publishers with crippling pre-publication injunctions to bury critical releases. 

These attacks reflect what may well be the President’s favorite tactic: divide and conquer, as detailed in the recent New York Times bestselling book, Trump’s Ten Commandments. By pitting others against each other, Trump uses divide and conquer as an intentional strategy to weaken his targets and bring them to heel. 

But the timeless antidote to divide and conquer is collective action, a lesson that our media leaders model daily in standing up for and supporting fellow media leaders under assault. When the Trump Administration went after late-night hosts, demanding the firing of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon, other late night hosts stood together, defended one another on air and turned the administration’s attempts at censorship into a collective rallying cry, which ultimately manifested in Colbert’s fellow late-night hosts joining him in a triumphant collective send-off in his last episode. 

Similarly, when Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon tried to limit what the press could cover and who could receive credentials for Pentagon briefings, many media organizations joined in solidarity to forfeit their Pentagon press passes until a federal judge ultimately ruled that these restrictions were in violation of the law. And when the Administration banned the AP that its reporters would be barred from the Oval Office unless it used the Gulf of America terminology to cover the Gulf of Mexico, other news organizations including The New York Times, Washington Post and Reuters joined with the AP in standing their ground, ultimately securing an injunction from a federal judge.  

Just last week, ABC, under the leadership of new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro and President Dana Walden, launched a campaign urging its viewers to push back against the FCC’s threats to free speech, which won plaudits from others across media who fortified Disney’s push. 

It wasn’t always this way

This level of solidarity across media was not always the norm – far from it.  We don’t have to refer to the scandalous days of the “yellow journalism” of Willam Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer who battled for readership through invented or exaggerated events to rile up the public. As The Insider reminds us, even the venerable 60 Minutes on CBS had its moments of commercial cowardice and shame decades ago when wilting to the pressure of some in the tobacco industry. 

Yes, CBS News’ boss Edward R. Murrow courageously challenged the political witch hunts conducted by the bullying, false accusations of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s  hearings in 1954, but the media overall, including CBS, was at other times cautious over when to join in mutual defense of free expression. For example, during the crucible of the civil rights movement, the national press initially failed to stand together. When The New York Times was targeted in 1960 by Southern government officials using coordinated, bad-faith libel lawsuits to bankrupt the paper and silence its civil rights coverage, the rest of the media largely looked away. Fearing similar retribution from hostile local governments, industry titans stayed quiet. CBS’ Murrow did not speak up in defense of the Times. Neither did ABC. Phil and Katharine Graham’s Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune remained on the sidelines for years as the Times fought alone against 11 different libel suits in Alabama seeking $5.6 million—part of a broader wave of false malice claims across the South totaling a staggering $300 million (the equivalent of nearly $3.4 billion today).

It took four grueling years for rival outlets to realize that if the Times fell, any newspaper, broadcaster, or reporter covering controversial public affairs could be financially destroyed by hostile local juries. Finally recognizing the mutual existential threat, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, ABC, CBS, and the American Newspaper Publishers Association joined forces to formally back the Times. That unified front ultimately secured the sweeping constitutional protections established by the unanimous, landmark 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan Supreme Court ruling.

It is easy to fall into the trap of being nostalgic for the “good old days” of journalism. But the history of the Sullivan decision proves that today’s media leaders may be just as courageous as the giants of the past, if not significantly more so. 

The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones have consistently shown such defense of freedom of press globally.  In 1990, when Singapore tried to suppress  a Wall Street Journal’s reporter questioning over practices of its stock exchange, the paper courageously pulled out of the island nation entirely.  Other outlets ranging from Time Inc (including Fortune) and The Economist followed this leadership. More recently, Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal  stood swiftly and resolutely behind its courageous reporter Evan Gershkovich following his abduction by Vladimir Putin on false espionage charges for reporting on Russia’s economic implosion following its invasion of Ukraine. They showed the same support for Danny Pearl, a renowned journalist kidnapped in 2002 in Pakistan and tragically later beheaded.

It seemed like ominous signs for the news business that last summer ended George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck tribute to the legendary CBS News titan Edward R. Murrow, with the highest box office returns in Broadway history. That was followed immediately by the sale of CBS/Paramount to the Ellisons.  This deal was closed after Paramount/CBS made an unjustified $16 million payment to the Trump Presidential Library after the false allegation that a normally edited interview with his rival candidate Kamala Harris somehow was maliciously damaging to him.  And then a year later, just after the death of CNN Founder Ted Turner, WBD/CNN was cleared for purchase by the Ellisons as well. 

While their apparent partisan influence on the news — with the continuing degradation of CBS’ 60 Minutes — has sent shockwaves of alarm across the journalism community, recent events give hope that other titans of the media business are fighting for constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression. 

On this 250^th, it is vital to echo the patriotic message of our first president as he saluted free expression as  the cornerstone of our liberty . In Washington’s famous 1783 Newburgh Address, he warned the new nation that if Americans are intimidated or punished for expressing their opinions on vital matters, “reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”

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