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<\/p>\nAlain Stephens is an investigative reporter covering gun violence, arms trafficking, and federal law enforcement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The New York Times<\/span> recently published a sweeping accounting of President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign against the American press: FBI agents arriving at reporters\u2019 homes, subpoenas for journalists\u2019 records, Pentagon access restrictions, regulatory pressure on television networks, numerous lawsuits against news organizations, and an increasingly politicized<\/a> Federal Communications Commission.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost 20 months into Mr. Trump\u2019s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once,\u201d Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jim Rutenberg wrote<\/a>. \u201cEach time the president assails what has long been considered protected speech \u2026 he is eroding norms and undercutting the role of an independent press.\u201d<\/p>\n All told, it is a damning inventory.<\/p>\n It is also difficult to read without noticing who occupies almost every frame: Us.<\/em><\/p>\n Reporters. Editors. Television hosts. Networks. Publishers. Their lawyers. And the access<\/a> our industry has become so reliant upon.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Times is right about the threat. Trump has indeed weaponized government agencies<\/a> and private litigation<\/a> against news organizations<\/a> in ways that seriously threaten the First Amendment, although judges have repeatedly rebuked parts of the administration\u2019s legal strategy. But Trump\u2019s attacks on free speech<\/a> have extended well beyond the journalism, from ICE protesters<\/a> in Los Angeles to faculty in solidarity with Palestine on college campuses.<\/a> But somewhere along the way, the American press began conflating two things: press freedom, with the conditions under which the press had become accustomed.<\/p>\n Those are not the same thing.<\/p>\n Free speech was never free.<\/p>\n It was wrested loose. Sharpened and stretched, stifled and reborn, often on the backs of those who put the pain and personal safety of others ahead of their own.<\/p>\n Somewhere along the way, the American press began conflating two things: press freedom, with the conditions under which the press had become accustomed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n In 1892, a little more than two decades after the nation wrenched itself back together from war, Ida B. Wells challenged the lies white Memphis terrorists used to justify lynching Black men in her newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. In retribution, a mob ransacked her office and destroyed the paper\u2019s printing equipment<\/a>. Wells happened to be away. Threatened with death if she returned, she continued her investigation from the North. There was no White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner, no presidential press core podium to be invited to, no shining press awards. As a Black woman, she couldn\u2019t even vote; in her isolation, her best job security was to carry a pistol<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so,\u201d she wrote in her book<\/a> on the excruciating personal trade-off she made to pursue her work: perspective.<\/em> Her fear, exhaustion, and isolation existed beside something larger: actual bodies, tangible violence, and lived injustice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I will be candid: Melancholy abounds. I write this as a journalist who has grown depressed while slinking through the yearly industry conferences, newsrooms, and brown bag luncheons. There is a palpable dread to most discussions, with an acknowledgment that the world is less fair, less stable, and overwhelmingly more difficult.<\/p>\n We talk about everything. Except the necessity to win, and most importantly, for who.<\/p>\n Israeli airstrikes<\/a> and other attacks are still killing<\/a> and displacing Palestinians in Gaza, where the United Nations reported last month that medical shortages<\/a> and restrictions on critical supplies continue to undermine an already devastated health system. In the West Bank<\/a>, settler violence, backstopped by the Israeli military<\/a>, is a daily and growing threat. Israel\u2019s war on Gaza has now killed nearly 300<\/a> journalists \u2014 more news gatherers<\/a> than in both world wars, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan combined<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Times in particular has done more than almost any other media outlet to launder<\/a> the justification<\/a> for this ongoing death and destruction, and to police the language<\/a> we\u2019re allowed to use when discussing it, which didn\u2019t warrant any mention in its attacks-on-free-speech roundup.<\/p>\n In the U.S., ICE arrests reached nearly 51,000 in August alone<\/a> as the Trump administration dramatically expanded immigration enforcement. Many of those being detained had no criminal record<\/a>, while courts continue battling out the administration\u2019s detention practices. A Department of Homeland Security watchdog reported on Monday<\/a> that immigrants at Florida\u2019s now-defunct \u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d prison were confined for more than an hour at a time in outdoor metal cages known as \u201ccalming areas\u201d that were barely larger than a phone booth.<\/p>\n Government coercion and obfuscation is difficult; it doesn\u2019t hold a candle to death, subjugation, and the powerlessness of victimization.<\/p>\n\n