Never Mind Biden and Big Tech, Fear 'Trump's Censorship Arsenal'

Tim Graham on Jan 3, 2025

Point and laugh at The Hollywood Reporter. After four years of Team Biden pressuring Big Tech to crush dissent on social media, not to mention Team Biden pressuring the news media to crush any word of President Joe Biden's mental decline, they're going to warn the world about Donald Trump and censorship.

The silly headline on this silly article is "Trump's Media Censorship Arsenal Is Growing." Beware, says the subhead: "A new roadmap for the president-elect and his advisors to chill free speech has surfaced as he targets networks critical of him."

Nowhere in this 1,000-word joke does young Berkeley-educated writer Winston Cho mention Biden or his team's tawdry record of censorship and "chilling" negative reporting in any way, shape or form.

Journalists on the Left hypocritically clothe themselves in the mantle of democracy and free speech while they tolerate the crudest censorship and political pressure being brought to serve the most powerful Democrats. Then consider the hilarious notion that Donald Trump is going to turn the anti-Trump media into a harmless yarn basket full of toothless kittens.

Network evening-news coverage of Trump has been routinely and relentlessly 90% negative in every study we've done at NewsBusters. But the left seems terrified that Trump might be able to pressure the media into making it, what, 70% negative? At one point in the last campaign, Kamala Harris was drawing 100% positive evening-news coverage on ABC.

So of course, Cho's panic began with ABC settling with Trump rather than letting us see all the internal George Stephanopoulos emails. We can't have the slightest fraction of a chance that ABC News and Stephanopoulos would somehow transform into a slightly more moderate network.

It continued with the notion that Trump would cause this Supreme Court to revisit the New York Times v. Sullivan ruling, which makes it nearly impossible for public figures to sue malicious and/or corrupt media outlets.

"The specter of Trump toppling a pillar of First Amendment jurisprudence has emerged as one of several weapons in his censorship arsenal," wrote Cho. Democracy and journalism somehow survived before The New York Times won over the Supreme Court in 1964.

Then there's the unintentionally hilarious worry from journalists that Trump shouldn't be using "lawfare" to make their lives difficult and expensive. Oh, really? And what do they think they've been relentlessly promoting and weaponizing all these Trump years? The lawfare shoe was delightful ... on the other foot.

Third, there's the worry that Trump's arsenal includes "loyalists serving as heads of regulatory agencies who can steer networks away from coverage critical of him and his administration." FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is making noise about reviewing TV news coverage, so "long-term incentives to stay out of Trump's crosshairs by toning down adversarial coverage persist."

These people are terrified at the prospect of "toning down adversarial coverage." Perhaps they would witness less use of words like "fascist" and "end of democracy." Maybe Trump will merely be described as "oafish" and "stupid." Cho is appalled that Stephanopoulos can't claim repeatedly that Trump is a rapist.

Mediaite founder Dan Abrams recently admitted that "there is a level of Trump derangement syndrome among some that they are completely incapable of giving him credit for anything." Any encouraging word about Trump is "normalizing" him.

The abnormal people here are the anti-Trump ranters who can't seem to fathom that every president tries -- sometimes gently, sometimes roughly -- to "tone down adversarial coverage." These haters just can't be honest enough to confess they don't object to Democrats like Biden censoring critical narratives and pressuring reporters to avoid negativity and repeat Democrat happy talk.

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.