There can be no question that President Trump and his appointees are limiting the free press. From calling reporters the enemy of the state to suing newspapers that write things he doesn’t like, demanding that television stations fire hosts, and arresting and serving reporters with subpoenas — the attacks are real and often successful.
Most of the time, it is hard to know what one can do to protect freedom of the press. But today, there is a clear-cut, easy action you can take if you want to stop President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) attempt to control news content by controlling broadcast licenses.
Locally, the Trump administration is reviewing WPVI’s (Channel 6) broadcast license. The announcement came after years of Trump complaining about its show, “The View,” its hosts, and WPVI’s late-night show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Both shows criticize and, from time to time, ridicule President Trump.
When Disney, the owner of WPVI and other stations, refused to do what CBS did for Trump, and end its late-night show, the Trump Administration began an early review of WPVI’s broadcast license.
Unlike other attacks on the media, this one we can stop.
The FCC must seek “community input.” You can tell Trump’s appointments to stop the fascist attacks on the media by clicking here, and filling out the one-page form. If you are upset about the attacks on the free press, take the time to tell the Trump appointees.
An article from Harvard University — a university that agreed to make many of the changes Trump demanded — makes it clear that dictators control the news. “Twentieth-century dictators — notably, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao — had all denounced their critics, especially the press, as ‘enemies of the people.’” Their goal was to delegitimize the work of the press as “fake news” and create confusion in the public mind about what’s real and what isn’t, what can be trusted and what can’t be. That, it seems, is also Trump’s goal.
Disney and WPVI are not perfect. Full disclosure, I have worked with WPVI reporter Nydia Han on various consumer stories and believe her to be courageous and great. There is plenty not to like about corporate news, but that is not the issue. As Thomas Jefferson said: “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
A free press, which includes even corporate-owned media, was so important to our “founding fathers” that it was listed in the First Amendment, the quintessential American document, The Bill of Rights. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The American Constitution would not have been ratified without the promise of a Bill of Rights to protect citizens from the power of the government. The solution to the problem of corporate-controlled news is to break up the corporations, not to replace the corporations challenging Trump with ones that will support Trump.
Trump’s ability to control the press is almost unfathomable. First, he removed FCC commissioners who were loyal to the Constitution, not to him. Then Trump began limiting access to press briefings. In February 2025, Associated Press reporters were indefinitely banned from press events after refusing to use the president’s preferred term “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico.” In the same years, CNN, NPR, NBC News, The Hill, Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post were denied Pentagon office space.
In September of that year, the Department of Defense required reporters to sign a pledge promising not to use material even if it was unclassified. The Pentagon barred Associated Press, Reuters, and Getty Images photographers from attending Iran War briefings because Trump didn’t like the coverage.
The administration launched an official government tool — White House Bias Tracker — to track and publicly flag “media bias,” which serves as a state-sponsored blacklist for journalists.
It has arrested reporters for covering news, deported others for critical coverage, raided reporters’ homes, and threatened reporters with arrest for not revealing sources. There has been no outcry from those who claim to venerate the Constitution.
It is appalling. And too often, we can do nothing to support the reporters under attack. This time, we can help. We can defend the Bill of Rights and tell President Trump you don’t have the right to eliminate reporting you don’t like. Click here, now, before you go on to the next thing.
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