Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has committed multiple attacks aimed toward freedom of the press and freedom of speech as a whole. These attacks mainly focus on larger, more widely known news outlets; but it leaves the question, how will this impact the general public?
Freedom of the press is included in the Bill of Rights. The first amendment states that “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” This protects journalists’ ability to freely investigate and report information to the public.
In the last year, Trump has sued multiple news outlets, banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool, and made it so that his administration determines what news outlets are allowed in the press pool and in the Pentagon. “It’s nothing new to have a person in a position of power threaten a news organization for coverage that they don’t like,” Riley Walker, an English teacher at MSHS said. “But this time around the administration might actually do something about it.”
Walker believes that this issue centers more around limiting people’s options and fracturing people’s attention so that nobody is on the same page. “I’m less worried about direct censorship than I am worried about people not consuming media,” Walker said.
According to the ACLU, Trump cut $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the summer of 2025 through the Rescissions Act, completely halting their operations. Although he could not directly rescind funding for PBS or NPR by rescinding funds for the CPB. Furthermore, he filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.
The Pentagon has extremely restrictive rules as to what can be published by their press pool. According to CNN in 2025, the Pentagon Press Association feels that the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth’s new policy “gags Pentagon employees and threatens retaliation against reporters who seek out information that has not been pre-approved for release.”
There is evidence that the government as a whole can control not only exactly what news outlets disclose, but also what news outlets can access information on government actions and discussions. Maintaining transparency with the public is imperative for mutual trust and more so, mutual safety and comfort. By virtually controlling the opinion of the press, the government widens their control of the people’s biases. Of course, the public can vote or express how they feel however they see fit; but the information exposed to them and the bias it may hold does impact their personal beliefs and opinions, especially if the news disclosed is heavily right or left leaning.
The purpose of the press from the creation of the country was to be a watchdog for the government. However, the press had morphed into an informative and productive manner for people to know what’s going on so that the country could continue to run as a democracy. In the past years, this manner of communication has become abusive once again towards the public.
The current climate around journalism means that the American people are hearing that the press is not trustworthy which erodes the trust that people have in news media overall. “I don’t know that we are getting as much balance to news anymore,” Amanda Kerrigan, English teacher and advisor to the news programs at MSHS said.
If the freedom of the press in America is stunted, representation of marginalized groups and the point of views that come out of smaller or oppressed communities will inevitably become more and more rare. “As we continue to limit the Free Speech of those outlets the public is uneducated and unaware of how different things impact them,” Sam Duff, a history teacher at MSHS said. “It is incredibly important for the smaller, marginalized communities, to have a voice in order to express their side of things.”
The press should not only be able, but should also have a goal of representing all kinds of communities and telling their stories.
Because of the rising use of TikTok as a news source combined with an algorithm designed to display extreme polarizing views, it is easy to get stuck focusing on and consuming only media that supports a specific world view. “Instead of a narrative that was established by journalists who operate on professional journalistic standards, people are consuming their news based on ideological algorithmic grounds,” Walker said. “They’re being fed information that supports their worldview already.”
Not only does this fragment the country, it decreases the people’s ability to work together as a democracy. “If we spend all our time disagreeing about what’s actually happening in the world, we can’t agree on what to do about it or what the right solution is,” Walker said. “We’re in bad shape, and I’m worried about it.”
According to Syracuse University Today, Johanna Dunaway, research director at the university’s Institute for Democracy Journalism and Citizenship, feels that most Americans are still closer to the center rather than left or right leaning. “Yet when people are asked to evaluate the opposing party, they often feel considerable animosity based on what they hear from that party’s elite and governing members.”
These accusational beliefs evidently create a divide between the two political parties, which furthers distrust in news outlets as a whole. When the public loses trust in news outlets, basing opinions on any kind of fact or reason becomes unlikely.
It is extremely important for the people to practice media literacy and to consume a variety of media, not just the media that conforms directly to what they believe. “The general public needs to speak out against attacks on public media,” Kerrigan said. “They need to understand that not everything that they see from a media perspective is true.”
If the government has the intention to push a certain perspective, many news outlets are unprotected and will be impacted. However, there are steps that can be taken to stay aware and knowledgeable about the state of the U.S. consuming media that doesn’t conform to any specific view, or even media that pushes a narrative you disagree with, allows for you to form a rounded opinion with an awareness of every perspective. Although ignorance may seem blissful, an educated public creates a flourishing environment for healthy innovation and problem solving for all.
