The President of the United States has a tortured relationship with the news media. He consumes news voraciously. On Monday, he said that he “cherish[es]” the free press. He frequently cites news organizations’ reporting. After a shooter disrupted a White House Correspondents Assn. where he was to be the featured speaker, the President was comforting, and he insisted that the dinner be rescheduled.
Yet he has declared journalists “the enemy of the American people,” evoking the language of authoritarians. He ridicules journalists and dismisses accurate reporting that’s not to his liking as “fake news.” He used his remarks at that rescheduled dinner, in part, to mock and denigrate reporters in the room.
And now, the President is banning some of the nations’ leading news organizations from covering the White House at all.
It started in a snit, when the Associated Press - as unbiased and nonpartisan a news source as any on the planet - was kicked out of the Oval Office, Air Force One, and White House press pools because the President was angry the AP hadn’t changed its style to rename the Gulf of Mexico as his preferred “Gulf of America.” The ban has remained in force for over a year, sometimes in defiance of court orders.
This weekend, the President doubled down, banning CNN, Politico, and MS Now, as well. He described this not as an attack on press freedom, but as “an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control,” he wrote on Truth Social. “It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
What does this have to do with New Hampshire Public Radio? Why am I, as NHPR’s president and CEO, speaking up about what could be dismissed as Washington inside baseball?
I think the President’s actions - which the affected news outlets are challenging in court as unconstitutional - are of a piece with his successful campaign a year ago to defund public media. Remember when the White House issued a statement in April 2025 declaring public media a “grift” and accused us of spreading “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’”? Three months later, Congress ripped back $1.1 billion that had already been appropriated for public radio and TV. By January, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had gone out of business.
More than that, I think that when a President moves from words to action, ratcheting up his attacks on the media and attempting to block some of the nation’s most serious news outlets from doing their jobs, those actions must be condemned.
If you care about a free press - and if you’re reading this, I know you do - this is a moment for action. Call the White House and let the President know you want him to respect the Constitution and rescind his ban. The number is (202) 456-1111. Or write him using this form.
Every President starting with George Washington has feuded with the press. But most have understood journalism’s role as fundamentally patriotic, poking and probing and challenging as a means of advancing America’s pursuit of a more perfect Union.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government,” Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, “I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
We need not choose. But we must not remain silent when the free press is under threat.
