When police raided the office of a Kansas newspaper last week and tore through the homes of its reporters, Donald Trump’s oft-heard refrain that the US media is “the enemy of the people” might not have been uppermost in the officers’ minds.
But an invasion that was likened to “Hitler tactics” by the newspaper’s co-owner, who subsequently died, and a wave of other recent attacks on journalists and media outlets across America, can be directly tied to the enmity whipped up by the former president and his ilk, analysts say.
“There has certainly been an increase in hostility towards the press, driven by the rhetoric from presidential candidates and public officials, which then infect lower levels of government, including police departments, and that leads to instances like we saw in Kansas,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
“It’s hard to say whether any one incident in isolation is part of the trend, but when you’ve got those attitudes out there becoming pervasive in society, including among law enforcement, and when the public is buying some of those ideas and not serving as a check on public officials, that creates a problem.”
The raid on the Marion County Record, seemingly at the behest of an influential local restaurant owner who wanted to hide a drunk-driving conviction, follows a disturbing recent spike in threats, intimidation and violence towards journalists in America.
In June, three New Hampshire men were charged with harassing and intimidating two National Public Radio reporters and vandalizing the homes of their family members. In Oklahoma’s McCurtain county, a discussion between the sheriff and public officials about executing reporters was recorded by the local newspaper.
There have also been deadly episodes. Last year Jeff German, an investigative reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was stabbed to death at his home, allegedly by a public administrator whose wrongdoing he had exposed. The killing had parallels with the murders of five newspaper staff by a gunman who attacked the office of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2018.
The non-partisan US press freedom tracker database has recorded almost 1,750 “violations” since 2017, including hundreds of actions against the media by law enforcement, politicians or private citizens.
The incidents coincide with, or perhaps reflect, a decline in the industry that has seen local newspapers closing at a rate of two a week, and created vast “news deserts” across the country that in turn weaken democracy by removing scrutiny of, and accountability for those in public office.
“In the past, whatever they thought of the national media, most folks had local papers, local news outlets they relied on to know what was going on in their own communities, and that they trusted. When they thought of journalists they thought of the reporter from the local paper,” Stern said.
“Now a lot of those local papers are out of business or a shell of themselves, so the trust people used to develop in the media based on reading their local paper is gone. People are looking at hyperbole on cable news and reacting to whichever side of the equation they take offense to, and forming their entire perspective on the value of journalism based on that.
“If local news were in a better place, that would not necessarily entirely mitigate the rhetoric coming from politicians, but it would go a long way.”
Katherine Jacobsen, US and Canada program coordinator for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, also saw a correlation between anti-media hostility from Trump and others, and the “very concerning” increase in aggression towards the press.
Speaking to the Guardian from Marion, Kansas, where she has been helping Record staff handle the fallout from the raid, she called the police action a “blatant violation of judicial process.
“It’s still unclear exactly why local police felt so emboldened to conduct such a sweeping search of the town’s paper, [but] part of it of course is national rhetoric and the politicization of the media, which kind of creates a permission structure for authorities to feel emboldened to go after local journalists, or journalists more broadly,” she said.
“But it’s important to recognize the nuances that exist within that. It’s not always just down political lines. Sometimes local officials who want their way feel that they’re able to kind of walk over judicial precedent and understanding of media protections to get it.”
Jacobsen said she was heartened by support for the newspaper she saw from emails, phone calls and a surge in subscriptions.
“People recognize the importance of a local paper and having local journalists who are in the community, on the ground, have an understanding and hold power to account,” she said.
“It sounds basic, but support your local journalists. People across the US and globally should think about the journalists in their communities and recognize the importance of their work. They face decreasing wages, longer hours, staff shortages, the whole shebang, and it’s really kind of a bleak picture sometimes.
“It’s important to recognize the burdens local journalists carry and the vital role they play in ensuring our democracy remains strong.”
John Daniszewski, vice-president and editor at large for standards at the Associated Press, organized a town hall on rising violence against reporters in the US two years ago in his role as co-chair of the International Press Institute’s North America committee, following the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot. He said he had seen a worsening of intimidation since.
“Unfortunately there’s an atmosphere, an environment, that empowers people to take extraordinary anti-press actions. It’s still on the margins, but this whole motif stemming from former President Trump that the media is the enemy of the people is something authoritarian governments have used for decades,” he said.
“A lot of people, especially on the fringes, people with extreme attitudes and anger in general, have bought into the idea, and feel journalists are easy targets. We as journalists have to speak out against these incidents and say press freedom is your freedom, your surrogate for getting access to information and holding officials accountable.”
He said he remained optimistic. “How and when our country will heal from this terrible divisiveness I don’t know, but I expect it will happen,” he said.
“There have been other periods in history when the press has been vilified and attacked and eventually the pendulum has swung back.”
