In an unprecedented seizure of control over coverage of the American presidency, the White House said that its officials “will determine” which news outlets can regularly cover President Donald Trump up close.

At the Ethnic News Media Services briefing speakers discussed the challenges these actions pose to freedom of the press and whether media and their sources are already self-censoring, the legal recourse and rights for reporters and their newsrooms.

Many newsrooms are concerned about maintaining their editorial independence under the Trump administration. Bay Area radio station KCBS found itself the target of an FCC investigation for its January 26 reporting of ICE raids in San Jose. The station is in danger of losing its license.

The public interest doctrine has traditionally given FCC power to regulate broadcast media like radio and television. That is a legacy of the days when the airways were deemed a scarce resource and the Supreme Court gave the FCC a limited amount of leeway to regulate broadcast media in ways that it cannot regulate print or online or digital, explained Joel Simon, founding director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.  

Joel Smith outlined the threats journalists and news organizations are currently facing. He shared strategies for how to combat them. 

“We need to think differently about our role. We are not on offense—fighting to change the narrative. We are playing defense, fighting to protect our rights.”
Major media houses faced lawsuits from Trump even before he took office.

Unleashing the regulatory threat

Simon shared that at a safety summit for newsrooms participants from newsrooms, advocacy, and legal community discussed “Threats to Journalists and Journalism,” the broad array of legal, regulatory, and systemic threats to the business and practice of independent journalism and prospective solutions. 

“We’re at the beginning stages of the regulatory threat,” said Simon. 

Investigations alone are chilling. where the process is the punishment.

“The Trump administration has already demonstrated some considerable sophistication and employed some surprising tactics so expect the unexpected,” he said. 

Simon suggested it would be best for media houses and journalists to  get their house in bulletproof order from a tax, business, employment, labor record keeping perspective.  The news business is a business and must be compliant.  

Newsrooms must educate themselves, and journalists must be informed about their own rights. For instance for the reporters who are reporting on the activities of immigration enforcement it is imperative to keep the immigration status of those reporters in mind. “Even if you're a green card holder and you are somehow detained in the context of these raids, that can complicate your path to immigrate to citizenship. There's a higher level risk if you're perceived as an immigrant in these contexts.”

Zach Press, senior staff attorney, Lawyers for Reporters at the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice advised, “In order to best protect yourself and make sure that your newsroom is covered, implement policies and practices that are uniform They may relate to your digital security they may relate to obtaining affordable media law insurance or media liability insurance.  ”In the face of  news organizations being served with a third party subpoena requesting information like the reporter's notes that would ordinarily be protected from disclosure, newsrooms want to be prepared with a plan of action. They need to be thinking about that now.”

Reporters do need to be very careful about how they interact with whoever they're reporting on wherever they go, the panelist said. 

Simon in his recent piece for the Columbia Journalism Review, had expressed concern about over-regulation of media with Kash Patel as FBI director. 

This is a moment of profound urgency for journalists as the Trump administration breaks long-standing norms, attacks major news organizations in the courts and from the briefing room, and blocks access to reporters.