Trump's Return and the Media We Need
In January, Donald Trump will become the president again. We can’t pretend we aren’t devastated. But we’re also reflecting on how we got to this point, what we should or could have done differently, and what it will take to build power to take on the unaccountable billionaires — from Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos — whose media empires have put our democracy at risk.
Trump cascaded into office on a wave of lies, racism, hate and other authoritarian tactics, egged on by a media system that puts profit over everything else. Our hearts are with the communities that Trump put in the crosshairs to reclaim the White House; our minds are on the role the media played in amplifying his demagoguery — and on the immediate dangers facing millions of people because of it.
One thing we’re crystal clear about is this: Free Press has an important role to play in the months and years ahead. Our team has specialized skills that will be needed to confront and combat the country’s slide toward authoritarianism. We’ve fought a Trump administration and the media moguls enabling it before, and we’ll do it again. We’re analyzing past successes and failures, and learning what we can do better this time around.
We don’t have all the answers yet. We’ll need to strategize with our teammates and partners, learning, adjusting and responding to events in the weeks and months ahead. But there is much we can and will do to stand up to the next Trump administration and the billionaire media-makers who helped bring him back to power.
How Free Press will fight back
- Free Press’ team of attorneys and policy experts will do everything in their power to derail Trump’s agenda to deregulate the media and tech industry, and destroy the administrative state more broadly. We’ll throw sand in the gears, we’ll take the Trump administration to court and we’ll file legal and policy analyses that help our allies at the agencies and in Congress slow down any rules or laws designed to strip away rights. Free Press will invest more resources into defending its policy victories, filing more lawsuits aimed at both preserving existing regulations and ensuring that our conservative-leaning judicial system does not further erode doctrines that protect everyday people on a range of important issues.
- Free Press will fight Trump’s war on journalists and the truth. We will fight to ensure that the press remains free and open and that dissent is a respected and protected right. The media have failed us, but we must aid the journalists and muckrakers who reveal Trump-administration wrongdoing, protect the protesters raising their voices, and speak out against attempts to silence and harass critics of Trump and his billionaire enablers.
- Free Press will expose the media and tech billionaires who powered Trump’s return. We’ve taken on the likes of Musk and Murdoch many times, costing them billions of dollars for spreading lies and hate. We will fight back against their attempts to whitewash Donald Trump’s actions. We’re primed to challenge Elon Musk should he try to take on an official government role. Free Press will shine a light on corruption and collusion between government actors and the billionaire class behind media, tech and telecom giants.
- Free Press will oppose the worst of Trump’s ilk from filling top leadership positions at the FCC, FTC and beyond. Sitting FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr seems primed to be the next agency chairman. Free Press has had extensive dealings with him and has covered his close ties to Project 2025 and right-wing extremists. We’ll be tracking Trump’s most dangerous appointments, exposing them in the press and campaigning to prevent them from taking power.
- If the federal government won’t help people or carry out its responsibilities, we will take our fights to the states. We have many opportunities there to experiment and build support for civic media that actually meets the needs of local communities, to make reparations a reality, and to protect people from corporate abuse.
- Free Press will campaign to stop draconian rollbacks of public and corporate policies that safeguard civil and human rights. This will include standing up to media and tech companies that have profited off of the hate, dehumanization and lies that helped reelect Donald Trump. We will build coalitions and campaigns to destabilize the far right’s use of our media system to advance racism, hate, authoritarianism and violence.
At moments like this, it can feel impossible to envision progress toward achieving a more just world. But we won’t let these setbacks diminish our vision of the media system we need: one that will foster a multiracial democracy, one that will love and support people of color, and one that will reflect people’s experiences and help them understand the world around them.
This is a terrifying moment in our nation’s history. But Free Press was founded to stand up to the unaccountable billionaires who control our media system, and we know our assignment. We will never stop fighting to ensure that people’s voices are heard in the decisions that shape our media.
