On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with a warning about how Donald Trump’s second term has brought a more systematic and punishing assault on American media, through regulatory pressure, retaliatory lawsuits, and corporate intimidation. Then David is joined by the legendary newspaper editor Marty Baron to discuss how today’s media institutions are struggling to stand up to power. Baron reflects on his tenure at The Washington Post, the new pressures facing owners such as Jeff Bezos, and how Trump has turned retribution into official policy. They also examine how internal newsroom culture, social media, and a loss of connection to working-class America have weakened public trust in journalism. David closes the episode by reflecting on the recent media overhyping of President Joe Biden’s age issues. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at theAtlantic.com/listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hello, and welcome to Episode 9 of The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Today, I'll be joined by Marty Baron, formerly executive editor of the Washington Post during the first Trump term and during the transition of ownership at the Washington Post from the Graham family that had led it through so many years to new ownership under Jeff Bezos.
Marty Baron is one of the most important media leaders of our time and has spoken forcefully, both in person and in his memoir, Collision of Power, about the threats to free press and the responsibilities of that press. I'll finish the episode with some thoughts about the way the media have covered the old age and infirmity of former President Joe Biden.
But let me begin by addressing this larger topic of press freedom and press responsibility in the second Trump term. President Trump began his campaign and his
spent much of his first term attacking the media, calling the media, free media, enemies of the people, enemies of the state, and huffing and puffing and complaining and generally persecuting and often inciting dangerous threats against individual members of the press.
If you covered the Trump presidency in that first term, especially if you were a woman, you suddenly found yourself being attacked both digitally and often in person. in ways unlike anything ever seen before. Death threats, harassment, abuse, anti-Semitic and misogynistic, racist, the worst kind of garbage. I even got a little splash of it myself.
I had an FBI man come to the house to warn my wife that there had been some threats against me. The Atlantic is kind of high-toned, and I think a lot of the people who make the worst threats don't read The Atlantic, and so we get spared to some degree. But it was nasty. But it was also mostly ineffective. The press worked during the first Trump term.
Institutions like The Atlantic, like The New York Times, like The Washington Post, like CNN kept bringing to light important stories about what the Trump presidency was doing, about corruption, about ties to Russia, about many things that people needed to know. And while... Their lives were much more difficult than they had been in the past.
And while the pressures on them were real, it did not, in the end, detract from getting the job done for the most part in the first Trump term. In the second Trump term, things have been different. President Trump has been much more systematic, much more deliberate, much more sustained, and much more effective in putting pressure on America's free media.
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