The First Amendment to the US Constitution strives to protect the free flow of ideas. This elemental foundation to liberty is now under fire in a way that every dictator in history understood; control the narrative to control the people.
In the 1990s, conservative commentators railed against the “liberal bias” of the mainstream media. The funny thing is that the accusations of liberal bias were often grounded in some element of the truth. This should not surprise us. Most journalists in the “prestige media” have long been college-educated urban dwellers; and educated people who live in the city tend to be more liberal-minded.
Despite this, my view is that the great majority of journalists that I attend to are extremely concerned with presenting the news in an objective manner. With that said, if you want to go looking for bias in the media, it won’t take you long to find it.*
Sadly, this simple reality of American journalism has opened the door for a much more malicious attack upon the media. Tune in to FOX News during a prime-time weekday and you will see that just about every rant against the left begins with a small kernel of truth. If you watch it often enough, as I do, you will come to realize that this tactic is the bread and butter of the FOX business model.
During the presidential election of 2016, liberal bias morphed into accusations of “Fake News.” No longer was the “radical left” simply putting a liberal slant on the news, now they were just making it up. I think it is pretty safe to say that the success of this media-bashing played a prominent role in putting Donald Trump in the White House the first time. It also explains how he managed to engage in such unsavory behavior for eight years before being re-elected.
During the past few months the decades-long trend to discredit long-standing, highly reputable journalists and media outlets has metastasized into a remarkably successful degradation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Today, Donald Trump is actively using the power of the government to undermine the legitimacy of the nation’s media infrastructure. Trump loyalists installed at the Federal Communication Commission and the Department of Justice are clearly doing exactly what the president has told us he would do. “This year,” from this May 3, 2025 CNN report, “the Trump administration has opened investigations into several broadcast networks, challenged the federal funding of NPR and PBS, blocked the Associated Press from news conferences [for refusing to acknowledge the Gulf of America], and seized control of the White House press pool.”
Trump has publicly suggested that he plans to investigate journalists who publish leaked information detrimental to the president and his supporters. He also threatened the New York Times for publishing unfavorable polling information.**
Many other institutions that underscore the free flow of ideas in our society are being transformed. Trump has threatened to withhold funding for several elite universities with charges that they are in the business of indoctrinating students with left wing ideology. Much like the media, there is indeed a liberal bias at these universities, and for many of the same reasons.
This is not a political aberration; it is an inherent characteristic of modern American life. Teaching young people to think critically and develop their personal autonomy is anathema to conservatism. “Conservative” derives from the Latin conservare meaning “to keep or preserve.” Simply put, conservatives hope to instill in young people the way things are or used to be—think MAGA—while liberals encourage the pursuit of knowledge and challenge students to examine and evaluate different ideas. The universities in question here are largely secular, diverse, and tolerant; not exactly the hallmarks of the current administration.
Historically, political conservatives have always pushed back against change. There was resistance during the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century. Efforts to protect the environment, conserve land, ensure the safety of food and drugs, and protect the rights of workers were viewed as government overreach.
New Deal legislation established during the Great Depression of the 1930s—Social Security, minimum wage, government works projects, and the rights of organized labor—had conservative opposition. There was a great deal of pushback as minorities fought for equality and the end of segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. Medicare and Medicaid, staples of the modern social safety net, faced strong conservative opposition during the same era.
Today, so-called conservatives who have married their political aspirations to a demagogic charlatan are now challenging the historical narrative of the past 165 years; the moment the US Constitution became a moral document by abolishing slavery and codifying the equality principles of the Declaration of Independence. (see my “Books & Such” piece on this topic.)***
This is from PBS.org from March 28, 2025****
President Donald Trump on Thursday revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order that targets funding for programs that advance “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology,” the latest step in a broadside against culture he deems too liberal.
Trump claimed there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it casts the “founding principles” of the United States in a “negative light.”
The order he signed behind closed doors puts Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to “remove improper ideology” from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
And, just in case the world has not been listening, the Trump administration has also taken steps to “dismantle” the US Agency for Global Media. This is “the Congressionally chartered agency that oversees Voice of America” which “was created in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda, and has long brought news to corners of the globe where reliable journalism is scarce.” This from the New York Times.
Trump’s point-person overseeing Voice of America is Keri Lake and she says VOA will now “be fed with content from One America News Network, or OAN, a rabidly pro-Trump political propaganda outlet.*****
And therein lies the rub. These frightening words above were published by the Public Broadcasting System and in MAGA-world, PBS and the New York Times are simply NOT reliable sources of information. It does not matter that the two news stories reported only the facts without any hint of bias; it matters only that to tens of millions of Americans, these highly credible and reputable news organizations are “Fake News.”
Controlling the narrative by abandoning the First Amendment makes it much easier to go after the rest of the Constitution.
Trump’s detention of undocumented immigrants and mass deportation efforts have violated Article I’s prohibition on suspending habeas corpus; which gives all those in the United States the right to a hearing after being taken into custody. Trump’s moves in this area also violate search and seizure requirements in the Fourth Amendment; Due Process of law guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment; and, in many cases also violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a fair trial.
Trump has threatened state and local governments to withhold congressionally approved funding for those who refuse to assist with his effort to deport immigrants in clear violation of the Tenth Amendment.
Trump has attempted to end birthright citizenship protected in the Fourteenth Amendment. He has also claimed that he has the power to invalidate the federal income tax as stated in the 16th Amendment. He has challenged the Senate’s confirmation power as decreed in Article II. Trump has threatened to open up federal land to oil and natural gas drilling in violation of Article I. ******
The silver lining to all of this anti-Constitutional behavior is that we are all being offered a painful civics lesson that reminds us how fragile our system is; and that a disruption to the free flow of ideas is Step 1 in how to be a dictator.
*https://www.newyorker.com/news/fault-lines/how-biased-is-the-media-really
***https://topanganewtimes.com/2022/07/15/honoring-the-fourteenth/
*****https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/us/politics/trump-voice-of-america.html
******https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2025/politics/trump-presidency-vs-us-constitution-dg/
