Faced with a barrage of breaking news out of the Trump administration, it is easy to become paralyzed. This is arguably intentional: Flood the zone to ensure the news cycle is so overwhelming that the media (not to mention, the public) cannot keep up. In this information ecosystem, it is crucial that people retain the ability to track how State power is being used. This, in turn, requires systematically identifying linkages between individual developments and broader trends.
The graphic below offers one method, or practice, of resistance to a “muzzle velocity” news cycle that makes it hard to think about, let alone understand, the ways in which the Trump administration is wielding State power. This focuses on threats to press freedom, but the concept can be applied to other broad issues, too. By absorbing each additional news item as a data point for or against a threat to a particular democratic norm, rather than as a singular development, it becomes possible to keep sight of the big picture – and direct action accordingly.
This graphic is based on an earlier article I wrote for Just Security, which synthesized numerous breaking news items to illuminate a set of growing threats to press freedom. Those threats came from aggressive actions by the Trump administration, such as evicting independent media organizations from office space in the Pentagon in favor of enthusiastically pro-Trump outlets, and from appeasement actions by media outlets – like the ABC’s $15 million settlement with Trump in a case that legal experts say it could have readily won on the merits.
Since then, the Trump administration has continued to use state power against the free press – most recently, trying to dismantle Voice of America. Still, there have also been encouraging signs of resistance, with VOA gaining a court order to resume broadcasting at the same level as before the Trump action and the Associated Press winning in court against the Trump administration barring the news agency’s reporters from the White House press pool.
There is every reason to expect that freedom of the press will remain under threat for the foreseeable future, but the public will only be able to comprehend the scale and severity of the threat if individual developments are explained in reference to the bigger picture. And press freedom is far from the only pillar of a democratic society that is under attack. One could readily imagine running this same exercise to develop “Big Picture Trackers” that help keep track of threats to judicial independence, right to counsel, voting rights, and more.
(For this tracker on press freedom, readers are invited to submit by email any developments that we may have missed.)
Editor’s Note: Readers might also be interested in a The Just Security Podcast: Keeping Track of the Big Picture–Challenges to Press Freedom and Beyond
Editor’s note: This piece is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions
