President Donald Trump walks toward the Marine One helicopter after speaking with reporters at the White House.Evan Vucci/AP
David Folkenflik occupies a unique role at NPR: He’s a journalist who writes about journalism. And that includes the very organization where he works, which is once again being threatened by conservatives in Washington.
The second Trump administration has aggressively gone after the media in its first few months. It’s kicked news organizations out of the Pentagon. It’s barred other newsrooms from access to the White House. And Trump supporters in Congress have targeted federal funding for public media.
In late March, the heads of NPR and PBS testified on Capitol Hill to defend public broadcasting from Republicans accusing them of political bias. Meanwhile, some major news organizations seem to be capitulating and bending to the will of the Trump administration.
Folkenflik, who’s been covering media for two decades for NPR, says journalism across the country is facing a two-pronged attack from both commercial and political forces.
“You’re seeing sort of discrete and specific and seemingly almost comedic attacks. You don’t say ‘Gulf of America’? Get to the back of the line,” Folkenflik says. “I think it’s actually part of a larger effort to control the flow of information.”
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Folkenflik talks to host Al Letson about this unprecedented moment for journalists, why more media outlets seem to be bowing to pressure from the Trump administration, and how journalism can begin to win back public trust.
Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app.
