Martin Baron, the former executive editor of the Boston Globe who shepherded the newspaper to a Pulitzer Prize during his tenure, believes President-elect Donald Trump will prosecute journalists and use the power of government to cripple media institutions.
Baron sat down Tuesday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to discuss ABC News settling a $15 million defamation suit with Trump last week, but soon pivoted to the potential danger media outlets as a whole could face once Trump assumes office in January.
Asked how the administration “can come after us,” Baron warned, “They have a lot of tools.”
He continued: “And I think they will use every single one of them. That’s already evident from the measures that they are promising to take. I think they are salivating for the opportunity to prosecute journalists for leaks of supposed national security information.”
Trump has called critical outlets “fake news” since his first presidential campaign in 2016 and said in October that CBS “must be investigated” and “should lose its license” after the public broadcaster aired a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Baron, who denounced Trump for attacking the media during his first term, suggested Tuesday that a revocation of broadcast licenses is just the beginning — and that Trump will sue “a lot of media outlets for supposed defamation” once he retakes the White House.
“I suspect a lot of the wealthy allies of Donald Trump will underwrite those lawsuits,” Baron told Amanpour. “I suspect that they will deny information to major media outlets routinely. I suspect that they will threaten advertisers from major media outlets as well.”
“So they will do everything to undermine public confidence in the press, to further undermine public confidence in the press, and undermine its economic sustainability,” he continued. “And probably to intimidate the press by this relentless pursuit.”
Trump has notably already tapped loyalist Kash Patel, who wrote an actual list of political enemies in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters,” as his FBI director. On Monday, Trump sued pollster J. Ann Selzer over a pre-election survey that showed Harris leading him.
Trump was seemingly emboldened after ABC News settled a defamation suit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ saying on air earlier this year that Trump was found liable for “raping” writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse, not rape, by a jury in 2023.
We Need Your Support
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Baron predicted Tuesday that Trump will only grow bolder once he is back in the White House, and that he will “use the power of government against the press” with the full force of the U.S. Justice Department.
“And the intention is not necessarily to win these cases,” he added. “It’s to … impose these heavy burdens, the cost of defending yourself against lawsuits, against investigations, all of that. Those costs are enormous … And a lot of media institutions simply can’t afford that.”