Press freedom, journalists holding power to account, and why it matters now more than ever.
When the world’s biggest oinker called seasoned White House correspondent, Catherine Lucey, “piggy,” the world was horrified.
Of the many stains on the soiled toilet-paper roll of horrors Donald Trump has delivered, I don’t know why this one upsets me so much. But it does. And I know I’m not alone.
It’s the abnormally stubby little finger stabbing the air. It’s the physical aggression from a bloated bucket of lard, and the tone of voice familiar to anyone who’s ever been in an abusive relationship. It’s the born-to-rule air… the unwavering sense of entitlement. The certainty that he can do whatever the fuck he wants without ever being called to account.
It’s the fact that he does it while demeaning a woman representing an institution that exists to protect every one of us.
Journalists are there to hold power to account.
You and I can’t line up in the White House press room and ask the hard questions.
In Australia, it’s not unusual to run into our prime minister at a local pub. But even if he was inclined to debate the government’s environmental policies with us, would we even have the right questions to ask?
That’s a journalist’s job. And the best of them knock it out of the park.
When Trump lobs insults at the women and men tasked with trying to keep him honest (yeah, good luck with that), he’s undermining human rights around the world.
Because if the self-acclaimed leader of the free world refuses to answer reasonable questions from the press, why would anyone else?
Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash
I’m not talking about hate-spewing pundits and talking heads here.
They aren’t even a boil on a real journalist’s bum.
I’m talking about old-school journalists. The men and women who will go to jail to protect a source. The heroes who put their lives on the line reporting from war zones. The dog-at-a-bone newshounds who spend months chasing down a lead.
They’re not there to make friends. They’re there to do their job.
There’s a reason that men like Donald Trump don’t like them. It’s because the best of them won’t be bought, won’t be bullied, and won’t give up.
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Real journalism vs. opinion
What I’m doing here and elsewhere is not journalism. It’s opinion.
Sure, it’s opinion backed up by experience, knowledge, and research. But it’s unapologetically coloured by my political leanings.
And that — to repeat — is not journalism.
This is the equivalent of having a spirited conversation with someone you know who shares the same opinions as you. You can both bring new things to the table. But your way of thinking isn’t going to be challenged by an inconvenient fact that doesn’t play into your worldview.
Sometimes that’s a good thing. But in chaotic times like the ones we’re living through, it’s not healthy to live in an echo chamber.
On both sides of the political fence, that’s what we’re doing when we let an algorithm decide what we see and hear.
Old-school journalism is the cure.
Only it’s getting increasingly difficult to find it. In a world governed by clickbait headlines and doom-scrolling, society has lost its patience when it comes to reporting.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein spent two years investigating the Watergate scandal before breaking the story for The Washington Post and bringing the Nixon presidency down.
Oh, those were the days, weren’t they? When the act of bugging the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters caused such a scandal that President Nixon fell on his sword. It wouldn’t even rate a footnote today.
It’s also hard to imagine the publication now owned by Jeff Bezos dedicating that amount of time to an investigation into the illegal activities of an incumbent president, especially when the WaPo proprietor is one of the donors to Trump’s fancy new ballroom.
It all comes down to the bottom line
The billionaires who own the social media platforms we use to get our news of the day only care about one thing: the bottom line. Those off-grid luxury bunkers and Yeezy clown shoes aren’t going to pay for themselves, after all.
They want you doom-scrolling on their platform, exclusively. If you see too many things that challenge your belief system, you’re likely to stop. So, they funnel you into silos with a bunch of people who think the same way you do. Which is fine in a social setting. But not great when you want informed points of view that might challenge your perspective.
It’s why social media is eroding critical thinking. We’re not having to defend our opinions. Every like, follow and share convinces us that we’re right. We block people who challenge us and never have to explain why our strong-held beliefs are right, much less try to convince someone else to change their mind.
Photo by Jørgen Håland on Unsplash
There’s a reason Donald Trump goes weak at the knees around dictators.
What he seems to forget is that he’s a public servant. He’s there because an alarmingly high number of Americans chose him as their president.
That also means he must answer to the people who are there for the almost impossible task of keeping him on the straight and narrow: the White House press corps.
And Donald Trump can’t stand that. He looks at Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Mohammed Bin Salman, and Kim Jong Un and wants what they have.
He wants a cowed and blinkered population spoon-fed propaganda by a compliant media that toes the party line and questions nothing.
Until he has that, Donald Trump will continue to undermine and attack the women and men brave enough to face off against him in the Oval Office.
They’re the ones who call him on his lies and pull back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on in the least transparent administration in American history.
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”
It’s literally right out of the Nazi playbook. It’s called the “illusion of truth.”
Lying is second nature to President Trump. The price of groceries has fallen. Other countries are paying the tariffs. America is respected again… it’s the HOTTEST country in the world right now. They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs.
The problem for the Liar-in-Chief is that real journalists know the difference between his lies and the truth. And those with a spine call him on it.
He responds by lobbing insults at — mainly female — journalists who push back. “A terrible person,” “not smart enough,” “you ought to go back and learn how to be a reporter,” “second-rate,” “obnoxious,” and a “terrible reporter.”
He snaps “keep your voice down,” “be nice; don’t be threatening,” “no more questions from you,” and “that’s enough of you.”
Their questions are “horrible,” “insubordinate,” “just terrible.”
News outlets are “fake news,” “a crappy company,” “disasters,” “unwatchable.”
And he threatened to go dibber-dobber and tell Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when an Australian investigative journalist dared ask whether there’s a problem with the Trump family raking in cash by the billions from sweetheart deals while he’s president.
But the point of it all is that while he’s insulting them, he’s not answering their questions.
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The First, and most important, Amendment
Press freedom was important enough to America’s Founding Fathers that they signed it into law in the First Amendment of the Constitution. So, not buried down the end. Right up the top.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The problem with a free press for those who would rather stifle human rights is that the best journalists shine a light on their bullshit.
That doesn’t always end too well for the journalists themselves.
Ending up at the pointy end of a bone saw was not on Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi’s, agenda when he arrived at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
According to US intelligence, the gruesome state-ordered execution was carried out on the orders of the man snuggling up to President Trump in the Oval Office on 18 November when Mary Bruce of ABC News dared ask the Saudi crown prince a question about a fellow journalist’s horrific death.
Trump called it a “horrible, insubordinate… terrible question.”
The mask slipped, though, when Trump said “It’s not the question that I mind; it’s your attitude… I think you are a terrible reporter… You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
Bruce was right to ask the question. Journalists like Khashoggi end up on the shit-list when they expose things that powerful men and women would rather keep quiet.
Trump knows it. His voice shook. You can see the barely contained rage beneath the surface.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Trump was furious because Bruce was doing her job.
As Caroline Hendrie, Executive Director of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) put it: “Journalists are not props at a photo op — they are watchdogs for the public. When reporters ask hard questions about the murder of a fellow journalist, that is not an embarrassment. What’s embarrassing is a leader trying to silence those questions.”
Although Trump would happily hand the lot of them over to Prince MBS —known forever now as Mr Bone Saw — if he had the chance, it’s why all self-respecting journalists must keep pushing. Because Trump will break.
Pioneering journalist, Nellie Bly
Female furies
At the heart of the issue is Trump’s woeful attitude towards women.
As the SPJ puts it: “These incidents are not isolated; they are part of an unmistakable pattern of hostility — often directed at women — that undermines the essential role of a free and independent press.”
Do you reckon he would have called a male journalist “piggy”? Me neither. It’s his favourite slur for women he wants to insult. It’s also rather ironic given his own porcine physique.
But it does warm the cockles to see female journalists fighting back.
There’s a long history of female journalists going in hard. My favourite? Nellie Bly. That’s her in the picture.
In 1887 at the age of 23, she feigned insanity to go undercover at a notorious women’s asylum. The story she wrote for Joseph Pulitzer’s (yes, THAT Pulitzer) New York Worldled to reform at the asylum, and fame for Ms Bly.
She went on to report from the front in WWI and was arrested when mistaken for a British spy.
Look her up. You’ll thank me.
Maybe that’s it. The thought that a rotting husk like Donald Trump thinks he has the God-given right to attack brilliant women like Mary Bruce and Catherine Lucey makes my blood boil.
They’re the offspring of pioneers like Nellie Bly. And as a measure, he’s not worth one of their toenail clippings.
Photo by Tabrez Syed on Unsplash
The White House Shit List
Bullies like Donald Trump only thrive when nobody pushes back.
That’s the other thing that shocked me.
I’ve seen The West Wing. The White House press corps is tight. So why didn’t anybody on board Air Force One go into bat for Lucey?
If, like me, you’ve been wondering why there has been so little resistance from the Press Corps when Trump starts in with his bullying tactics, it may be because he’s got a sword of Damocles hanging over their head in the person of Brendan Carr. Carr is a fierce Trump loyalist who decides who does, and does not, get broadcast licences. Carr is also one of the authors of Project 2025. So, yeah.
It’s why Trump has a habit of threatening to pull ABC’s licence anytime journalists like Mary Bruce ask him questions he doesn’t like.
Remember what happened to Jimmy Kimmel? And Stephen Colbert?
“Neither fear nor favour” has taken a back seat. The cost of doing business with the Trump White House, it seems, is to play nice and cross the president’s palms with gold.
The billionaire owners of the biggest media empires know that. If they want to keep their jobs, the people working for them know it as well.
Quiet, piggy
When journalists ask questions that leaders would rather not answer, they’re doing their job.
When a journalist is attacked without repercussions or pushback, the foundations of democracy begin to erode.
While mainstream media might be on a leash, there’s no controlling hyper-viral social media content.
In the meantime, I hope more brave journalists like Mary Bruce and Catherine Lucey find their voices and start to support each other.
Because the rest of the world certainly has their collective back.
The “quiet, piggy” clip made a mark because online accounts started talking. I had over half a million views on just two posts I made on Threads alone. And there were many, many more. Social media became the conversation.
“Quiet, piggy,” is already the biggest meme of the year.
And I don’t think I’m alone when I say I hope it’s the last thing Trump hears as he’s drummed out of office.
Brilliantly written as usual.
Well, thank you. Glad it works for you. What in particular got you thinking?