Washington has always criticized the regimes in Russia, China, and other nations for suppressing the press.
However, we have reached a point where such comparisons are now parody. The United States has fallen to 57th place on the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, placing it alongside developing nations like Gambia, Uruguay, and Sierra Leone.
The country that built its founding mythos on freedom and equality is now being accused of undermining the very pillars of democracy.
The Pentagon’s recent measures against accredited reporters have sparked widespread controversy, with many seeing them as just another chapter in a growing campaign to strangle one of the oldest freedoms upon which America’s global image was built: the freedom of the press.
These new rules resemble a contract of submission, requiring reporters to sign lengthy, ten-page forms.
They are prohibited from publishing any information, even non-classified material, without prior approval.
Licenses can be revoked after a single violation.
Journalists are no longer permitted to move freely within the building, and the daily press conference hall, once a vital forum for public questions and dialogue, has been shut down. Most alarming is the vague definition of prohibited information, which now includes even unclassified documents if the administration deems they could pose a “potential threat to national security.”
The US Secretary of War, formerly the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was crudely and defiantly clear when he wrote on the X platform: “The press is no longer allowed to roam the corridors of a secure facility. The rules are clear: comply or leave.”
Reactions were furious and outraged.
The National Press Club described the measures as a “direct attack on independent journalism,” while Reporters Without Borders warned of an “alarming decline in American press freedom.”
Academics argued that a journalist who only publishes what the government allows cannot be a real journalist. Even some Republican representatives saw the move as a “Soviet-style bravado.”
Major newspapers like the New York Times have even affirmed that what is happening violates constitutional guarantees of a free press.
The truth, however, is that these restrictions are merely an extension of a broader policy adopted by the Trump administration since his return to the White House: revoking the credentials of prominent journalists, excluding major agencies from official coverage, threatening television stations with license revocation over their reporting, and then pushing for media mergers and acquisitions to create a single entity that paves the way for a monopolistic media landscape, serving a singular narrative and marginalizing all other voices.
Just a reminder before we continue: we are talking about the US.
What is happening now is a reproduction of America’s image as a state, attempting to redraw the rules of the media game to suit a growing authoritarian impulse.
Will the US’ media institutions withstand this authoritarian tsunami, or will they be exposed one after another until all pretense falls away, and the world’s oldest democracy is reduced to a mere farce?
What is certain is that the American press is undergoing its most dangerous test in decades, and the freedom that is the cornerstone of the American dream – one which the US has long boasted of – is collapsing before everyone’s eyes.
