AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President-elect Donald Trump's win of a second term in the White House has prompted intense reporting and analysis from the news media, as well as some soul-searching and concerns. During the campaign, Trump pledged to imprison reporters and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage that he didn't like. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik joins us now to talk about the fractious relationship between Trump and the news media, and how it might all play out over the next four years. Hi, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: All right, so what lessons do you think the media should take away from Trump's win - his second win?
FOLKENFLIK: In this cycle, he's particularly continued to foster and to benefit from a continued plunge in trust in the news media. So what does that mean this time around? Well, this time around, you know, Trump decided, after a first debate with Kamala Harris didn't go well for him, he just avoided a second one - seemed to pay absolutely no penalty in the public's thinking about him. Similarly, he didn't just decide not to be interviewed by "60 Minutes" - he backed out of what CBS says was an agreement to do so. Again, absolutely no harm to him in terms of how voters thought about him.
Instead, he went to spend time with podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von. These aren't explicitly political shows, but they talk about politics, and they do it in a way that is more natural for many of the young male voters that Trump was seeking to get. And let's not forget - Rogan has a bigger audience than TV news shows, and he and Von and some of the others Trump talked to are much less likely to trip Trump up, you know, holding him accountable for specifics about his policies or proposals or his past record. The big lesson, if you're asking the question, is I think Trump found out for sure he didn't really need the mainstream media.
CHANG: Well, what about the right-wing media, like Fox News? Like, has his relationship with them changed?
FOLKENFLIK: It's more about their relationship with him, it seems to me - that you have all these outlets that are hurtling to catch up to him and stay close by him. You had Fox News pay such a price four years ago when it seemingly backed away from him, announcing Joe Biden had won Arizona on election night, that it hurtled to embrace so many of the lies and falsehoods about election fraud that he and his allies put out there, that Fox had to pay $787 million to an election tech company as a defamation settlement. This time, he attacked Fox as insufficiently loyal for just interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris, which was a pretty big get for them. Loyalty, I think is a key element. Fox has stayed resolutely by his side while tamping down on some of the more extreme claims.
CHANG: Well, it's not new news that Trump doesn't like most journalists, right? Like, he has long-villainized journalists. He doesn't talk as much, though, these days about the news media offering up fake news. He talks more about punishing the news media. And I'm just curious so far, what has Trump said that he would do to the press if he were reelected? Go ahead and lay it all out for us, David.
FOLKENFLIK: Right. Well, if you think about one of the key elements of his campaign rhetoric, the idea that I am your retribution against all those who would stand in my, but really your way, I think the press is one of the key elements of that. He is looking, or appears to be looking, to punish outlets that failed to cover him and his approach in the way that he wants. He's suggested that he would make libel laws looser - that is, easier - for places to successfully sue news outlets for coverage that they felt treated them unfairly. He has threatened to, as you mentioned earlier, throw reporters and editors in jail if they seek to keep confidential sources hidden - something that under the Biden administration, the Justice Department said it would do in almost the smallest fraction of cases. He said that he would punish, you know, big legacy broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC - for the way in which they covered him and the way in which they moderated the presidential and vice presidential debates.
Now, to be fair, broadcasters don't hold licenses regulated by the federal government, but all those stations they own do. And those are profitable pressure points for him to threaten to really come after them. And if you believe, as many do, that he's going to embrace the agenda as set out by this conservative group the Heritage Foundation - what's called Project 2025 - he disavowed it, but it's created by a lot of folks who have served him in the past and have spoken for him in the past. It would go after public broadcasting like PBS and NPR. Only a modest amount, a couple percent of points of NPR's funds typically comes from federal sources, but our member stations get a lot more. That would be a real hit for a lot of them.
CHANG: That is NPR's David Folkenflik. Thank you so much, David.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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