The New Censorship: now what?

2026 marks a decade of ‘Trumpism’. A decade of Trump-dominated news cycles in the US and beyond, a decade of smear campaigns and SLAPPS, a decade of journalists becoming, for growing audiences, the ‘enemies of the people’. From the hostile takeover threats to CNN, The Washington Post and CBS to Trump’s billion-pound lawsuit against the BBC, the risk that the New Censorship poses to journalism has become evident by the day. ‘Old-school’ censorship is still alive and kicking, as the unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza makes clear. But new, ‘softer’ forms of censorship – from legal threats to online harassment – have come to dominate the public conversation across borders. What have journalists learned over the decade since Trump’s victory shook the world? How have newsrooms changed since press conferences became a tete-a-tete battlefield, increasingly filled with loyalists and journalists-in-name-only? And what could reporters do differently to better cope with populist authoritarianism in the future?
The New Censorship: How the War on the Media is Taking Us Down (Footnote, 2025) uncovers the unfortunate and unexpected mechanisms through which today's media has inadvertently amplified the anti-democratic movement that now threatens to crash it. From strategic bias to rituals of loyalty, Trump, Netanyahu, Orban and Farage have found a way to exercise a more effective type of silencing. Instead of banning stories, they spread flows of disinformation, which take hours and days to debunk. Instead of silencing, they shout louder. Instead of blue-pencilling, they employ fake users and hateful bots to dominate the conversation. Heavy-handed censorship is unnecessary when one can manipulate people to censor themselves – or simply stop listening.
Based on empirical research into the populist leader who mastered the art of media-bashing long before many of his counterparts, Benjamin Netanyahu, The New Censorship provides the playbook for today’s authoritarianism – but also guidelines for better journalism in Trumpist times.