Reporters, Start Doing Your Damn Job Before It’s Too Late

Trump’s second term is rewriting the truth in real time, and the press is letting it happen.

If you hold a press pass, you hold one of the most powerful tools for protecting democracy. Your responsibility is not to keep access or avoid discomfort, it is to press for answers until the truth is undeniable. When the press stops asking hard questions, the public stops getting the truth, and that is when democracy begins to fail.

You are in the room where history is being written. The cameras are rolling, the world is watching, and you are holding a microphone that can cut through the noise. The job you signed up for is not to make friends with the people you cover. It is not to keep your seat in the front row warm. It is to hold power accountable, no matter how uncomfortable that gets.

Right now, too many of you are doing the opposite. You sit on Trump’s plane, share small talk at off-the-record dinners, and treat press briefings like a networking event instead of an interrogation. You nod along as he repeats lines that have been debunked over and over. You let him sidestep questions and turn the room into a rally. You give up the moment he pivots. Then you tweet about the experience like it was a celebrity meet-and-greet.

This is not why you became a reporter or journalist. You are supposed to be the wall between the American people and unchecked power. Trump and his administration are openly reshaping the country to their advantage. They are bending the Constitution until it cracks. They are dividing Americans for political gain. They are making moves that will take years to repair, if they can be repaired at all. And you are letting them skate because you are afraid to lose access or be called biased.

When Trump stands at that podium and declares “Liberation Day” in Washington as he takes over the DC police department, that is not a quirky headline. That is a federal takeover of a local police force in a city with falling crime rates. Your job is to ask why the president is using executive power this way. Your job is to demand the legal justification. Your job is to stay on that question until he either answers it or exposes himself by refusing to. If you accept a vague talking point and move on, you are complicit in the spin.

When you travel with him and watch him work a crowd overseas, surrounded by leaders who are thrilled to see America pulling back from global alliances, you are not there to enjoy the wine and the view. You are there to ask what he promised those leaders in private. You are there to press for specifics on deals that affect our national security, our economy, and our standing in the world. You are there to make it clear that every handshake has consequences.

And when you are back on American soil, you are there to ask the question that millions of Americans are still waiting on: where are the Epstein files? We all know what was promised, and it is not the selective, sanitized 1 percent buried in grand jury transcripts. It is the thousands of documents that Attorney General Pam Bondi herself said were sitting on her desk. Where are they? What’s the holdup? Why is a nation still waiting on answers that were pledged months and even years ago? If you let this slide without relentless follow-up, you are signaling to the public that powerful promises can be broken in broad daylight without consequence.

When you watch him brush off a question by attacking the reporter, you do not lower your head and hope he moves on to someone else. You ask the question again, louder, and you back it with facts. You strip away the theater. You remind everyone watching that the role of a free press is not to be liked, it is to be respected.

I have spent my career in courtrooms watching people dodge, lie, and spin to save themselves. The lawyers who get to the truth are the ones who refuse to back down. Reporters, journalists and lawyers share that responsibility. The truth does not fall into your lap. It is dragged into the light by someone who refuses to quit until it shows up.

You are supposed to be that someone. In today’s current environment, the first reporter in the room with the guts to stay locked on the real questions until the real answers come will not just get the story. They will become a symbol of what journalism is supposed to be. That is how you earn respect. That is how you change the conversation.

But this hasn’t happened since he was reelected.

This is not a private problem between reporters and their editors. This is a national problem. A weak press in the face of a strongman presidency puts every one of us at risk. It allows lies to spread unchecked. It lets the public be fed a version of reality that is manufactured to serve the people in power, not the people in the streets.

If you are a reporter, stop thinking about your career trajectory and start thinking about the country you will leave behind. Every soft question, every unchallenged talking point, every time you let Trump or his inner circle set the terms of the exchange, you are telling them they can keep doing it. You are telling the public their right to the truth is negotiable. And that makes you part of the problem.

And to the public, you have a role here too. Demand more from the people who claim to speak truth to power on your behalf. When you see weak reporting, call it out. When you see a journalist pressing hard for answers, support their work and share it. Make it clear that you value courage over access. The press works for you. If they are not doing their job, you are the ones who need to hold them accountable.

Your job as a reporter or journalist has never been more important. Trump’s second term is not a rerun. It is an escalation. He is emboldened, surrounded by loyalists, and openly hostile to oversight.

If the press fails to meet this moment with courage and persistence, the damage will run deeper than policy disagreements. It will corrode the public’s ability to separate fact from fiction. It will leave the next generation in a country where the truth is whatever the loudest person in the room says it is.

So if you are holding a press pass right now, ask yourself why you wanted it in the first place. Was it to be close to power, or to challenge it? Was it to get invited on the plane, or to make the people on that plane answer for what they do? Was it to coast, or to risk your comfort for the truth?

The clock is running. The stakes are high. This is the job. Do it.

Mitch Jackson, Esq. | links | audio conversation |

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