Trump has called the press the "enemy of the people" and threatened retribution, including jailing reporters, investigating NBC for treason, and suggesting CBS's broadcast license be taken away. Terry Gross talks with David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, and Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post, about the media landscape as we head into a second Trump administration. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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I'm Terry Gross.
Donald Trump has called the media enemies of the people and threatened retribution, including jailing reporters who refused to reveal their sources and suggesting NBC, CBS and ABC should have their licenses revoked for reasons relating to their coverage of him.
Many journalists who report on him in ways he's found unfavorable have faced threats on social media and in real life, and some have gotten doxxed, which is to say their addresses and other private information were revealed on social media.
At a campaign rally months after a failed assassination attempt, Trump said, to shoot me, they'd have to shoot through the media.
And frankly, I wouldn't mind.
We're going to talk about Trump's threats to the media, what it was like to cover him in his first term and the challenges journalists will likely face in his second term.
My guests are Marty Barron and David Remnick.
Marty Barron was the editor in chief of the Washington Post from 2013 until his retirement in 2021, seven months after starting the job, the paper was bought by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the aerospace company Blue Origin.
During Banner's tenure at the Post, the paper started printing its motto, democracy dies in Darkness.
Barron previously was the editor of the Boston Globe.
In the movie Spotlight, a drama based on the Globe's investigation that revealed sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Barron was portrayed by Lev Schreiber.
His memoir, collision of Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post, was recently published in paperback.
David Remnick has been the editor of the New Yorker since 1998.
Before joining the magazine as a staff writer in 1992, he was a Washington Post reporter, including a four year assignment as the Post Moscow correspondent.
He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Lenin's the Last Days of the Soviet Empire.
Remnick also hosts the public radio program and podcast, the New Yorker Radio Hour.
David Remnick, Marty Barron, welcome back to FRESH air.