The fear of retribution is powerful (boldface mine):

I suspect it will take Color Revolution-style resistance—perhaps including state violence against peaceful protests—before mainstream news acts like Trump’s abuses of power are newsworthy again.

But Trump would have to be hard up against the ropes first.

I can recall a single New York Times story—this one by Peter Baker—that treated our hard turn into authoritarianism like a real era-defining story. But the further we backslide, the greater the inclination to treat it all as a new normal.

Just yesterday, the Times tech reporter Kate Conger observed, “Seeing a lot of posts on here tonight questioning why any organizations stay on X after Grok went on an antisemitic posting spree. Remember, Trump’s FTC is investigating watchdog groups to determine whether they tried to organize an illegal boycott of X & other conservative websites.”

A fair inference, but also a shocking observation. The best sourced reporters in journalism have internalized that fear of government retribution pervades decision making among actors who never before feared airing disagreement with a president or his supporters. And it’s just… not treated as a story in itself. Certainly not as important as Hillary Clinton’s emails or Zohran Mamdani’s college application.

My friend Luppe B. Luppen responded, “The unamerican climate of fear Trumpism has managed to create in corporate America hovers over lots of stories but, by its intrinsic nature, does not get directly reported as the extraordinary news it is.”

One way to ‘help’ the news media get past this fear is for Democrats to make this a point of partisan, political conflict. They won’t cover their own fear, but if Democrats start saying things like “we know you Republicans have intimidated the press corps, which is unprecedented in U.S. history” (whether or not that’s entirely true), it would give some of them an excuse to report the conflict.

It is clear that large news organizations aren’t going to come to the rescue here–though one would think there would be a market niche to do just that, but that requires what was long ago called a traitor to his class.