The Observer view: Save the First Amendment

Two things should be said about the context. The first is that a day earlier ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel had been suspended by his employer for daring to accuse “the Maga gang” of making political hay out of the murder of Charlie Kirk. The second is that Trump had just spent 36 hours inhaling the Ruritanian flummery of Windsor Castle.

Did he think he was a king? If only. A delusional president would be less dangerous than this one. Trump is using the full might of the federal government to conduct a systematic shakedown of the US broadcast industry to bend their output to his whim, First Amendment be damned.

ABC had already tipped its hand, paying $15m last year to Trump’s presidential library to settle a meritless lawsuit about a careless choice of words in relation to an $83m verdict against him for sexual assault. CBS’s new owner has likewise caved on free speech to stay on the right side of the president. The New York Times is being sued by Trump for doing its job and says it will fight, but a chill wind from the Oval Office is being felt across the American media landscape.

As little as half a year ago there would have been no conceivable doubt that the US was home to the most vibrant, muscular, fearless and variegated media business on the planet. How fast things change. This was the week that Robert Redford died. He represented the best of liberal America and played one of its heroes, the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men. Watch it again and weep.

Photograph by Evan Vucci/AP