Last week’s violent attacks on journalists in Los Angeles shocked the world, but this is part of an ongoing trend in which politicians and their militarised minions in all sorts of countries seek to kill or otherwise silence those who report on their repressive behaviour.
2024 was the deadliest year for journalists in history, with at least 124 killed across eighteen countries, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Many of these people died at the hands of the Israeli military, with Sudan, Pakistan, Haiti, Mexico, Myanmar, Mozambique, India and Iraq also contributing to the grim statistic.
2025 is shaping up to be even worse. Prominent Saudi journalist Turki Al-Jasser was executed on Saturday for a tweet that alleged corruption of Saudi officials. The regime there has been emboldened since the lack of international reaction to the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at their consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Putin and Xi have been equally ruthless, and thin-skinned.
Until now, the United States has been relatively safe for journalists (at least if they stay at home) but with Donald Trump’s demonisation of uncontrolled media, that situation is rapidly changing.
City of angels?
The most visible victim of last week’s violence in LA was Australian Channel Nine correspondent Lauren Tomasi, who was deliberately targeted and shot by a rubber bullet from a militarised police officer while she was on camera, but seven other journalists were also injured in that single event.
Veteran war zone reporter Toby Canham was standing alone near a freeway overpass, far from the crowd, and filming with a tripod. Shot in the forehead by a projectile from police, he suffered whiplash and haematoma.
A photographer named Nick Stern was hit in the leg with a 14 mm sponge round fired at close range. He lost a dangerous amount of blood and had to be carried to emergency.
A New York Times reporter named Livia Albeck-Ripka was struck with a round below the ribs, causing serious bruising.
Another Australian reporter, the ABC’s Lauren Day, was tear-gassed and struck with pepper rounds, swelling her throat and burning her face. Her camera operator was also targeted. Both were clearly identified as press.
Day called this ‘a really shocking thing to experience in a democracy’.
Frightening precedents
It’s not actually illegal to be a real journalist in the USA yet, but that day is getting closer.
In 1933, under Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi government took full control of the press in Germany, with journalists losing their jobs and then in many cases their lives if they refused to praise the regime.
In Italy, the dictator Benito Mussolini had a background in writing and editing himself, and made the destruction of the free media one of his highest priorities when he seized power, beginning with his High Commission for the press as early as 1929.
‘Fascism requires militant journalism’, as Mussolini put it, with only supportive propaganda to be allowed going forward.
Donald Trump’s regime is doing all the same things, with attacks on NPR, the exile of serious press from the White House and the Pentagon, and the elevation of junk extreme right wing media in its place. The label of ‘fake news’ has been inverted and applied to anything other than sycophantic propaganda, making life more dangerous for journalists than ever before.
Terry Moran, a veteran correspondent for America’s ABC news, has just been fired for correctly describing Trump’s racist apparatchik Stephen Miller as a ‘world-class hater’. This comes after the network gave Donald Trump $16 million to settle a case in which another journalist said Trump was liable for rape.
What next?
In the last few days, as Trump’s military birthday parade was rained out and eclipsed by No King protests across the United States, Vice-President J.D. Vance made a pilgrimage to visit Rupert Murdoch, the 94 year old former Australian largely responsible for the rise of Donald Trump from fake business genius to the presidency, via his Fox News network.
What they discussed is unknown, but it’s clear that for all their attacks on journalists, this is an administration which is totally dependent on media in various forms for its ongoing existence, particularly the partisan news-as-entertainment type of media which has delivered a fortune to Rupert and his family.
Murdoch’s role as political king-maker in Australia and the US may be fading, but the fact that this visit happened at this moment is significant.
With the G7 Summit rapidly approaching, and the AUKUS agreement in tatters, Anthony Albanese might have hoped that Uncle Rupe would put in a word or two about Australia’s interests, but that’s probably too much to hope for.
After all, Rupert Murdoch renounced his Australian citizenship at around the same time he gave up journalism.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
You can find more of his writing at Patreon and Gumroad.
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