I had a dream to be a journalist.  

I dreamed of being one of the fact checkers, the watchdogs, the muckrakers. I longed to be in the room where it happens among diverse voices and unexpected questions. My goal was to be one of the names you saw in the paper that made you think twice about your understanding of the world. Within a month of this administration, I fear that dream will be dead by the time I graduate in May.  

Good journalism in the United States has always relied on the First Amendment, guaranteeing virtually unlimited freedom to the press. One president is chipping away at that freedom in small yet profoundly destructive ways.  

On Feb. 26, President Trump ended the power of the century-old White House Correspondents’ Association to collectively and independently decide how seats in White House press briefings will be distributed among news outlets. Instead, President Trump and his team will have the sole choice of which journalists can access the Oval Office, Air Force One and other media spaces.  

That prevention is not hypothetical, either. The administration stated that it would continue blocking the Associated Press from covering President Trump, following their refusal to change their stylebook to “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico.” 

The Associated Press, long recognized as a leader in unbiased journalism, rarely explicitly expresses dissent in their fact-based reporting. Their decision to remain true to the globally recognized name of the Gulf is an incredibly petty reason for a ban. I have no doubt that journalists who are more blatant in their disagreement with Trump will soon not be allowed to cover him at all.  

At the end of January, Leavitt announced that members of the “new media” would be allowed to apply for White House press credentials. This declaration allows anyone from an Instagram model to a YouTube podcaster to apply for access to White House Press briefings. In the first 24 hours of this program, which adds one extra seat for a selected influencer in each briefing, 7,400 people applied for press credentials.  

At first glance, this could be a genuine step toward enhancing freedom of the press. By allowing more types of media into briefings, the Constitution must be alive and well.  

That would be true if the new media allowed into press briefings were selected on a nonpartisan basis. Instead, the Trump administration is hand-picking which influencers are granted credentials, allowing Trump to choose only loyalist voices if he desires.  

The first “new media” member selected was John Ashbrook, host of the conservative Ruthless Podcast. He asked whether Leavitt thought traditional media was “out of touch with Americans demanding action on our border crisis.” Naturally, in support of Trump’s anti-immigration position, Leavitt replied, “The media is certainly out of touch.”  

In September, I read an opinion written by New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger explaining the subtle ways illiberal democratic leaders gradually destroyed the foundation of a free press because the media was known to write unfavorable things about their administrations. Sulzberger mentioned things like normalizing the harassment of journalists, manipulating court systems and rewarding loyalists who spoke out against the opposition.  

The tactics Sulzberger mentioned operated beneath the consciousness of the public, creating a decline of free speech that is “not the stuff of thrillers but a movie so plodding and complicated that no one wants to watch it.” Sulzberger described the actions of leaders in Hungary, Brazil and India discretely inching toward blanket censorship in a more subtle way than the imprisonment and murder of journalists in totalitarian countries like Russia and China.  

I feared that Trump, with his consistent emphasis on media distrust, might take some similar actions, but I never expected attacks on the press to be this obvious. The Trump administration cannot be allowed to continue silencing dissenting media. Before we know it, differing opinions will morph into one homogenous, loyalist voice, drowning out the power of those willing to speak out against subsequent injustices.  

The First Amendment is a five-pillared statement of freedom for the United States. When one pillar is slowly chipped away, the others face an equal threat. If freedom of the press is

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash.