AP: Trump is waging an aggressive campaign against the media, making moves similar to those of the authoritarian leaders he has often praised

The American news agency AP writes that since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has been waging an aggressive campaign against the media unprecedented in modern United States history, making moves similar to those of authoritarian leaders he has often praised, including Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.

On Wednesday, Trump welcomed the cancellation of comedian Jimmy Kimmel's ABC show because he criticized the president's MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement in his commentary on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

It was the latest in a series of attacks by the US president on news outlets and media figures he believes are overly critical of him. Trump has filed lawsuits against outlets whose reporting he dislikes, threatened to revoke television broadcast licenses, and attempted to bend news organizations and social media companies to his will.

These tactics are similar to those used by leaders in other countries who have curtailed free speech and independent media while consolidating political power, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close Trump ally whose leadership style is respected by many conservatives in the United States.

"What we're seeing is an unprecedented attempt to silence speech that is unpopular with the government," said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. "Donald Trump is trying to dictate what Americans can say," he said.

Trump's approach to governance has drawn comparisons to Orban, who has been in power since 2010. The Hungarian leader has made hostility to the press a central part of his political brand, borrowing Trump's term "fake news" to describe critical media outlets, and has not given an interview to an independent journalist in years.

Media group Reporters Without Borders says Orban has built a "genuine media empire at the behest of his party" through newspaper and broadcaster acquisitions by his allies. The group says the strategy has given Orban's Fidesz party control of about 80% of the Hungarian media market. In 2018, Orban's allies donated nearly 500 of the newspapers they had acquired to a government-controlled conglomerate, a group that included all of Hungary's local daily newspapers.

Opposition parties complain that they only get five minutes of airtime on public television during the election, which is the legal minimum, while state broadcasters reliably amplify the government's theses and smear Orbán's political opponents.

The Hungarian media authority, made up entirely of candidates from Orban's party, threatened not to renew broadcasting frequencies to keep the media in order and forced the liberal-leaning station Klubradio to stop broadcasting.

"They were buying up media outlets in bulk and replacing editorial boards," said Hungarian media analyst Gabor Poljak.

The crackdown on independent media, coupled with Orbán's systematic conquest of Hungary's democratic institutions, prompted the European Parliament in 2022 to declare that the country could no longer be considered democratic.

Hungary is not the only country where similar patterns of erosion of the independent media landscape are unfolding. In neighboring Serbia, the AP writes, "populist President Aleksandar Vučić has faced accusations of restricting media freedoms since he came to power more than a decade ago."

"Critics have cited a combination of political pressure, public smear campaigns, and financial pressure on the media as the means used by Vučić's government to establish control over mainstream media and the public broadcaster RTS," it continues.

The agency points out that "the safety of journalists in Serbia has deteriorated since the start of student protests ten months ago that challenged Vučić's firm rule. The Rapid Response Group on Media Freedom, which monitors press freedom in Europe, said in a recent report that it was deeply concerned that journalists in Serbia 'report under enormous political pressure, facing physical violence, censorship, smear campaigns, abusive lawsuits and daily death threats.'"

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin consolidated control over national television early in his rule, AP reports, and later expanded restrictions on civil society, independent journalism and online platforms. Authorities later passed a series of laws to curb free speech.

The restrictive label "foreign agent" was placed on the few remaining independent media outlets and dozens of journalists, and the state gradually tightened control over the internet. Putin's repression only intensified after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when new laws criminalized criticism of the war and forced many journalists into exile.

The rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India has coincided with growing pressure on comedians and satirists. Police have arrested performers for jokes deemed offensive to Hindu deities or critical of Modi's party.

Comedians like Kunal Kamra and Vir Das have faced lawsuits, show cancellations, and harassment from nationalist groups for tearing into the government.

Leaders have also taken action against the media in several Latin American countries. Nicaragua withdrew from the United Nations’ main cultural agency earlier this year in protest over a press freedom award it gave to the country’s main opposition newspaper. The publication, La Prensa, has been produced largely by exiled writers since the government raided its offices in Managua in 2021, the AP reports.