The attacks of the US President, Donald Trump, to the press favor an “antiperiodism” in the US that is extending throughout the world, warns the general director of the organization reporters without borders, the Frenchman Tibaut Bruttin, who fears an impact on the “global” media system.
In an interview, Bruttin explains that, although other world leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, already practiced this “antiperiodism” before, Trump’s arrival at the White House served to accelerate him.
“An instruction manual is distributed on how to attack the press and be elected (president) and is something that we are seeing expand very quickly, especially in Europe,” says Bruttin, 37, a degree in public affairs from the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and linked to RSF since 2014.
Bruttin believes that Trump’s actions in the US are “extremely dangerous because we live in a Machiavellian world, in which everything someone does to win is of interest to others.”
He points out that the strategy of the US president is to extend his concept of freedom of expression, which is a “misinterpretation” of this notion against the media.
Therefore, Bruttin is worried because it becomes “the first society where you can benefit from freedom of expression, but not from the press.” “And public discussion is worse if the facts are just another opinion,” he adds.
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The power of platforms in the American press
The CEO of RSF creates the work of journalism is not to verify the information, but “to obtain the best attainable version of the truth.”
In this sense, he believes that the American press lost the central role in the public conversation in his country because, on many occasions, they ran “behind Trump’s last lie.”
Even so, he admits that the verification of the information was one of the “safeguards” that existed in the digital space, where technological companies have the “key” for the distribution of news and are regulated “very lax”.
According to Bruttin, these companies do not respect “the democratic guarantees that could be expected of them” and try to avoid the regulation that organizations such as the European Union try to implement in the digital field.
In addition, they sometimes hinder journalistic work, withdrawing content because it does not obey or respect its terms of use, as has happened in the Ukraine War.
“I understand that war does not meet the terms of use, but we need to have exemptions for those who identify as media,” he denounces.
Trust Journalism Initiative
Bruttin recalls that the “World Freedom Index 2025”, published by RSF in May, shows that there was a global decrease in press freedom, which has to do with the security of journalists, but also with the “systemic conditions of the sector”.
It considers that the deterioration of the economic conditions of the sector leads to some media to create more “polarizing” content and to yield to pressures of political powers, which in turn weakens the public’s confidence in the press, which is in crisis.
That is why RSF launched the trusted journalism initiative (JTI), a quality seal that identifies quality media in digital space.
“We bet on an honest journalism about its sources of financing, its governanza structure and on their work methods,” he explains about the initiative, to which 2,000 media from 120 different countries have already received.
With EFE information
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