America has long sold itself as the gold standard of democracy — the shining city on the hill, sworn enemy of authoritarianism. That story is looking increasingly threadbare. Because what is emerging in the United States today is something disturbingly familiar: censorship. The oldest tool in the autocrat’s kit.
The muzzling of the press doesn’t just threaten free expression in itself. It also poisons the well on a deeper question: what actually constitutes “fake news”? Who gets to decide? And by what right?
Under the new disorder now taking shape, the answer is creeping towards something chilling: any story, opinion, or commentary that doesn’t serve the interests of those in power gets branded disinformation — and punished accordingly.
Which means the dissenting voice gets silenced. And with it goes something precious: the citizen’s ability to think for themselves, to weigh competing arguments, to form their own view — however imperfect, however subjective. That fundamental human right is being quietly strangled. Information is becoming a one-way street. Just like in the authoritarian states America has spent decades lecturing the world about. Any alternative perspective is stamped as misinformation, and those who spread it are hunted down.
The clearest illustration of this came recently from Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission. Without naming names, he took to X to warn broadcasters covering the Iran war that they risked losing their licences unless they corrected course. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their licence renewals come up,” Carr wrote. The justification? The public interest.
That phrase — the public interest — is perhaps the most dangerous weapon a government can wield. It is infinitely elastic, infinitely adaptable to whatever political purpose needs serving. Today it is deployed to control what you are told. Tomorrow it could be deployed to control what you think.
It is worth noting that the targets of all this noise happen to be the New York Times and CNN — two outlets for which Donald Trump has never disguised his contempt, and which he has long dismissed as purveyors of fake news.
Press freedom organisations were not slow to respond. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) called Carr’s warning “outrageous.” “When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,” it said.
Quite. Free expression is not some abstract philosophical luxury. It is not a privilege doled out on condition of good behaviour by whoever happens to be in power. It is a fundamental human right and the load-bearing wall of any democracy worthy of the name. The moment it is curtailed punitively — dressed up as the defence of “accurate information” — democracy stops being democracy.
To be direct about it: criminalising dissent, however prettily it is dressed up in institutional language, is the first step towards silencing a society. And silence, as history keeps reminding us, has always been authoritarianism’s closest friend.
I will close with a question. All this — the war drums, the justifications, the manufactured urgency around Iran’s nuclear programme — is that not itself a form of fake news, made in America? Does the programme even exist as advertised? We have only Washington’s word for it, and that of its allies. But there is precedent. Wasn’t this the same script they ran on Iraq in 2003? Weapons of mass destruction. Irrefutable evidence. Existential threat. All of it, in the end, exposed as fiction — and admitted as such. Why should anyone assume this time is different?
