Inside the media’s pressure-cooker year

Gilbert Bailon on Thursday, Sept. 1, in St. Louis..Photo by Chris Lee, clee@post-dispatch.com

There are so many people now on Substack or video platforms — influencers and opinion people — who have different guardrails. Ours haven’t changed, but I do think that the environment we’re in is more sensitive and there’s more scrutiny — even if you’re not sharing an opinion. You can be attacked for how you write a headline or state a fact.”

Gilbert Bailon, former executive editor, Chicago Public Media

Editor’s Note: Gilbert Bailon was ousted as the executive editor at Chicago Public Media as a new top editor’s reorganization eliminated his job in mid-November, as we went to press with this story.

News media publishers are under attack from powerful interests. This year saw a troubling number of lawsuits lobbed at the press. Some were settled, sparking debate over whether they were wise decisions or dangerous precedents.

It was also a year marked by the firings of high-profile people in the news. ABC News parted company with Correspondent Terry Moran. After a brief suspension for online comments, the network didn’t renew his contract.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, at least three news professionals were fired for comments made online or on air. MSNBC dismissed Matthew Dowd, a contributor. The Washington Post fired Karen Attiah, a columnist and The Post’s founding global opinions editor. Attiah wrote about her ousting on Substack. In part, it read: “On Bluesky, in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Utah and Colorado, I condemned America’s acceptance of political violence and criticized its ritualized responses — the hollow, clichéd calls for ‘thoughts and prayers’ and ‘this is not who we are,’ that normalize gun violence and absolve white perpetrators especially, while nothing is done to curb deaths. I expressed sadness and fear for America.” Regarding Kirk, Attiah had merely posted a quotation attributed to Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk.

These were not clear-cut disciplinary cases, but they were seen as examples of a media culture becoming increasingly risk averse.

Reporting from Chicago

Gilbert Bailon is the executive editor at Chicago Public Media — since April, a multiplatform, unified newsroom (WBEZ + the Chicago Sun-Times) producing news in digital, print, audio, video and broadcast. This summer, like all public media outlets, Chicago Public Media lost federal funding totaling about $3 million, or 6% of its annual budget. It is also one of the public media entities under the FCC investigation into public media fundraising and advertising.

“We are among some of the bigger stations being investigated. There are direct threats. There is intimidation, whether it’s the FCC threat of withdrawing licenses, threats to funding or the threat of lawsuits,” he said. Complying with investigations or defending lawsuits places an enormous burden on a news business, requiring personnel resources, legal counsel and substantial financial resources, he said.

Bailon believes Chicago Public Media has “a good footing” in the FCC investigation and said none of these pressures has impacted the journalism.

When E&P spoke with Bailon in November, he remarked on the frenzied nature of reporting in Chicago at this time, when federal agents are operating in the city.

“It has been stressful on the staff, just keeping up with what’s going on and trying to fulfill all those different platforms. We must make sure every night and weekend is staffed up, because who knows when ICE or a protest is going to pop up,” he said.

“I think it’s also energized the newsroom in many ways, because it’s such a big story and there are demands for information,” he added.

Social media is a critical platform. It allows them to reach audiences beyond the traditional public media reader/listener/viewer. 

“We’re doing things like audio drop-ins — a two-minute explainer for TikTok and Instagram Reels. We’ve done a lot with Spanish, too, because the communities being targeted are Spanish-speaking,” he said.

“[Social media] has always been fraught,” Bailon observed. “You find a large group of people there who are anti-media, seeing it as biased, liberal, woke — whatever derogatory term they want to use. It’s not new; it’s just elevated.”

Social media conduct is part of their publicly stated code of ethics.

“There are so many people now on Substack or video platforms — influencers and opinion people — who have different guardrails. Ours haven’t changed, but I do think that the environment we’re in is more sensitive and there’s more scrutiny — even if you’re not sharing an opinion. You can be attacked for how you write a headline or state a fact.”

The best way to silence criticism, Bailon suggested, is to do good journalism: “Bulletproof your work.”

While other media companies have settled lawsuits, canceled features like opinion columns and caved to public pressure, in Chicago, they’re moving forward, business as usual.

“We know this is a very important moment for Chicago. I would argue, for the country, too,” Bailon said.  

Reporting from Texas

Laurie Ezzel Brown, owner, publisher and editor, The Canadian Record

For Laurie Ezzell Brown, 2025 marked two years since the 132-year-old Canadian Record — a community weekly in rural Texas — printed its final edition. Her family has owned the news brand since 1948. “That was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life,” she said.

The Canadian Record continues to publish a website, with links shared on Facebook. Brown doesn't do much in-depth reporting. Mostly, it’s critical information for the people of Canadian and Hemphill counties.

At its peak, she had a staff of six. For the past 25 years, news media has felt like a “whipsaw,” Brown said, citing relentless change. And there was always criticism.  

“In my business, which is very local, very rural and community-based, I never got fired from some guy in some fancy office on the 30^th floor. When I wrote something that upset people, they’d walk through my front door, sit down at my desk and talk to me about it. That’s a much different dynamic, and in some ways, it’s harder, because these are people you know. You’ve grown up with them. It might be an advertiser or someone who wants to cancel their subscription. It’s immediate and personal.

There is necrosis when the toxicity of national politics seeps into local reporting.

“When you have a president of the United States — an extremely wealthy man, growing day by day in wealth — who’s throwing lawsuits at everybody who writes or says or does something he doesn’t like, what is the impact of that?” Brown said. “We have to think about that every time we state an opinion, every time we write something we know might not be popular with some of our readers. We’re not dealing just with their anger, their disapproval. We’re now dealing with a threat that looms large — that could put you out of business.”

Over the years, plenty of her peers suggested she carry liability insurance. However, she resisted, explaining why: She’d seen cases in which newspapers were sued without merit, and their liability carriers forced them to settle. Brown couldn’t imagine being forced to accept blame when none was due. She has been sued twice over the years. One was filed within a week of the paper’s final print edition. She won the case.

Brown is now semi-retired. Unwilling to cede the news brand to history’s dustbin, she continues to carry on as a one-person newsroom. She is actively searching for a successor — ideally, someone who can reinvigorate the paper, perhaps restart print production and ensure it continues.

Lately, she’s been traveling to journalism events to talk about Heather Courtney’s documentary, “For The Record,” about the paper. It’s allowed her to speak with young people entering the news profession at a challenging time for journalism. But she has good news for them: “Realizing you’ve made a difference somewhere, to someone. Realizing that people have read what you’ve written and thought about it, that you’ve added to their knowledge and given them a different perspective — it is often very rewarding.”

Reporting from Colorado

Amanda Mountain, president and CEO, Rocky Mountain Public Media

Amanda Mountain is the president and CEO of Rocky Mountain Public Media. She reflected on the year as a time of “great creativity” — a “window of opportunity” period.

Yet, it was also a year of extraordinary challenges.

“We are in the trust business, operating in a very low-trust environment,” she said. Mountain describes public media as a “bridge builder.”

“Despite some of the talking points and binary arguments that have prevailed around our defunding, the truth is that many of our local public media organizations have audiences that politically reflect the diversity of their communities,” she said. “Our audience here in Colorado has traditionally been a third registered Republican, a third registered Independent and a third Democrat. Roughly speaking, over time, it has shifted more toward Independent, reflecting a change in Colorado law that allows Independents to participate in a party primary. So, we are not niche media.”

Mountain is considerate of what it’s like to be a journalist today. She understands that social media is tricky. Their employee guidelines, she explained, include expectations for social media — posting with care and ensuring that information is from trusted sources, not misinformation that widely circulates in digital spaces. 

“Are we asking our journalists to do too many conflicting things at the same time, some of which are unrealistic to begin with?” she pondered. “Personally, I don’t believe that objectivity is a goal that can be achieved alone. As a group, with different perspectives, we can strive for that independence. We can strive for nuance and complexity, but trying to remove someone’s personal identity from the work is at odds with what audiences are telling us.

“They trust people, not brands — not organizations exclusively. To build that trust with audiences, you need to bring yourself into your work. People need to get a sense of what you care about, what your values are. … Saying that you can’t and shouldn’t participate in democratic processes as a citizen is fundamentally at odds with what we do. Those tensions need to be resolved. A new framework needs to emerge in its place. And I think that’s the existential crisis that’s been playing out for several years. It’s ongoing, while the external pressures are getting worse and worse.”

When she hears about other outlets canceling opinion pages or enterprise reporting, Mountain rejects those impulses: “We’re not getting into that reactive, fear-based place,” she said. “You can’t lead from a place of fear. … When it comes to demonstrating the values that we are so renowned for espousing, if we change those values when times are tough or risk is higher, then we risk losing the trust we’ve earned over the years. It’s a fool’s errand.”

Representing journalists’ voices

Jon Schleuss, president, The NewsGuild-CWA

What impact do these external pressures have on journalists? From his vantage point as president of The NewsGuild-CWA, Jon Schleuss sees “a level of exhaustion that permeates everything.” The news cycle is faster. Newsrooms have to operate with far fewer people today. They’re required to be on social media, where they’re subjected to targeted harassment like doxxing. Like their employers, they worry about lawsuits. And their jobs are getting harder to do by virtue of tactics like denying journalists access to local city council meetings or to the White House press pool.

They’re contending with all of that, and Schleuss said, “There’s a real frustration that the journalists themselves aren’t getting enough support from newsroom leadership.”

That’s not to say there aren’t fire-worthy offenses. Schleuss cited plagiarism.            

When guilds negotiate on behalf of journalists today, they take these things into consideration and bargain for a clear-cut termination process — a verbal warning, a written warning, perhaps a performance-improvement plan. Recently, the Guild negotiated a contract that required the employer to legally back their journalists if they’re sued.

Schleuss is empathetic toward the economic and political pressure that news media owners and management face. He offered advice: “When we’re organizing and helping workers unionize, there's a lot of fear … and the best remedy for fear is to do collective action. So, my advice for publishers is to understand and acknowledge that you have these fears, that not only could the president of the United States sue you, but the sheriff could also raid your newsroom, as we saw in the Midwest.

“We are going to see DHS shoot our journalists. We’re going to see more restrictions on newsrooms. They’re going to defame our newsrooms. They're going to attack our journalists personally, but the best way to push through fear is through collective action. Publishers should be supporting each other to defend our free press."

As 2026 dawns, the news community can rise to both challenges and opportunities, he suggested: “This is a golden era for news that can be done right now.”

Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.