Washington Post editor Marty Baron's message to journalists on surviving Trump regime

Marty Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, was presented with 2016 Hitchens Prize at a dinner in New York. Baron, best known as editor of The Boston Globe in 2002 when the daily exposed a sex-abuse scandal in the city’s Catholic Church, warned journalists who would be soon entering the US President-elect Donald Tump’s era to “do their job as it’s supposed to be done”. Baron spoke on Trump’s claims of harassing “unfriendly media outlets”: “Donald Trump said he wanted to ‘open up’ libel laws. And he proposed to harass unfriendly media outlets by suing them, driving up their legal expenses with a goal of weakening them financially.” “With respect to The Washington Post, he ordered our press credentials revoked during the campaign, barring us from routine press access to him and his events, because our coverage didn’t meet with his approval. Even before we were subjected to his months-long blacklist, Donald Trump falsely alleged that our owner, Jeff Bezos, was orchestrating that coverage. And he openly hinted that if he became president, he would retaliate,” Baron said. Baron further said that Trump’s election has not changed anything. “After his election — in the midst of protests against him — Donald Trump resorted to Twitter to accuse the media of inciting violence when, of course, there had been no incitement whatsoever by anyone.” Advising the journalists, who would be wondering the situation in the media for over the next four years, Baron, as quoted in a speech in Vanity Fair, said, “The ultimate defence of press freedom lies in our daily work. Many journalists wonder with considerable weariness what it is going to be like for us during the next four — perhaps eight — years. Will we be incessantly harassed and vilified? Will the new administration seize on opportunities to try intimidating us? Will we face obstruction at every turn? If so, what do we do? The answer, I believe, is pretty simple. Just do our job. Do it as it’s supposed to be done.” You can read the full text of the speech here. Watch the video of the speech:

The Hitchens Prize is presented to an author or journalist, who in the spirit of the late Christopher Hitchens, demonstrates a commitment to free expression and to a pursuit of the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence. Baron was not only depicted in the movie Spotlight, but The Boston Globe had also won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for its coverage of the scandal.