During Donald Trump’s first stint at the White House, women journalists faced unprecedented threats and challenges. From online violence and smear campaigns to physical and verbal assaults, they remained at immense risk. As Trump returns to the presidency, his legacy indicates the threat of increased risks towards women journalists.
To understand these women’s experiences, as well as their reporting on gender, the Coalition For Women in Journalism on Monday hosted a discussion featuring Women Press Freedom senior editor Inge Snip; Ms. managing digital editor Roxanne Szal; California-based journalist Cerise Castle; and CFWIJ founding director Kiran Nazish.
Watch the discussion below—or read on for a full transcript of the event.
Kiran Nazish: It is an important time that we’re having this conversation about how journalism and how reporters today under the current administration are going to be able to work given the difficult circumstances. During the previous Trump presidency, the Coalition for Women in Journalism (CFWIJ) documented unprecedented attacks on women journalists, from physical assault to online harassment and smear campaigns.
With Trump being back in power, what does that mean for reporting on gender? We’re going to talk about that. I do want to briefly go back a little bit and see some of the references that we have from the previous administration that we have taken into account.
Inge Snip: Just quickly to introduce myself, I’m the senior editor with the Women Press Freedom newsroom at the Coalition for Women in Journalism. I’ve worked with them for the past two years. And as Kiran mentioned, what we’re doing is in this panel, looking at what journalism, especially for women and LGBTQ journalists, is going to look like in the next four years, which is obviously not looking great, considering already the things that we’ve heard, the things we’ve experienced previously. Also looking at Project 2025, which was released, and a lot of things are already set into motion.
So at the Coalition, we’ve obviously documented a rise in violations previously during the Trump administration. We also have data that clearly shows that the attacks on women and LGBTQ journalists, whether it’s legal as Cerise has experienced, whether it’s surveillance, Cerise also has experienced this, or its actual violence that has been heightened under Trump. That doesn’t mean that during Biden and Harris this wasn’t the case at all, but definitely the difference is quite large. Since we’re talking about these direct attacks, Cerise, maybe introduce yourself and explain to us how you as a journalist are working through this increasing oppression.
Cerise Castle: Thanks so much for having me. My name is Cerise Castle. I am a Los Angeles based journalist, and I work currently for Capital & Main as a reporter on inequality, and I also covered the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on a freelance basis. That work is really where I have seen the most obstacles presented my way.
That included digital and physical surveillance, as Inge was mentioning in the introduction, as well as physical attacks. It was actually being shot with a less lethal munition that pushed me into this work, that gave rise to the situation for me to even pursue this reporting.
As far as navigating the oppression, I mean, I think it’s important to know what your own limits are. The things that I’ve experienced are quite severe. It’s things from having police come to my home, to having digital surveillance of anywhere that I am appearing on social media constantly, and to threats of being sued for publishing this information.
I think it’s important for journalists to know what their personal line is. While I’m perfectly okay with putting up with all this stuff, some people might not, and that’s okay. I don’t think it’s healthy for people to push themselves through this kind of thing and lead to burnout. So there are less journalists. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think it’s important to know what your own limits are and to be aware of the risks as well.
Before you’re going into a situation, you can’t always predict what it is going to lead to, but it is important to be aware of things. If you do find yourself in a situation where you are being subjected to harassment, whether it’s physical or digital, it’s important to know about resources that are available out there to help you get through it.
The CFWIJ, for example, has been really supportive of me, literally from day one, sending me resources on how to protect myself digitally, things that I can do to protect myself physically, whether that is utilizing resources like to Delete Me to remove all of my personal information from the internet to make it harder for people to find me, taking hostile environment for journalists training to know how to physically protect myself in these spaces. All these are great tools, and I recommend that every journalist is engaging in things like this, doing risk assessments before you go out and do a story. All of that should be happening constantly, but especially under an administration like this, it just becomes that much more important, because we know that there is an open hostility to journalists, and we can do a lot in advance of like going into these situations to prepare. There’s a lot that we can do in the aftermath of situations to take care of each other as well.
Nazish: Thank you Cerise for your insight. We are glad to be able to support. We were very concerned about you and a lot of other journalists working on the ground. And it seems like right now we are in that situation where we are having this conversation again. We are hearing from reporters who are covering important beats, like yourself.
I know that you have been doing this investigation, which you received several awards for, on the Sheriff’s County, which also got you into trouble, but also your social justice work. So since we are talking to Cerise, we’ll just going to stick to that, and I will come to Roxy after.
What is it like right now for you reporting on the ground, especially when you’re working on issues of social justice, what is the environment like? For you as a journalist, what are the conversations that you’re having with your colleagues and your editors in this moment?
Castle: On the ground with my colleagues there’s a lot of apprehension and nervousness, maybe even fear for some people. It’s only been a few weeks of the Trump administration, and we’ve seen a lot of sweeping orders that have come to pass, many of which were promised either in 2025 or on his campaign.
I think very top of mind for a lot of journalists is his promise to go after reporters to prosecute them. There are a number of people I work with who during the last administration did a lot of accountability journalism, whether it was around administration nominees, practices by the administration in carrying out their policies that had some pretty big effects, things like people resigning or having policies rewritten. There’s definitely a lot of nervousness around what that could mean for people. Does that mean that there’s a target on their back for the new administration? We’ve seen Kash Patel’s confirmation hearings going forward. We’ve seen the FBI have these really frankly scary things happening; these surveys going out, asking people to self identify if they participated in investigations over Jan. 6, rioters, insurrectionists. That tone is scary for people.
We’re seeing this happening already, this gentleman who has promised to go after reporters going in, we’re already seeing this stuff come to pass. So it is very nervous for journalists on the ground. I would say the good news is that it hasn’t stopped anyone. Yes, we are nervous. Yes, there is some fear, but we’re not going to stop what we’re doing. I found that when I’m going out into the field and speaking with people, people are very willing to tell their story. People want to tell their story. People are very eager to show that they are still out there, still doing work, still living their lives, in spite of these policies that are coming down in an attempt to silence and erase them.
Whether that is day laborers in Pasadena that are working for free to clear out the streets of toxic debris that the city did not remove, that they stepped up to do themselves. Whether that is trans people in Los Angeles getting together to educate trans people across the United States on how to get their documents up to date to continue existing in the face of these executive orders that have attempted to erase trans people. The community is strong. The community is still going forward, and the community wants to tell its stories. There will always be journalists there that are willing to tell those stories, to stand in the face of any administration that is trying to come down hard and end human rights. There will always be journalists there to stand up and fight for them.
Nazish: It’s good to hear that communities are sticking around and not getting too discouraged by it. When going through some of the cases that we documented the last time, some of them being very visceral, there were physical assaults on journalists, as well as verbal of course. We are aware of the verbal hostility that journalists face, particularly women, particularly women of color, which include Yamiche Alcindor from PBS News, Weijia Zhang from CBS News.
There was a physical attack as well on a journalist. You might remember Sophie Alexander was physically assaulted by Trump supporters after posing a question to the president. She was booed and grabbed by the arm and told, get out you stupid B-word. This incident reflects the broader pattern of hostility towards journalists that a lot of journalists think is going to be even bolder and more aggressive now.
Are there any preparations that you have gone through in terms of protecting yourself on the ground?
Castle: I think the biggest thing that I’ve done to prepare myself on the ground is taking hostile environment for journalist courses. I’ve completed two, both of which were offered by the International Women in Media Foundation. There are a lot of really in retrospect, looking at these tips, very basic things that can be done to protect yourself. Things like doing a risk assessment before you go out. Simplistically, that involves just looking at where you’re going, listing all the dangers that could potentially arise, finding your exits and checking in with yourself and the folks that you are going with about your boundaries, like, what is something that might happen that means to you, OK it’s time to go. For me a lot of the time is physical touching like that. I am not okay with being touched. That is not what I’m here to do. I’m here to report. There is no reason to touch me. If that’s happening, it’s time for me to get out of there. That’s so important. When it comes to protecting yourself physically, I think it is in this time, important for all journalists to have some sort of physical self defense in their repertoire. It’s sad that it’s come to that. I never thought that as a reporter I would be saying to my fellow journalists, you need to have some sort of physical fighting skill to do this job. But unfortunately, that’s where we are now, and it’s important to have that.
There have definitely been times that I’ve been reporting in hostile situations, like a Trump rally in Beverly Hills, for instance, where I was touched, where people did try to attack me. I’m very grateful that I do have some self defense training and I was able to get out of that situation and get to safety. It’s horrible that this is where we are, but we need to be realistic and take these steps to protect ourselves.
Nazish: Moving to Roxanne Szal. Roxy is a powerhouse journalist and editor who leads the editorial charge at Ms. magazine, where her visionary coverage advances critical conversations about gender equality, social justice and human rights. As you all might know, Ms. magazine was founded in 1971 co-founded by Gloria Steinem and some of the co-founders still work with Ms. It was also the first feminist magazine in America.
So Roxy, we see on a daily basis, you’re covering everything that is going on gender, women, LGBTQ, racial democracy issues. When you’re leading your coverage at this moment, what are your priorities? What are you thinking about right now?
Roxanne Szal: To speak on violence briefly, Ms. is on right-wing media’s radar. It always has been. You know, when I worked in the office, we’d get prank calls and really just very misogynistic kind of coordinated prank call campaigns. When we write about important people, we get lawsuit threats, and I’ve had right-wing articles written about pro-abortion TikToks that I’ve made. I mean, especially X since, since Elon Musk’s takeover. It is a cesspool in our Ms. magazine comments.
Hearing Cerise talk about physical assault, I’m lucky that that has never been my experience. I also feel lucky that I work in a newsroom where we have a pro bono attorney who’s consulting us on, you know, hey, you should be careful with that sentence before you publish it. So I do feel protected in that way, that the threats are not coming towards me personally, typically. Like I said, there have been articles written about me in particular. Like Cerise said, you kind of have to gauge your own comfort level.
We are steeling ourselves, literally. Like with our fact checking operations, we are investing more money in our fact checking so that we make sure that if we get… You know, lawsuits are going to come, and we want to make sure that, at least, we have a legal leg to stand on. Hey, we’re sure that the facts we published in this article are right. If you’re upset about the coverage, that’s one thing, but if it’s libelous, that’s another. So we meet really regularly with our lawyer. He’s feminist, pro bono. We’re just really lucky to have that kind of resource.
Also, there’s this kind of mental steeling that I can hear in Cerise’s answer that I think some of us are doing too. Journalists are scared, and that’s exactly what the authoritarians want. They want activists and journalists and feminists to be afraid and silent and siloed, you know, talking not to each other. It is rebellious to even get on a panel like this and speak openly about, this is hard. This is scary.
Nazish: We’ve been having so many conversations with journalists who, especially the ones in D.C., who cover the White House. Particularly the ones who are going to the White House, they are being very careful.
This is the first time it’s happening in America. It has happened in other parts of the world. Something that we cover all the time, that we’ve covered in Turkey, we’ve covered in Egypt. I myself have seen in Pakistan and Turkey when I worked there. So this is a dynamic that happens where journalists become more careful. There’s this resilience that we will go out there and we will cover these things. I think this is not, obviously, this is not just an attack on the press. This is an attack on communities, on gender, on things that make democracy stronger, right, equality, equity, these issues. So I think that there is also a sense of resilience coming amidst all of those communities that are affected. They’re aware that this is happening. I suppose that resilience is also something that is felt.
Roxy, I’m sure, like when the election results came in last year, you guys sat and thought about how you’re going to cover. You already know these are going to be the priorities, because this is what happened before, and this is going to be under attack.
What does your coverage look like for women? And when you work, do you work with women journalists? What is that experience like covering gender?
Szal: The problem right now is that Trump is kind of flooding the media zone. So journalists don’t know where don’t know where to look. It’s horrible things happening over here. Horrible things are happening over here.
The two things that kind of give me and Ms. staffers focus is we only cover feminist stories, explicitly feminist angles. So, we haven’t yet covered the Jan. 6 pardons, but we have covered his antiabortion FACE Act pardons, because that is the angle that we feel is more feminist. It’s more impacting women and girls and people that need abortion care. So that’s kind of one thing that’s keeping me sane here. I’m reading all the mainstream coverage, and I’m thinking, Okay, what’s the feminist angle here?
Secondly, sort of related to that, Ms. practices movement journalism. So it’s journalism seeking political, social or economic change, and typically that means that we would cover a badly reported or underreported story. That’s why we covered these antiabortion pardons, because we wanted to emphasize the impact this is going to have on antiabortion violence and how emboldened they’re going to feel.
You saw the commentary from the DOJ that said, basically, we’re not even going to be enforcing the FACE Act unless they mentioned death. So what’s this going to take? Someone has to die again? So it’s just terrible.
I would say some of the kind of focus areas for Ms. are keeping track of antiabortion violence. Ms. is published by the Feminist Majority Foundation, and it also oversees the National Clinic Access Project. So we have a ton of sources of abortion providers, and we’re going to really ramp up our coverage of that, because the right wing is certainly covering the FACE Act saying, ‘the DOJ brought charges, and we’re just innocent people praying outside of the clinic.’ No, they’re not. They are chaining themselves together. They are hurting staff members, physically hurting them. So we have to correct the narrative, and that’s an example of something that’s badly reported or under reported, or being covered by the right wing in a way that is not feminist or even accurate.
Nazish: There’s a lot of misinformation. Because what happens is misinformation gaslights the narrative and gaslights issues, and then we are kind of gaslit and and responding constantly to that. I think what’s great is that Ms. magazine focuses on doing explainers and explaining what actually happened, not really responding to those things that are happening, but more like going and saying, Hey, this is the alternative picture. This is the real picture. This is what’s happening.
One way to look at it is to look at what is winning. Sometimes we have, in the past, gotten caught up with Trump and everything. So we’re constantly covering what happened. I think what is also good to report on is what is winning, what is running, working? Who are the journalists on the ground, like we’re speaking to Cerise, right? Like she’s on the ground. She’s doing it. And it doesn’t matter what you know what Trump is doing, because she is there on the ground doing the work. There are some women leaders in social justice and feminist space who are doing the work.
Szal: And in blue states, New York, Connecticut, California, Illinois. There are some really strong feminist governors, lawmakers and elected officials that are doing really cool, interesting things with the law that we need to make sure we’re lifting up, because if we only lift up the bad things that are happening, typically in the southeast, Texas and Louisiana, you’ll see copycat bills introduced in one and it’s exactly the same written in another state. So we have to do that in a positive way, too. So this is what Illinois is doing and maybe New Mexico didn’t think about that. Maybe Vermont is thinking this is a push that we need. We want to push the right people to not trust these emboldened incells on the internet that are feeling like there’s no consequences.
Feminists and women’s rights leaders should also feel emboldened right now, sad too. Of course, I think we’re all sad, like Cerise said, We’re all scared, but we kind of have to channel that into something positive. The current issue of this magazine says ‘Rolling Up Our Sleeves.’ So this is kind of the focus. We’re putting it out in four parts. Two parts came out last week, and two parts are filling out this week. It documents the feminist resistance that is fomenting in response, because it is his second time in office. The good news for him, unfortunately, is that he knows how this job works. He knows how to do things a little bit faster, but so do we. In Project 2025 he lined out what he’s going to do and 75 percent of his executive actions are basically word for word from Project 2025.
It’s really comforting; it helps me sleep at night thinking that there are these badass feminist lawyers, feminist officials that are like, we are ready. The lawsuit is typed. We’re just submitting it. There’s all these pathways that have been practiced and everyone’s going through the steps that they know. So anyone listening should know that someone is at the helm. If you don’t hear about it, things are happening in state courts, federal courts, maybe at the Supreme Court soon, but we’re not holding our breath there. But things are happening and liberal and progressive people are doing the work.
Nazish: And also read Ms. magazine and read what’s happening. What are women and anyone who’s under attack talking about? I think maybe media coverage should be slightly better, because right now, it’s a lot of reaction to Trump.
Our wonderful editor at Women Press Freedom, at the Coalition for Women in Journalism, and to introduce Inge, she is a distinguished journalist and advocate for press freedom. Since 2023 she served as a lead at the Women Press Freedom in a newsroom at the Coalition for Women in Journalism, where she has worked on groundbreaking initiatives to support and amplify the voices and needs of women journalists globally. Thank you so much for joining this conversation. You are looking on a daily basis, you look at the Globe, and you look at press freedom attacks on women journalists, and you understand in the main 55 categories that we document Violence Against Women Journalists. So you kind of have a landscape view, as you know, Donald Trump gets elected in America, which is seen as a democratic power around the world.
What are you thinking about and what’s on your mind right now, as far as press freedom and gender goes?
Snip: There’s so many things happening. I’m not based in the U.S. I’m not from the U.S. It’s actually night here right now. In the work that I’ve been doing as a journalist, I’ve never focused on one specific space. I’ve always looked at different places. I think one of the things that is very, very clear is that although the United States as a democratic power is not necessarily respected as much like that around the world, I do think we need to acknowledge that what happens in the United States is sometimes taken as a cart launch for other regimes—they’re doing it in the United States, so we can do too. That’s why I think looking globally, it gives authoritarian regimes like we see in Hungary, we see in Georgia, we see in many different spaces, it gives them more power to suppress the press even more. So I do think that that is a very important marker.
Secondly, when it comes to gender internationally, we see a massive move against anything that has to do with equality or uplifting voices that are unheard or not heard as much as they are supposed to. Again, this is a global movement that we’re seeing, especially like Women Journalists and LGBTIQ journalists are specifically repressed. Then, of course, the stories that they’re telling are repressed even more.
With the situation in the United States, however, and I think Roxy mentioned this really well, is that what we’ve seen in the last two weeks is that, yes, a lot of things happened, but they were predicted already by them, right? It’s like they are following the playbook. So if you haven’t read Project 2025 yourself, it’s a lot, it’s 600 pages, so maybe you don’t want to. But, look it up and figure out what are the things that are going to happen.
When it comes to executive orders, I feel like we already know it’s happening. When it comes to gender specifically, not just reporting, both reporting on it and being a woman and LGBTIQ journalist, we see attacks. When it came to the attacks on women and LGBTIQ journalists in the first Trump presidency, it it was massive compared to the kind of violence that was directed towards men. So 100 percent that’s going to increase again. I think we all feel it, because already, now we’re seeing how the minorities are being taken. The CDC has just been ordered to take out all the biological references to male and females. ‘Born as a female,’ apparently, cannot be put in a research paper because the government is trying to erase any kind of gender-nonconforming language. As journalists, obviously, you take a brunt. Thanks for people like Cerise who are actually going to these kinds of places like Trump rallies, where you are putting yourself in danger. But if you’re not going, it’s not going to be covered.
Szal: Or covered correctly. It’s going to be covered by our enemies, by someone that’s looking to skew the narrative in this certain way to serve their interests?
Snip: Exactly, yeah, 100 percent.
Big question, and I hope I was able to give that global lens to it.
Nazish: I will say that you also published this big report with the team that you worked on which was focused on comparing, because at the time we were doing this before the elections, looking at Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s record. Could you tell us a little bit about that report, and what you saw as the main problematic areas under Trump?
Snip: I think one of the reasons we wanted to do this report where we just look at press freedom violations under the Trump administration and unprecedented violations under Biden and Harris, the reason we wanted to do is because there were press freedom violations during the Harris campaign as well, but we wanted to make sure to be posted in a situation we could really see, where does the danger lie with Trump coming in? Because what we saw most during Biden and Harris, it was law enforcement, of course, which was larger under Trump, but the biggest one was law enforcement and legal harassment. This does not necessarily have anything to do specifically with the executive system, because it was mostly courts. Like court cases where judges were trying to get sources from journalists, whistleblowers and that kind of thing.
After looking at the data, which clearly shows that the difference in press freedom violations is massive. I think the dangerous thing is, during a previous Trump presidency, I would say the majority was like misogynistic comments, or your fake news. It was dismissive of women and minority journalists, there was the law enforcement part. When we were looking at Project 2025, I think the most important takeaway from that is again, looking forward, is that the legal harassment cases are gonna skyrocket, likely, because parts of Project 2025 which we know is going to be executed slightly, step by step, soon, is actually giving legal legal rights of to law enforcement to surveil journalists, to force journalists to give up their anonymous sources, to whistleblowers, and to potentially also make a criminal offense to not share your sources. This kind of legal harassment already happened, it also happened under Biden Harris.
I would say the difference is that what we’re going to see now, at least this is my assumption, is that by legalizing those things even more, it’s just going to skyrocket. The issue here then is whistleblowers don’t want to move forward anymore, because their anonymity cannot be protected. When that happens, journalists cannot hold the powerful to account. If your sources don’t want to talk to you because they’re worried that they’re going to be exposed, that is a massive danger to freedom of information that the public has. I would say that’s the main thing. We already saw, of course, illegal harassment and surveillance under Biden and Harris as well. But what is going to happen, likely, is that this is going to be emboldened by actually making it part of the legal framework.
Nazish: I’m hearing from some newsrooms in the U.S. that are preparing bigger budgets for legal legal support. That’s one of the main things. The way some newsrooms who can’t afford to are responding that way, but then you have smaller newsrooms that are nervous about it, because certainly legal harassment is something that is going to be used as a tool. It has been used before. Coming back to Cerose on that, she was harassed by the sheriff’s office.
I’m wondering, I know you briefly touched upon that, is it possible for you to share a little bit about what you think was really going on from sheriff’s side in terms of his office using his power over you, what was going on in that encounter?
Castle: Shortly after publishing my series in 2021 which is titled A Tradition of Violence, and that series looked at the 50 year plus history of criminal gangs forming and operating within the Sheriff’s Department. It is a podcast series as well as a written series and a forthcoming book that I should also mention.
Pretty quickly after that series was published, I was contacted by several sources inside the department that were concerned for my safety, because they were seeing personal photos of mine appearing in their stations, on bulletin boards, things like that, and I, myself actually saw a picture of myself at the Hall of Justice, which is where the sheriff’s department is housed. That prompted me, after receiving those tips, to file a public records request to the sheriff’s department by requesting all communications that had been made within the department that contained my name in it, and they did not want to give me that information. It took about three years in court to fight with them, with the support of a team of attorneys to get that information, and eventually we did get it, and we received over 800 pages of documents that have been generated in just a six month period that all had my name on them. This included personal quips from sheriff’s deputies that were criticizing my reporting, criticizing me as a person, calling into question my ethics and morality doing this reporting. There were remarks made about people they thought were friends of mine doing full background checks on people that they assumed were people that I had some sort of personal connection with based off of what I was posting on social media.
There were emails detailing that there were several ‘crime analysts’ they call them, that were assigned to monitor my social media accounts. They were doing work up reports on what I was posting on social media. I think the most concerning for me personally was my information being sent to the unit that monitors license plates and tracks where people are moving throughout Los Angeles County, and that information was sent to a number of different police departments. It confirmed, for me, a lot of suspicions that I had because there had been a number of questionable interactions that I had with members of different police departments, whether that was them popping up and pulling me over right after I had conducted an interview that with a confidential source, or even people that I talked to literally being shot by members of the sheriff’s department after I had spoken to them.
Seeing all that information in writing just confirmed my suspicions that I was under surveillance and that it was not just me, but it was people that the sheriff’s department thought were in my circle.
Nazish: Cerise, I will say that when we were covering our case, I remember one day after another, like every few weeks there was something going on. I will say, this was one of the first very rare times where we noted that in United States there was something going on in a county of the scale that usually happens in India, or like the kind of way that a government or an official in her can harass a journalist and just bully them and go after them and monitor them. It seemed like they were strategically targeting you, because there was an escalation of things. There was one thing after another, and when you looked at it in a time frame, it was very clear that it was planned and it was strategic. This was something that was one of the very rare cases that we saw in the United States where a county sheriff would go after a journalist.
Castle: I also want to mention that it wasn’t just me. The sheriff’s department has a history at this point, going after women journalists.
Maya Lau, who covered the sheriff’s department at the Los Angeles Times for many years, it came out last year that the sheriff’s department had taken three years to pursue a criminal investigation of her because she had written a story that spoke about deputy gangs and how the sheriff, the head of the department, his role and his administration’s role in the growth and promotion of deputy gang culture.
Alene Tchekmedyian, who succeeded Maya Lau at the Los Angeles Times covering the Sheriff’s Department. The sheriff at the time, Alex Villanueva held an entire press conference where he had Alene’s photo up on the dais with him, and was making these really disgusting insinuations that she was a criminal for continuing that investigatory work into the department. I’m not alone in this, there are other women I can name as well. Kate Cagle at Spectrum News One; Keri Blakinger who now covers the sheriff’s department. Every day I see Alex Villanueva criticizing Keri, saying horrible things about her because of things in her personal life. It’s disgusting that these are government officials that are engaging in this kind of material and are using the apparatus of the department behind them to carry this stuff out.
Nazish: I can’t help but say thank you for that insight, Cerise. I will say that we started doing the monitoring and documenting only five years ago. I will say that there has been, usually, when you see these kinds of incidents, you know that it has been well practiced before the sheriff. It’s not something new that they’re doing out of the blue. It’s something that they have honed over time. I think that that kind of also brings the question of when women journalists get targeted, it doesn’t get documented, it doesn’t get headed by larger advocacy groups. A lot of the reason is that what’s happening on the ground, a lot of times, women don’t share. It all goes back to the whole ecosystem about how women are supported in newsrooms in the industry, what kind of networks they have to seek that kind of support.
I will say that your case came into our radar, because this is when we were working, but certainly it was something that has been well practiced before. You mentioned something about Naomi Klein’s doppelganger, I wonder if you want to touch on that. And any last notes that you had?
Castle: I love Naomi Klein; I just need to say that. Her writing has been so helpful to me in this time. I was just saying to piggyback off of something that Roxy said earlier about knowing your angle and the importance of that.
Tying it into Naomi Klein’s writing, where she’s written for years about these populist leaders coming in and issuing sweeping rulings to confuse the public as well as dominate the media churn and that confusion and that domination on so many different things, as Roxy said, people were sort of scrambling to figure out what to cover and when to cover it, that sort of thing. I think it’s important, as she said, to know your angle and to have your specialty. If we have lots of different journalists covering very specific angles, I think it’s a great way to make sense of the deluge that we face in this 24 hour news cycle with someone on Trump in the presidential office. I think that also underscores the importance of having a large press score, of having a lot of different media institutions that are covering things from very different and specific angles, as well as highlighting the importance of local journalism to talk about how these big, sweeping rulings from a national level trickle down and operate in your community.
Unfortunately, we’re seeing a decimation of the journalism industry by far, year after year, especially when we’re seeing these tech giants, these tech oligarchs like Jeff Bezos running the Washington Post, Patrick Soon-Shiong running the Los Angeles Times, and capitulating trying to kiss the ring of the ruler. It’s horrible and it’s very scary. It’s very reminiscent of early 1930s Germany, what happened to the press there. And again, this for everyone watching, it’s so important to support journalists, to support local journalists, so there are places to get real facts, to get real information, so we can have an informed public, and that protects democracy. Yes,
Nazish: I don’t even want to start with the billionaires and that power circle that’s going on.
Roxy, what would you like to say?
Szal: A case study that I’m really heartened by, and I think that proves that storytelling matters and that people focused reporting matters. So I’m based in Austin, Texas; we have a total ban on abortion in effect. The Center for Reproductive Rights has done some really creative legal gymnastics to try to get the Texas Supreme Court to intervene. You all saw all this ProPublica reporting showing these Texas women that have been literally dying, and I covered that story at the Texas Supreme Court last summer during the hearing, when the women shared their stories.
One of the women, Samantha Casiano couldn’t afford to travel out of state, and she was pregnant with a baby with anencephaly, developing without a brain, without fetal tissue. This fetus had 0 percent survival once it was born. She and the Center for Reproductive Rights have been putting these women everywhere. They’re at South by Southwest. They’re doing Instagram lives. They’re at the DNC. They are everywhere.
I’m telling you, as someone that lives in Texas, their stories are taking effect. It’s just taking longer than we as journalists would like it to take. We want our reporters to come out and be like the change needs to happen. But women are putting their kids in school, they’re going to their second job. It takes a while for these stories to take effect, but I don’t know if you all saw but the Texas Tribune wrote a couple weeks ago that Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor here, he said that the legislature should clarify the abortion law to protect mothers at risk.
Now I know the bar is on the floor. But as someone who lives in Texas who’s thinking about becoming pregnant sometime soon, probably during the Trump administration, I am terrified to be pregnant in the state, because it’s not just women that want abortions that are being denied abortions. It’s women that are pregnant that want this baby very badly, but they’re having a miscarriage.
There was no reason for Dan Patrick to weigh in, really. He didn’t need to, because the Texas Supreme Court ruled late last year that women suing the state did not have a case. They dismissed their case. I mean, Dan Patrick, he is not a feminist. He is not a women’s rights advocate. And the fact that he went on a radio show and said, ‘hey, the legislature, they just gaveled in. They need to do something about this.’ And the Republicans here, you know Bryan Hughes, he did SB 8. He was kind of the mastermind behind the bounty hunter law that we have an effect here. He’s like, ‘absolutely not.’ So anyway, rifts are happening even among Republicans. And the reason is storytelling. It’s that women are finally being like, wait a minute, it’s not just abortion that’s being affected. It’s women’s health. It’s actual wanted pregnancies.
The more we can tell these stories, it’s like banging against a wall, but it’s chipping, it’s chipping. And you have to see these fissures in our opposition and try to cram them open. You know, “Dems in disarray.” We have to show that our storytelling, and that the fact that these people went through such pain is not for nothing.
Nazish: You’re absolutely right about opening it, because I think that’s what the power of storytelling is. That’s why journalism is important. Sometimes when people get confused, like I would say just you know Republican women, they’re also affected by this. Apart from that, apart from the issues that narratively they’re not affected by. There are things that would affect their lives in terms of equality. I think journalism is what is there as a hope to cover that. For that reason we need to make sure that journalists are protected, that journalists have a community, that journalists have the support that they need, that they have the legal support and the institutional support that they need.
Inge, I would move to you, is there something that you want to share? You know, from this conversation, journalists can do what women journalists can do. You know with the concerns that are ongoing for them?
Snip: I think what is very important right now, especially the last few months, this is not again the United States because what’s happening in the United States is impacting everyone around the world, I’m hearing from all the communities I have, how the United States right now is going down, is worrying everyone.
I cannot imagine what it is even like to be a journalist right now in the United States, because if I’m depressed and I’m not even living there, it must be 10 times worse, right? I think it can be very daunting and scary. I just want to share this with all the journalists out there in the United States that it’s okay to be depressed a little bit. I saw a really, really good video the other day about how in the 80s there were the HIV by gay rights activists. They would march all day, and then at night they would go party and have fun. I think what we want to take away from this is, yes you can be depressed. But don’t let them take your fun away, because if you don’t have the fun, the work is not going to happen. So allow yourself also to feel happy. Allow yourself to take your mind away. And so with the coalition we’re working also on a mental health guideline that hopefully can help. For today, my main one is allow yourself to have fun, and don’t let them take that away from you, because you’ll have way more power and spirit to continue the fight.
Nazish: That’s the best takeaway. Thank you so much Inge. Fun and community, working with each other, that brings the joy. I was in Europe the last two months before, when I arrived Donald Trump had already gotten elected. But during that time, I was mostly meeting European leaders, majority of them happened to be women, because we work on gender and press freedom.
So, I was meeting women leaders, including the president of the European Parliament and the Cabinet members who are working on gender and immigration and some of these issues that impact journalists and their freedom. Of course, Donald Trump was coming to power during this time. This is December and early January. Everyone in Europe, some of the leaders who are looking at democracy and the institutions of democracy are nervous and that that women, even abroad even in one of the other Western locations on this planet where democracy happens to be stable, which is Europe, are nervous about Trump coming into power because they think that it’s going to have a reaction back home. They are also working together to work stronger on building a stronger institution to be able to counter less. So that’s one of the other positive reactions I think that is taking place in the world, where you are seeing some of the women, these are all women, who are coming together, and they’re thinking about, Okay, how are we going to make sure that what is happening in America doesn’t happen in Europe? I think for me as someone who wants good policies for journalists and criminal democracy, and women and gender, this is something that is too helpful for.
Editor’s note: Thanks to Livia Follet for her editorial support in creating this transcript.
Key highlights from our findings from the previous Trump presidency:
1. Trump’s Public Attacks on Women Journalists
Trump’s administration was marked by public verbal attacks against women journalists, often laced with gendered and racial undertones.
- Women journalists covering significant beats, such as the White House, faced verbal harassment and attacks. The CFWIJ also highlighted cases during the Capitol Hill riots where female reporters were targeted, underscoring the dangers they encounter in the field.
- Black women journalists frequently bore the brunt of hostility either from President Trump himself, or from his administration. Yamiche Alcindor, a PBS correspondent, faced repeated interruptions and accusations of asking “nasty” questions during press briefings.
- April Ryan, a longtime White House correspondent, was publicly mocked and told to “sit down,” reinforcing racial and gendered power dynamics in the press room.
- Asian women journalists were frequently targeted with xenophobic and sexist remarks. Weijia Jiang, a CBS journalist, was told by Trump to “ask China” during a question about COVID-19, exposing the intersection of anti-Asian racism and sexism in his rhetoric.
Physical assaults also took place: Journalist Sophie Alexander was physically assaulted by Trump supporters after posing a question to the former president. She was booed, grabbed by the arm and told, “get out you stupid b****.” This incident reflects a broader pattern of hostility towards journalists covering Trump-related events.
2. Online Harassment and Threats
Trump’s public targeting of journalists, particularly women, emboldened his supporters to launch coordinated harassment campaigns online. This increased the number of smear campaigns on women journalists. Black and Asian women journalists experienced disproportionate levels of racist and misogynistic abuse, including death threats, doxxing, and coordinated trolling.
Reports from the CFWIJ documented the surge of online abuse directly tied to Trump’s statements, often exacerbating preexisting challenges for women journalists covering the White House and important issues across the country. For example women journalists covering COVID-19 faced increased smear campaigns against them, mostly from anti-waxers.
3. Racialized and Gendered Microaggressions
Women journalists of color often reported to the CFWIJ that they felt silenced or sidelined during press briefings.
Trump’s labeling of the media as “fake news” was disproportionately weaponized against women journalists who questioned his policies on race, gender or immigration.
During his previous administration, CFWIJ reported Trump accusing women journalists of “pushing an agenda” when they reported on policies impacting marginalized communities, such as child separation at the border.
4. Gender Disparities in Reporting Access
Women journalists faced challenges in accessing sources and government officials, with gender bias influencing who was granted interviews or inside information.
Women of color were particularly excluded, with their inquiries often dismissed or treated as adversarial.
5. Impact on Mental Health and Careers
The combination of public attacks, online abuse and institutional marginalization led to burnout, stress and PTSD for many women journalists.
The CFWIJ reported that several women journalists left political reporting entirely due to the hostile environment fostered under Trump’s presidency.
The previous Trump era exposed and intensified systemic inequities in journalism, particularly for women and women of color. Public attacks, online harassment, and structural barriers underscored the urgent need for industry-wide support systems to address these challenges.
The CFWIJ’s reports highlight the importance of fostering a safer and more inclusive environment for all journalists. Join us in this mission: Donate here.
