Chilling Statement

Total cases	35

Congressman Nunes alleges CNN, Daily Beast ‘committed crimes’ in reporting, says will sue

November 27, 2019 Recently Updated

California Congressman Devin Nunes said that he plans to sue CNN and The Daily Beast for defamation during an interview …

White House plans to instruct federal agencies to cancel subscriptions to two major news outlets

November 6, 2019

The White House announced that President Donald Trump plans to instruct federal agencies to not renew their subscriptions to The …

Reporter says White House senior adviser threatened to ‘delve’ into her personal life

November 8, 2019

Caitlin Yilek, a breaking news reporter for the Washington Examiner, wrote that she was berated and threatened by top White …

Former House Speaker Gingrich says, if he could, he would eliminate the White House press corps

November 20, 2019

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said during a CBS News interview on Oct. 21, 2019, that he would …

Trump’s anti-press language on Twitter mirrored in violent video created by supporter

October 15, 2019

More than half of the news outlets depicted in a graphic fake video of President Donald Trump assaulting his critics …

New York Times reports that conservative operatives are compiling dossiers on journalists

August 28, 2019

According to a New York Times article published on Aug. 25, 2019, a “loose network of conservative operatives” supporting President …

Trump uses Twitter to endorse Covington student’s lawsuit against The Washington Post

March 4, 2019

A Kentucky teen and his family have sued The Washington Post, seeking $250 million in damages for its coverage of …

Trump pointing at ABC News reporter Karen Travers

Trump blames reporters for ‘creating violence by not writing the truth’

November 3, 2018

Trump blamed the “fake news” for “creating violence”

More Incidents

How we track Chilling Statements

Selected public threats made to reporters and media organizations by U.S. politicians and other public figures, which can have a chilling effect on journalism.

FEATURED STORY

From ‘fake news’ to ‘enemy of the people’: An Anatomy of Trump’s tweets

From June 16, 2015, when Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president, to today, where he sits as leader of the free world, every tweet in which he mentions the media, individual journalists, news outlets, or journalistic sources in a negative tone is being tracked in a database.

Contributor Stephanie Sugars, who created that database with the Committee to Protect Journalists and manages its ongoing accounting, explored rhetoric from the first two years of Trump’s presidency in a blog post.

As the president continues to communicate through Twitter, this live database offers a continued tracking.