Nixon would smile
President Donald Trump is yet again threatening to crack down on media outlets he doesn’t like. But this time he’s doing it in a much more brazen fashion. And it’s almost exactly what Richard Nixon appeared to attempt in the 1970s.
The difference here is that Nixon talked about the scheme only privately.
Challenging the licenses of news outlets is a highly questionable strategy for Trump—and not even because of the First Amendment implications. As CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Brian Stelter note, it’s just practically very difficult:
“First of all, there is no single license for NBC or any other national television network. Licenses are granted to individual local stations—and NBC doesn’t even own most of the stations that broadcast its content across the country. And it is extremely unusual for any station’s license to be taken away for any reason, much less for a political vendetta ….”
In 1973 the New York Times reported on the effort from George Champion Jr., who had been finance chairman for Nixon’s campaign in Florida, to challenge the license of Jacksonville, Fla., TV station WJXT-TV. The station was then owned by Newsweek and the Washington Post Co., which also owned the Washington Post. The Post was at that point well into its Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate investigation of the president.
Nixon’s press secretary Ronald Ziegler was asked at the time whether Champion was acting at the behest of the administration. “No, absolutely not,” Ziegler assured.
When Nixon’s White House tapes emerged, though, they painted a picture of a president who wanted to employ exactly those tactics. Here’s a relevant section from September 1972, a few months before certain TV stations had their licenses challenged by people tied to Nixon.
Nixon: That’s right. Right. The main thing is the Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of this one. They have a television station.
John Dean: That’s right, they do.
Nixon: And they’re going to have to get it renewed.
H.R. Haldeman: They’ve got a radio station too. Nixon: Does that come up too? The point is, when does it come up?
Dean: I don’t know. But the practice of non-licensees filing on top of licensees has certainly gotten more …
Nixon: That’s right.
Dean: … more active in the, in the area. Nixon: And it’s going to be God damn active here.
Dean: (laughs)
By May 1974, sources told the Times that the edited White House transcript of that September 1972 meeting with Dean and Haldeman omitted the passage described above. Ziegler didn’t address it directly, but he suggested it wasn’t germane to the Watergate investigation.
“Really, they’re just open threats,” a House Judiciary Committee source told the Times then. More than 40 years later, a U.S. president is now making those same threats publicly, for all to see.