Trump and Videla: What We Can Learn from Argentina’s Past to Inform the Present

About a month ago, I attended a panel discussion featuring five leading Washington correspondents—from The Washington Post, Fox News, The New York Times, CNN, and AP News—who shared their experiences working in political and investigative journalism. Speaking to an audience of forty high school students, they emphasized the importance of their work and the role of journalism in educating the public to preserve a functioning democracy. Each one described how they came to stand on a particular side of the political aisle, explained why they chose to work at their respective news outlets, and recounted memories of reporting under different United States presidents.

Despite the diverse range of stories and experiences given, they unanimously raised an alarm: Trump threatens the free press. All five, as if synchronized, shook their heads from left to right with faces of disgust when an audience member asked whether they feared Trump’s censorship of the media. Their answer? Yes, they are deeply afraid. They are afraid to step foot in the White House, afraid to publish opinion pieces about Trump, afraid to do their jobs: to expose the truth to the public. 

This struck a chord with me. Just two weeks before the panel, I had traveled to Argentina and learned about the widespread censorship of the press and the fear journalists experienced under Jorge Videla’s dictatorship. In my own investigative, journalistic way, I began to wonder: were there any connections to be drawn between Argentina’s history of press repression under Jorge Videla and the fears expressed by the panelists? Could such a comparison help me better understand why they seemed so shaken?

Videla first seized power—more accurately, stripped it from the democratically elected government—in 1976 through a military coup, during which troops arrested nearly all former government officials, from the president to low-ranking cabinet ministers, and took control of nearly every major Argentine city. For the next seven years, Videla ruled Argentina as a police state. During that time, thirty thousand Argentinians—teachers, accountants, painters, even high schoolers as young as fourteen—seemingly vanished into thin air and an even greater number—an innumerable number—endured torture and harrasment. 

The toll of Videla’s brutality was perhaps most evident by the loss of at least 98 journalists and the tormenting of many more. Robert Cox, the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, recounted his experience of being targeted by the government: “I had my telephone tapped. They sent me death threats. I was jailed for a time. Even my eleven-year-old son Peter received a handwritten death threat.” Cox’s account reveals the extent to which Videla’s regime would go to silence the press. There were no limits. It did not matter if a child was threatened with death. It did not matter if a reporter’s personal life—their conversations, their family, their very existence—was invaded. What mattered was preserving Videla’s grip on power and hiding injustices from the public.

Videla not only maintained his power and concealed the injustices of his regime by targeting journalists individually, but also by seizing control of the media as a whole. According to the Guardian, the Argentine military purchased several news outlets to “spread rumours and scare people,” promoted pieces aimed at discrediting anti-Videla movements, and shamed journalists who investigated human rights violations by calling them communists—a move that clearly sought to tarnish the public’s trust in their reporting. Furthermore, many news outlets that defied Videla’s commands were forcibly resigned over to his administration. For example, in 1977, Videla made La Opinión, a moderately left leaning, intellectual magazine that reported on widespread disappearances, turn over its leadership to his sympathizers. 

Although Videla left some media organizations alone, many were frightened into self censorship. A majority of news outlets, as Cox put it in a 2013 Harvard article, “silenced themselves in complicity with, or out of fear of, [Videla’s] special task forces.” Cox personifies news outlets with the word “silenced” to demonstrate the extent to which they feared for their existence. When a person experiences such a great amount of fear, they freeze, entering a sort of paralysis, keeping silent to avoid being detected or targeted. In the same way, these news outlets kept silent or froze any publications about topics which Videla hated as a survival mechanism—a way of protecting themselves from being abolished and their journalists from being killed. 

While Trump has not yet silenced the press to the same extreme as Videla, there are striking similarities in the way he has targeted the media since his reelection in 2024. Like Videla, Trump has aggressively attacked and condemned individual journalists. Just last month, for instance, he took to Twitter to reprimand CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand for her coverage of the strike on Iran’s nuclear sites:“I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be immediately reprimanded, then thrown out like a dog.”

In reality, Bertrand’s reporting was not “fake news.” All she pointed out was that Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear sites had been “obliterated” was an exaggeration, noting that the strikes may not have set back the country’s atomic weapons program as much as he asserted. What this reveals is that, much like Videla—who could not bear to be challenged on subjects such as the disappearance of thousands—Trump feels threatened by being proven wrong and, by extension, exposed. Like Videla, Trump will go to great lengths to intimidate journalists who challenge him. Like how Videla stripped journalists of their humanity by framing them as communist, Trump degrades reporters to the level of a “dog” publicly before millions of followers. 

Trump has also sought to control the media by threatening entire news outlets with complete termination. In February of this year, he sued CBS for twenty billion dollars over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which he claimed had been deceptively edited to damage his reputation and mislead the public. Twenty billion dollars is an extraordinarily excessive demand—especially considering that CBS itself is worth only twenty-seven billion. Such a payout would leave the network barely able to survive, if not entirely destroyed. And all of this, simply over alleged “misleading editing.”

The irony is that every news outlet edits interviews with politicians to highlight the most essential and relevant moments. This practice is not evidence of bias but of journalistic efficiency. In fact, CBS edited its interview with Senator J.D. Vance—Trump’s right hand man—in precisely the same way, presenting the public with the most concise and important content. What is even more striking is that while Trump has sued not only CBS but also the Associated Press, NPR, PBS, and The Wall Street Journal, for a combined total of more than thirty billion dollars, he has not filed a single lawsuit against any fully conservative news outlet. This is a classic dictatorial play. Trump seeks to dominate the media landscape by destroying any outlet that portrays him unfavorably, while leaving his political allies untouched. In doing so, he aims to control what the public sees and hears about him—a tactic that Videla used nearly forty years ago. 

The consequences of Trump going after news outlets and their journalists are that we are losing not just the freedom of the press, but the media itself, because of the climate of fear he has created. News organizations no longer feel secure in their First Amendment rights to publish freely. As a result, many have either stopped reporting on Trump’s policies altogether or have altered their opinion pieces to avoid addressing the injustices of his administration. Take, for example, PBS, which cut an entire segment from a documentary—the only scene in which the film’s focus, author Art Spiegelman, criticized Trump. According to Axios, executives at the station justified the cut by calling it a “breach of taste.” But whose taste? Trump’s taste—his palate for what he wants the public to see in the news. He does not want the truth. He wants flattering portrayals.

It is understandable, then, why outlets like PBS resort to self-censorship. As with the media under Videla’s dictatorship, they see it as the only way to survive. This is precisely why the journalists in the panel discussion expressed such fear, because if they do not self-censor, if they continue reporting the truth on issues Trump despises, their careers may not endure. Thus, reporters and their organizations face the stark choice of choosing between pursuing the truth and risking total destruction, or submitting to Trump’s dictates and continuing to exist. Most will choose the latter, for the threat of losing everything is too great. The result, however, is the loss of truth in America and the surrender of public discourse to Trump’s control. It is a first step into a Videla-esc authoritarian rule.

The only way to prevent America from descending fully into authoritarianism—where Trump, like Videla, commands absolute power and bends the nation to his will—is to refuse to tolerate his fear-mongering. When news outlets submit to his threats of lawsuits or public humiliation, they are effectively obeying his commands and allowing him to consolidate more power. Authoritarian regimes thrive off of silencing the  truth. Thus, when journalists and news organizations fail to call out what is wrong, they are complicit in enabling injustices to continue and allowing Trump to remain in control. 

The responsibility to expose the truth no matter Trump’s threats does not rest solely on journalists or their respective news outlets, it belongs to the American people as a whole. We have the constitutional right to speak freely, so we have the responsibility to speak up, out, and against. We must all be journalists and expose the truth, for if we recognize the wrongs that we see with our eyes and ears, no president, no strongman, no dictator, no Videla can threaten our great democracy. 

Cox, Robert. On Argentina’s Murderous Regime. The Guardian, 6 Nov. 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/06/argentina-human-rights

Reporters Without Borders. 30th Anniversary of Coup: Tribute to 98 Journalists Missing or Killed during Military Dictatorship. RSF, 24 Mar. 2006. https://rsf.org/en/30th-anniversary-coup-tribute-98-journalists-missing-or-killed-during-military-dictatorship

Axios. Trump’s Pressure Campaign on Journalists Intensifies. Axios, 27 May 2025. https://www.axios.com/2025/05/27/trump-journalism-pressure

Middle Tennessee State University. Trump Attacks News Media for Reporting on Intelligence Assessment of Iran Strikes. First Amendment Encyclopedia, 2020. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/post/trump-attacks-news-media-for-reporting-on-intelligence-assessment-of-iran-strikes

Cox, Robert. Keeping the Silence, Breaking the Silence: The Role of the Published Word. ReVista, Harvard Review of Latin America, Fall 2013. https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/keeping-the-silence-breaking-the-silence-the-role-of-the-published-word

Smith, Terence. There’s a Long Way to Go, but General Videla Opposes an Elitist System. The New York Times, 26 June 1977. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/06/26/archives/theres-a-long-way-to-go-but-general-videla-opposes-an-elitist.html

The Guardian. Trump Moves to Cut NPR and PBS Funding. The Guardian, 28 Dec. 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/28/trump-npr-pbs-funding-cut

The Independent. Trump Sues Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over Epstein Birthday Card Story. The Independent, 13 Feb. 2025. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-epstein-birthday-card-wsj-lawsuit-b2791930.html

Faber, David. Mediator Floats $20 Billion Settlement in Trump Suit against CBS. The New York Times, 7 Apr. 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/business/media/trump-paramount-mediator-60-minutes.html

Sky News Australia. “Fire Natasha”: Trump Lashes Out at CNN Journalist over Iran Nuclear Report. Sky News, 12 Sept. 2024. https://www.skynews.com.au/business/media/fire-natasha-trump-lashes-out-at-cnn-journalist-for-fake-news-reporting-on-irans-nuclear-sites-calls-on-her-to-be-immediately-reprimanded/news-story/271ed99f6a3f003e6aa45c9bb7e93d70

Fast Company. Trump’s Media Crackdown: What Free Press Looks like after 100 Days. Fast Company, 14 May 2025. https://www.fastcompany.com/91324552/trump-media-crackdown-free-press-and-journalism-100-days