🔗 Share this article

“Incidents take place.” A mere phrase. That’s all it took for the US president to brush off what is probably the most infamous murder of a reporter of the last decade – and in so doing plumbed a new low in his disregard toward the press, for journalism – and for the truth.

Background Details

The US president’s dismissal of the killing of well-known reporter Jamal Khashoggi came during a media briefing with the Saudi leader, Mohammed bin Salman – a man whom the CIA concluded in a 2021 report had ordered the abduction and murder of the Washington Post columnist in 2018. (The crown prince has denied involvement.)

The US intelligence services were not the sole entities to determine the murder – which took place in the Saudi diplomatic building in Turkey and in which the late Khashoggi was sedated and dismembered – was signed off at the top echelons. An investigation led by former UN expert, Agnès Callamard, reached comparable findings.

International Response

For a brief period, nations were unified in their criticism of Saudi Arabia’s actions. The US imposed penalties and visa bans in that year over the killing, although it refrained of sanctioning Prince Mohammed himself. Since then, the kingdom has been slowly rehabilitating itself – and the crown prince’s visit to Washington seemed to be the ultimate sign of that rehabilitation.

White House Remarks

Opponents of the regime had roundly condemned the meeting. But what was on display at the White House was worse than could have been anticipated. Not only did the president honor the Saudi leader but he seemed to alter the facts – and then pointed fingers at the deceased. The crown prince, he asserted when asked, was unaware about the killing – in direct contradiction to what his country’s own intelligence services determined four years ago. Moreover, Trump said: “Many individuals didn’t like that person that you’re talking about, whether you approve of him or didn’t like him, incidents occur.”

Pattern of Behavior

This represents a new and abject low for a president who has made no attempt to hide of his contempt for the truth – or for the media. He has defamed journalists (he called ABC news, whose reporter asked the question about the journalist at the media event “fake news”), berated them in public (he called one a “rude name” this week for asking about his relationship with the convicted sex offender financier the convicted criminal), taken legal action against news outlets for eye-watering sums of money in vexatious law suits, and called for media groups he doesn’t like to lose their licenses.

He has forced established media out of the White House press pool for declining to use terminology of his preference, and he has gutted funding for vital news services at domestically and crucial free press abroad.

Broader Implications

All of that has created an environment in which journalists are clearly more vulnerable in the US, but one in which their targeting – and indeed murder – becomes not just insignificant (“things happen”) but acceptable (“a lot of people disliked that gentleman”).

It is unsurprising that 2024 was the most lethal year on record for the press in the over three decades the press freedom organization has been tracking this information: a persistent failure to bring to justice those responsible for reporter murders has created a environment without consequences in which journalists’ killers are literally able to escape punishment and so continue to do so.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Middle Eastern nation, which is responsible for the killing of over two hundred media workers in the recent period.

Effect on Society

The impact on society is profound. Attacks on journalists are attacks on the truth. They are undermining of reality. They are attacks on our rights to know and on our liberty to exist without fear and safely.

On Thursday, CPJ gathers for its annual International Press Freedom awards. The statement at the event is the same as my message for Trump: these things may occur. But it is our responsibility to make sure they cease.