🔗 Share this article

“Incidents take place.” Just two words. That’s all it took for the US president to effectively dismiss what is probably the most notorious murder of a reporter of the past ten years – and in so doing plumbed a new low in his disregard toward journalists, for the media – and for the truth.

The Context

The American leader’s dismissal of the murder of well-known reporter the Washington Post columnist came during a media briefing with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – a man whom the US intelligence concluded in a 2021 report had ordered the abduction and murder of the journalist in 2018. (Prince Mohammed has rejected accusations.)

The US intelligence services were not the sole entities to determine the homicide – which took place in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and in which the 59-year-old Khashoggi was drugged and dismembered – was approved at the highest levels. An inquiry led by then UN special rapporteur, Agnès Callamard, reached comparable findings.

Global Reactions

For a brief period, nations were in agreement in their condemnation of Saudi Arabia’s actions. The US enacted penalties and visa bans in that year over the killing, although it stopped short of sanctioning the crown prince himself. Since then, the kingdom has been gradually restoring itself – and the leader’s trip to the US capital seemed to be the ultimate sign of that rehabilitation.

White House Remarks

Critics of the government had roundly condemned the meeting. But what was on display at the White House was more alarming than could have been imagined. Not only did the president fete the Saudi leader but he effectively rewrote the facts – and then blamed the victim. The crown prince, he asserted when asked, was unaware about the murder – in direct contradiction to what his country’s own spy agencies concluded four years ago. Moreover, Trump said: “A lot of people disliked that person that you’re talking about, whether you approve of him or disapproved, incidents occur.”

Pattern of Behavior

This marks a fresh and shameful low for a president who has made little secret of his contempt for the facts – or for the media. He has defamed reporters (he called a news network, whose journalist asked the question about Khashoggi at the Saudi press conference “fake news”), scolded them in open settings (he called one a “piggy” this week for asking about his connection with the disgraced financier the convicted criminal), taken legal action against media organizations for eye-watering sums of money in vexatious law suits, and called for news outlets he doesn’t like to lose their licenses.

He has forced veteran news services out of the official briefing group for declining to use language of his preference, and he has slashed financial support for essential public media at home and crucial free press abroad.

Wider Consequences

All of that has fostered an atmosphere in which journalists are clearly more vulnerable in the United States, but one in which their targeting – and indeed killing – becomes not just insignificant (“incidents occur”) but acceptable (“many individuals disliked that person”).

It is no surprise that 2024 was the deadliest year on record for journalists in the more than 30 years the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has been tracking this data: a persistent failure to bring to justice those accountable for reporter murders has established a environment without consequences in which journalists’ killers are actually able to get away with murder 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 effect on society is deep. Attacks on journalists are assaults on facts. They are undermining of reality. They are violations of our entitlement to information and on our liberty to exist without fear and safely.

This week, CPJ gathers for its annual global journalism honors. My message there is the identical as my one for the president: such events may happen. But it is our responsibility to make sure they do not.