🔗 Share this article

“Things happen.” A mere phrase. That’s all it took for Donald Trump to effectively dismiss what is arguably the most infamous journalist killing of the past ten years – and in so doing plumbed a new low in his contempt for journalists, for the media – and for the facts.

Background Details

The US president’s dismissive attitude of the murder of well-known reporter the Washington Post columnist came during a press conference with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – a man whom the CIA found in a recent assessment had orchestrated the kidnap and killing of the journalist in 2018. (Prince Mohammed has rejected accusations.)

The US intelligence services were not the sole entities to determine the murder – which took place in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and in which the 59-year-old Khashoggi was drugged and dismembered – was signed off at the top echelons. An inquiry led by former UN expert, Agnès Callamard, reached comparable findings.

International Response

For a short time, governments were in agreement in their condemnation of the kingdom’s conduct. The US enacted penalties and visa bans in that year over the murder, although it stopped short of penalizing Prince Mohammed himself. Since then, the nation has been gradually restoring itself – and the leader’s trip to Washington seemed to be the final confirmation of that rehabilitation.

Presidential Comments

Critics of the regime had roundly condemned the visit. But what was evident 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 history – and then blamed the deceased. Prince Mohammed, he claimed when asked, knew nothing about the killing – in direct contradiction to what his country’s own spy agencies concluded four years ago. Moreover, Trump said: “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

Pattern of Behavior

This marks a fresh and shameful point for a president who has made little secret of his contempt for the facts – or for the press. Trump has defamed reporters (he called a news network, whose reporter asked the inquiry about Khashoggi at the Saudi press conference “fake news”), berated them in public (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 large amounts of money in vexatious law suits, and called for news outlets he disapproves of to be shut down.

He has forced established media out of the White House press pool for declining to use language of his choosing, and he has gutted financial support for vital news services at domestically and vital independent media abroad.

Broader Implications

All of that has created an environment in which reporters are manifestly less safe in the United States, but one in which their victimization – and indeed murder – becomes not just insignificant (“things happen”) but tolerated (“a lot of people disliked that gentleman”).

It is unsurprising that that year was the most lethal year on record for the press in the more than 30 years the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has been documenting this information: a persistent failure to bring to justice those accountable for journalist killings has established a culture of impunity in which journalists’ killers are actually able to escape punishment and so continue to do so.

In no place is this more evident than in Israel, which is responsible for the deaths of over two hundred journalists in the recent period.

Effect on Society

The effect on the public is profound. Targeting reporters are assaults on facts. They are undermining of reality. They are attacks on our entitlement to information and on our freedom to live freely and securely.

This week, CPJ meets for its annual global journalism honors. The statement there is the identical as my one for the president: such events may occur. But it is our duty to make sure they do not.