Week of March 19, 2026

From the editor’s desk

When I say that the Trump administration’s threats to press freedom have escalated yet again, I won’t blame you if you wonder if we accidentally sent you an old column. We’ve said it often over the past 14 months.

But yes, during the past week, the threats have escalated yet again. The administration is sending loud and clear messaging that it prefers propaganda validating its own stance over honest reporting.

The most obvious recent examples are the pushbacks against reporting on the Iran war. On Saturday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened, in an X post, to revoke media companies’ licenses over their reporting of the war. And on Sunday, a Trump social media post asserted that news outlets should be charged with treason.

The Trump administration’s eagerness to control the flow of information is not limited to war reporting it doesn’t like. Here’s an example from closer to home. Yesterday, SFGate reported that it had been blacklisted by the Department of the Interior’s Public Affairs Office. The online news source—which does a great job of covering outdoors and environmental topics in Tahoe and Northern California—noticed that its dozens of information requests to national parks had gone ignored. Park employees, to whom SFGate granted anonymity, finally explained what was up:

“We have received direction to not respond in any way to any inquiries received no matter the topic from SFGATE,” one employee said. “This is the only outlet that we have been instructed to ignore, and we have responded to other outlets on the same topics that SFGATE has asked about.”

Insiders say the ban on providing information to an entire media organization is likely unprecedented. “On a national level, you guys are the only ones I’ve ever heard of getting blacklisted,” a communications employee said. …

Although the Department of the Interior has publicly expressed dissatisfaction with SFGATE’s reporting in the past, particularly regarding lawlessness in Yosemite National Park, insiders say the last straw was apparently a Feb. 10 article with the headline “‘Unprecedented and a mess’: Sweeping new rules restrict nearly all aspects of national park communications.”

An employee said they wanted to provide SFGate with accurate information, but couldn’t.

In one example, a park employee took the time to write responses for an SFGATE feature story involving an expedition. After nearly a month of waiting to hear back, the employee let SFGATE know that the responses were not approved.

“The park was super on board with it and were excited about my responses,” the employee told SFGATE, “but I got a canned response [from the regional level] about how my responses don’t match the ‘administration’s goals’ and how SFGATE isn’t ‘in line with the administration’s views.’”

SFGate asked former National Park Service director Jon Jarvis to comment on the situation. He replied by email.

Jarvis (said) that in his 40 years with the Park Service, he never experienced any blacklisting of the press, at any level.

“There was always grumbling by the politicals about a negative story,” Jarvis wrote, “but the practice was to not respond and let it pass. This is a new era of message control.”

It’s almost as if the administration timed all of this on purpose to coincide with Sunshine Week—which is this week, March 15-21—when the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock highlight a year’s worth of government agencies refusing to release information that should be public. They do so by conferring the humorous yet sobering Foilies awards upon notable offenders. The RN&R published the Foilies a few days ago; you can read them here. 

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor