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“Incidents take place.” Just two words. That’s all it took for the US president to brush off what is probably the most notorious journalist killing of the past ten years – and in so doing sank to a fresh depth in his contempt for the press, for the media – and for the truth.

The Context

The US president’s dismissive attitude of the killing of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi came during a press conference with the Saudi leader, Mohammed bin Salman – a man whom the CIA found in a recent assessment had orchestrated the abduction and murder of the journalist in 2018. (The crown prince has rejected accusations.)

The American spy agencies were not the sole entities to determine the murder – which occurred in the Saudi diplomatic building in Turkey and in which the 59-year-old journalist was drugged and dismembered – was signed off at the highest levels. An investigation led by former UN expert, the UN investigator, reached similar conclusions.

Global Reactions

For a short time, governments were in agreement in their criticism of the kingdom’s conduct. The United States enacted sanctions and travel restrictions in that year over the killing, although it refrained of sanctioning Prince Mohammed himself. Since then, the kingdom has been gradually restoring itself – and the leader’s trip to the US capital seemed to be the final confirmation of that rehabilitation.

Presidential Comments

Critics of the regime had roundly condemned the meeting. But what was evident at the presidential residence was more alarming than could have been anticipated. Not only did Trump fete the Saudi leader but he seemed to alter the facts – and then blamed the victim. Prince Mohammed, Trump asserted when asked, knew nothing about the murder – in direct contradiction to what his country’s own intelligence services concluded previously. Moreover, the president said: “A lot of people didn’t like that person that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

Established Conduct

This marks a fresh and shameful point for a leader who has made little secret of his contempt for the facts – or for the press. He has smeared journalists (he called a news network, whose reporter asked the inquiry about the journalist at the media event “false information”), scolded them in open settings (he called one a “piggy” this week for asking about his connection with the disgraced financier the convicted criminal), sued news outlets for eye-watering sums of money in frivolous cases, and called for news outlets he doesn’t like to lose their licenses.

He has pressured established media out of the official briefing group for declining to use terminology of his choosing, and he has gutted financial support for essential public media at home and crucial free press abroad.

Wider Consequences

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

It is unsurprising that 2024 was the deadliest year on file for journalists in the more than 30 years the press freedom organization has been tracking this information: a persistent failure to hold those responsible for journalist killings has established a environment without consequences in which journalists’ killers are literally able to escape punishment and so persist in these actions.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Middle Eastern nation, which is responsible for the deaths of over two hundred journalists in the past two years.

Societal Impact

The impact on the public is profound. Attacks on journalists are attacks on the truth. They are undermining of reality. They are attacks on our entitlement to information and on our freedom to live freely and safely.

On Thursday, CPJ gathers for its annual global journalism honors. The statement at the event is the identical as my one for the president: such events may happen. But it is our duty to make sure they cease.