FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatens to revoke broadcast licenses over war coverage. Pete Hegseth demands a more "patriotic press." These declarations feel almost theatrical — and that's exactly the point. They draw attention to the loud, visible pressure, while the quieter kind takes hold inside the newsroom. We welcome a special guest to make sense of these new tactics, and examples from other countries and contexts that contextualize this moment.

Matt Powers is a Professor of Communication at the University of Washington and Co-Director of its Center for Journalism, Media and Democracy. He is the author of The Journalist's Predicament: Difficult Choices in a Declining Profession (Columbia University Press, 2023) and NGOs as Newsmakers: The Changing Landscape of International News (Columbia University Press, 2018). In his recent article with Ozan Asik, An Ethics of Suppression: How Professional Values Silence Critical Journalism in Turkey, he takes us inside Turkish newsrooms to show how journalists navigate — and survive — under authoritarian pressure. (He also has a (very) close connection to one of our hosts!)

What he found is unsettling: editors suppressing critical reporting while genuinely believing they are protecting the space for journalism to survive. At what point does maintaining the appearance of a functioning newsroom become indistinguishable from providing cover for its capture?

And the question Turkish journalists learned the hard way: most people can't just leave. So what does staying and continuing to do the work actually look like — inside a system that is increasingly hostile to the journalism you came to do?