Petition: Media Must Expose DOJ Shielding Trump

The Justice Department’s attempt to reinterpret long-standing post-Watergate rules around presidential records raises serious concerns about protecting Donald Trump from accountability. These rules were designed to ensure transparency and prevent abuses of power—but shifting them now, in ways that benefit Trump, risks undermining those safeguards and shielding critical information from public scrutiny.

Yet too much media coverage treats this as a technical legal dispute or bureaucratic adjustment rather than confronting its broader implications. When the DOJ appears to change rules in ways that protect a powerful political figure, that is not routine governance—it is a potential abuse of authority. Framing it as process obscures the central question: whether the justice system is being used to protect, rather than hold accountable, those in power.

We call on major news organizations to cover this development clearly and forcefully as an attempt to shield Donald Trump—examining the legal precedent being altered, who benefits from the change, and what it means for transparency and the rule of law. The public deserves reporting that names when accountability is being weakened, not coverage that normalizes it.