A coalition of prominent press freedom organizations that spent years blasting President Donald Trump's treatment of journalists has now turned its fire on one of his loudest Democratic critics: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, along with the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders, and the Society of Professional Journalists, sent an Oct. 13 letter accusing the Moore administration of unlawfully retaliating against reporters at Sinclair-affiliated news outlets and The Baltimore Sun, according to Fox News Digital and WBFF.
The dispute centers on a decision by Maryland agencies to subject even routine media inquiries from those outlets to additional legal review — a policy Moore's office says is standard practice but which the press groups call a "legal review black hole."
At the center of the fight is David Smith, executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group and majority owner of The Baltimore Sun. Smith filed a defamation lawsuit against Moore in July, accusing the governor of making false and damaging statements about him during a telephone call. Maryland agencies have explicitly cited Smith's lawsuit in written responses to reporters, informing journalists their inquiries would be referred to legal counsel before receiving any response.
"It's particularly offensive that Moore seeks to boost his national profile by slamming the Trump administration's unconstitutional attempts to ban disfavored media outlets from the White House when he's engaged in such similar antics himself," Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement accompanying the letter.
"It is particularly jarring that, while government agencies under your watch stonewall reporters based on flimsy pretexts, you take to the airwaves to condemn the Trump administration's unconstitutional ban of news outlets the president doesn't like from the White House. Yes, Trump frequently turns his personal grudges into censorial government policy, to the detriment of the public. But your own conduct appears not much different." — Freedom of the Press Foundation letter to Gov. Wes Moore
The groups argued that journalists should not face different treatment from government officials because of a dispute involving their outlets' ownership, drawing a direct comparison to the Trump administration's restrictions on certain White House reporters.
Moore's Office Pushes Back
Moore's office strongly disputed the allegations in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, insisting that reporters have continued receiving responses from state agencies despite the additional legal scrutiny.
The governor, a Democrat who took office in 2023, has not publicly responded to the letter beyond that statement. It is not yet clear whether his administration plans to change the review policy in response to the coalition's demands.
CNN Business reported separately this week that news outlets won a round in court against Trump's press ban, while cautioning the fight is far from over — a framing that critics say conveniently ignores the fact that a Democratic governor stands accused of the exact same behavior the legacy media spent years condemning.
The letter's signatories are hardly conservative partisans. The Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN America, and Reporters Without Borders have been among the most aggressive critics of Trump's press policies, filing lawsuits and issuing condemnations throughout his first and second terms. Their decision to turn on Moore now undercuts the narrative that press freedom is a partisan issue — and it forces Democrats to answer for a standard they claimed to uphold.
Our Take
For years, the same press freedom groups now lining up against Wes Moore demanded that Republicans accept their framing without question: that Trump's treatment of the media was an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment, a five-alarm fire that required constant vigilance from every journalist in America.
We at Next News Network have never defended government retaliation against reporters — not from Trump, not from Obama, not from Biden, and not from Moore. But the silence from the legacy media on this story is deafening. Where are the primetime panels? Where are the screaming op-eds? Where are the "democracy is dying" chyrons?
They're missing, because the accused governor has a (D) next to his name.
Moore wants to run for president. He's spent the last two years building a national profile as the anti-Trump, appearing on every cable show that will have him, lecturing red-state governors about authoritarianism. Now he's accused of sending reporters' inquiries into a legal purgatory because the owner of their outlets sued him. The hypocrisy is not subtle — it is the whole point.
Patriots, this is the lesson: the rules only apply one way in the establishment media's world. When the press freedom coalition turns its guns on a Democrat, it exposes the grift for what it is. Hold every politician to the same standard — and never let the media tell you which abuses of power are worth their outrage.
