New York Times Publisher Sounds Alarm That Trump Is Using Authoritarian, Anti-Press ‘Playbook’

Attorney General Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, sounded the alarm on Thursday about a “quiet war” on press freedom waged by authoritarian leaders around the world and said Americans should understand the anti-media “playbook” that Donald Trump could use in a second term.

In an editorial published by one of the Times’ main rivals, The Washington Post, Sulzberger warned that Trump and his allies had repeatedly threatened the press and said he wanted the Times to “ensure we are prepared for whatever comes.”

“My colleagues and I have spent months investigating how press freedom has been attacked in Hungary, as well as in other democracies such as India and Brazil,” he wrote.

These techniques include “stirring public distrust of independent journalism and normalizing harassment” of journalists in order to create “a climate conducive to media repression”; using government bodies such as taxes “to punish offending journalists and news organizations” while rewarding “those who show loyalty to their leaders”; filing baseless lawsuits; and using the courts to increase the costs of reporting news.

“The effectiveness of this manual should not be underestimated,” Sulzberger wrote.

The Times publisher said he did not want to get involved in politics, but that Trump’s anti-press words and actions — calling the media “the enemy of the people” and suggesting the government be used to suppress dissent — should be taken seriously.

“I believe that this risk is borne by all members of our profession, as well as all who depend on it,” he wrote.

Defending the need for trustworthy news and information, Sulzberger called on his colleagues to strengthen protections, which includes training employees to protect themselves and their sources, preparing for legal challenges and harassment, and countering campaigns that seek to unfairly undermine trust in news media.

Sulzberger occasionally writes essays to encourage dialogue in the journalism industry about key issues. Last year, he wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review about the debate over objectivity in journalism. This year, with Trump’s anti-media rhetoric once again in the spotlight, he wanted to write about what an escalating campaign against the American press might look like.

Sulzberger treated it as a kind of summer project.

“To make sure we were prepared for whatever came, my colleagues and I spent months researching how press freedom was under attack in Hungary—as well as in other democracies such as India and Brazil,” he wrote in the essay. “The political and media environments in each country are different, and campaigns have met with varying tactics and levels of success, but the pattern of anti-press efforts reveals common threads.”

Sulzberger thought long and hard about how to publish the essay—in The Times or elsewhere. He ultimately put it in the Post, an unorthodox move given the long history of competition between the two publications. The collaboration is a clear sign of the importance of solidarity in the face of existential threats to press freedom.

“I am grateful to The Post for publishing this piece, especially given its length (and the author’s questionable institutional affiliations),” he wrote in an email to colleagues on Thursday. “They have been a great partner on press freedom for many decades, and it is great to see that tradition continue.”

To receive more CNN news and newsletters, sign up for CNN.com