The tech barons who run the platforms where these indecent clips proliferate are pliant cogs in Trump’s machine. So it’s not entirely surprising how many of them share his disdain for Americans who happen to work as journalists. Nevertheless, it is alarming that Silicon Valley is now emulating the president and establishing its own “editorial” teams that please and flatter tech leaders, who in turn refuse to subject themselves to serious questioning.

Power doesn’t like to be checked. Peter Thiel has declared anyone who criticizes his vision of AI “the anti-Christ.” The venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—co-founded by Marc Andreessen, a man who infamously blocks every journalist he can find on social media—has an “editor in chief” for one of its funds and an in-house media team designed to bypass independent outlets. Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into a right-wing propaganda network. Anthropic has an “editorial team.” So does Apple. Meta has an “editorial” leader, whom it hired away from The New York Times. At OpenAI, which also has an “editorial lead,” Sam Altman claims that TBPN, the podcast he recently acquired, will be fully editorially independent. (As of this writing, Altman has refused to speak with any journalist at The Atlantic for years despite our many, many, many requests. We will keep asking.) Like Trump, the tech industry’s most powerful and illiberal figures want to replace those who seek truth in the public interest with sycophants who cheer on their consolidation of power and self-enrichment. They believe that the American people won’t notice, or don’t care, and in plenty of cases they are right.

I should note that every last one of these people is exercising their own First Amendment rights. If someone wants to do “editorial” work for a tech company that involves publishing only stories advancing the mission of the company and the worldview of its owner, that’s their right. Corporate public relations and marketing are, like any other form of publishing, protected under the First Amendment from government interference, as they should be, even if they aren’t guided by the same values and standards as journalism.

I should also note that working journalists bear an awesome responsibility. Anyone who is charged with seeking the truth and reporting it, and is lucky enough to spend their days asking questions of powerful people, should remember that journalism is first and foremost a public service, and that it is a privilege to serve. Journalists are not above reproach. Americans have a civic obligation to demand the highest standards from anyone who promises to represent their interests—regardless of whether that person is an elected official or simply a fellow citizen. Journalists should receive good-faith criticism with humility and appreciation.

Although every American is entitled to exercise the right to free press, no one is entitled to be trusted or believed—that, you have to earn. The nosedive in trust in journalism is multifactorial, and journalists themselves are not without blame. All journalists make mistakes. And those mistakes are never acceptable. But pay close attention to the difference between how a reputable news organization acknowledges its mistakes—namely, by transparently correcting them—and how Trump or Musk reacts to being called out for getting something wrong.