Anyone who doubts the incoming Trump administration poses a serious threat to independent journalism has not been paying attention. An attack is already underway — and we journalists must not allow ourselves to be intimidated.

President-elect Donald Trump has announced — and demonstrated — what is coming. “We have to straighten out the press,” he said last week. “Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.” Trump says he wants “a fair media,” but what he means by fair is tame and compliant.

So far, the assault is being waged via litigation. This month, ABC News said it would pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit Trump filed over the way anchor George Stephanopoulos, in a broadcast, characterized the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case that Trump was liable for sexual abuse. It is possible, perhaps likely, that ABC could have prevailed if the suit had gone to trial. But it is also possible that Trump would have appealed to the Supreme Court, where some justices are eager to weaken long-standing precedent that gives journalists broad protection against defamation suits filed by public figures.

Last week, Trump sued the Des Moines Register and respected pollster J. Ann Selzer for publishing a poll, days before the election, that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa; Trump ended up winning the state by 13 points. Trump and his lawyers are not alleging defamation but instead suing under the novel theory that Selzer’s off-the-mark poll amounted to consumer fraud.

Meanwhile, Trump is continuing to pursue a suit he filed in 2022 against the Pulitzer Prize board alleging, among other things, “defamation by implication.” Trump is angry over the award of the 2018 prize for national reporting to The Post and the New York Times. The Pulitzer citation said the award was for the newspapers’ coverage of “Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.” Trump argues that the “Russia hoax” has been discredited, and he wants the awards rescinded.

(Full disclosure: I was a member of the Pulitzer board in 2018, but I was recused from any participation in this decision because The Post was one of the finalists. I had left the board by the time Trump filed his suit.)

In these cases, Trump is going after big, powerful institutions. ABC’s parent company Disney, the Register’s parent company Gannett and the Pulitzer board all have the resources to defend themselves (or, in the case of Disney, pay a handsome settlement). But for smaller news organizations or individual journalists, the cost of defending even a frivolous lawsuit filed by such a wealthy plaintiff could be ruinous.

And, when Trump takes office, the threat will escalate. Perhaps dramatically.

Kash Patel, Trump’s candidate to become FBI director, has made explicit threats against the news media. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said last year in a podcast hosted by former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.” The word “criminally” jumps out of that quote.

A bill called the Press Act that would give journalists added protection — preventing the government from forcing them to reveal their confidential sources or snooping on journalists’ communications without their knowledge — made it through the Republican-controlled House. But after Trump posted on Truth Social last month that “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!” the legislation stalled in the Senate. There it remains.

We fail the country if we grant Trump his wish for a docile, compliant news media. We also fail if we allow ourselves to be baited into thinking and acting as part of some anti-Trump “resistance.”

After Eugene Meyer bought The Post in 1933, he laid out seven guiding principles for the newspaper, the first of which is “to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.” The stance of the news media must be pro-truth, even when Trump calls us the “enemy of the people” — and even when his political opponents call us cowards or quislings.

This is not, mind you, an argument for seeking some sort of imaginary middle ground between true and false. When Trump tells a lie, we need to call it a lie. Given that The Post’s often-cited Fact Checker column chronicled 30,573 “false or misleading claims” that Trump made during his first presidential term, it is likely that the media will have many occasions to correct the record — and invite Trump’s ire — during his second term.

When that ire comes, we must withstand it. We work for the people, not the president. Whenever it’s necessary, we’ll remind the president that he works for the people, too.