The Quiet Rearrangement of the Truth

On the White House’s War Against the Press and the Public’s Right to Know

By Dino Alonso

It begins in silence. Not with a law. Not with a gun. Not even with a lie—but with a seating chart.

The White House has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it now has the authority not only to answer the press, but to arrange it—to decide who sits closest to power, who may speak, and who must strain to hear from the back. What was once a room for questions is being reshaped into a stage for scripted answers. Do not be fooled. This is not about order. It is about control.

The press room—unruly, imperfect, irritating to every president—is one of the last windows through which the people may glimpse power in its raw form. And now, they are drawing the curtains. They will say it’s about modernization. They will say it’s about equity. But what they are doing is simple and dangerous: they are deciding which truths are valid—and which truths are no longer welcome.

The authoritarian does not ban the truth. He reclassifies it. He does not silence the journalist. He demotes them. He moves them out of the frame. He does not burn the newspaper. He calls it fake, and hands the microphone to a loyalist who smiles at the right time. Then he looks at the camera and says he’s the victim. And the crowd applauds.

This is not about chairs. This is about the government deciding which realities are permitted and which will be erased. A government that fears questions has already answered them.

Let us remember: it is not the press that owes the government access. It is the government that owes the people answers. When a government curates the questions, when it rewards flattery and punishes truth, it no longer serves the people, it manages them. It dims the light in the room until only certain truths are visible.

The press—messy, flawed, often imperfect—is still one of the last lines between the citizen and the state’s machinery of illusion. And now, that line is being pushed to the back of the room.

What comes next? When the cameras are cut? When reporters are removed? When the lie is no longer called a lie, but a matter of “national interest”?

If we do not speak now, if we do not organize, if we do not refuse to be managed, we will wake to find ourselves not informed, but performed to.

And the actors on stage will smile, the crowd will cheer, and the script will tell us that everything is fine. And we will believe it, because the truth, once seated quietly in the back, will have already left the room.