The recently released 20,000 Jeffrey Epstein emails make one thing painfully clear: Some of the biggest names in media weren’t watchdogs.
They were enablers.
New York Times journalist Shaun McCreech is examining emails, and a troubling pattern emerges. Journalists, editors, publishers, and publicists entrusted with public trust helped a convicted predator plan his return to respectability. They offered advice, opened doors, traded access, and some even provided platforms to help rehabilitate his image.
This wasn’t a failure of judgment. This was a failure of ethics.
When journalists use their influence to support the powerful at the expense of the public, they do more than erode trust. They violate the core purpose of their profession.
The Epstein emails, revealed by McCreesh, expose an old-media system in which the influential shielded each other.
Celebrated biographer Michael Wolff brainstorms ways to reshape Epstein’s coverage and offers his own column inches.
Billionaire media owner Mort Zuckerman discussed media ventures with Epstein even after his conviction. Publicist Peggy Siegel offered to rewrite Epstein’s spin “in better grammar” so she could pass it along to Arianna Huffington. Publicist and gossip columnist R. Couri Hay warned Epstein that The Daily Beast founder and Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown had assigned a reporter to investigate him. Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has long been accused of softening or sidestepping adverse Epstein reporting.
These were not naive interns. They were seasoned professionals who understood exactly what Epstein was. Yet, they still helped him. They didn’t just enable Epstein; they facilitated the erasure of his victims. They upheld the illusion of legitimacy. They assisted a predator in trying to re-enter polite society through institutions designed to protect the public from men like him.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: This pattern of enabling hasn’t ended. It simply moved from back rooms to prime time.
Enabling never begins as a big plan. It starts with small moral compromises. A journalist agrees to “soften” a line. A publicist offers to pass along a polished talking point. An editor warns a friend that a reporter is asking questions. A columnist suggests a favorable outlet. A publisher entertains a business partnership with someone he knows is radioactive.
Does this genuinely seek the truth or serve the public’s best interest? So much for giving victims a voice. Every step leads to the same result: Misleading the public while a powerful man avoids scrutiny because those who should have spoken the truth decided he still deserved their influence.
Epstein understood this clearly. He manipulated the media just as he manipulated his victims. He was calculated, persistent, and strategic. The main sickness was the belief that access is more important than integrity—that being close to power matters more than holding it accountable.
When access takes precedence, ethics become secondary. When ethics are sidelined, predators gain refuge. When predators find refuge, victims lose their final protection.
That is the real betrayal.
If Epstein’s era was the age of whispered enabling, the present moment is a different, yet public, form of televised enabling. No matter how much disgrace or contempt an individual brings to himself, political and journalistic enablers are eager to help.
Today’s enablers no longer hide; they broadcast. Tucker Carlson spreads racism, antisemitism, and authoritarian ideas through mainstream talk. Nick Fuentes was pushed from the fringe into the spotlight by those who turn bigotry into content. The pardon for January 6 attackers redefines a violent attack as patriotic dissent. Matt Gaetz, leaving Congress amid a sex-trafficking investigation, was rewarded with a show on One America News. Gaetz was never charged and denies any illegal activity involving minors. Fabulist conman and former Congressman George Santos is out of jail after a Presidential sentence commutation.
The President keeps publicly condemning his political opponents with threats and urging the Department of Justice to prosecute his enemies. The President ordered the DOJ to investigate only Democrats mentioned in the Epstein files, an overt weaponization of justice. However, as this column was going to print, Trump has now requested that Congress release the Epstein files. We’ll see.
The tactics are the same as Epstein’s rehabilitation machine—just louder, bolder, and more profitable. What Epstein planned to accomplish through whispered emails is now shared across social media, cable shows, podcasts, and rallies.
Bad men thrive when good people look away. They succeed with support from influential voices. And they survive when journalists prioritize access over truth. Every time a journalist empowers the powerful at the expense of the public, it provides another reason not to trust the media.
You can’t trust the press to protect you. The press protects the powerful.
Every assist to Epstein. Every soft landing for a predator. Every rehabilitative op-ed.
Every platform given to the cruel, the corrupt, the conspiratorial, or the anti-democratic.
It all chips away at the fragile architecture of trust that journalism is built upon.
We now live in a nation torn between competing realities. Audiences overwhelmed by misinformation and disinformation. People who assume every journalist has an agenda.
A media landscape where cruelty spreads rapidly while truth struggles to survive amid the spectacle.
This distrust isn’t just a coincidence; it is earned, one unethical decision at a time.
This is where the Press Club and responsible journalists come in. We are not passive chroniclers of decline. We are defenders of public understanding. Members of the Press Club, including journalists, editors, broadcasters, and educators, carry a responsibility that has only grown.
- To call out enabling wherever it appears
- To expose the machinery behind reputation laundering
- To refuse to sanitize extremism
- To challenge lies, even when they come from people with power, ratings, or influence
- To protect the public from those who weaponize information to harm democracy
The moment we treat enabling as “just the business,” the business becomes corrupt. The moment we ignore these acts as minor, the public loses trust. The moment we stop calling out those who help the powerful evade accountability, we forfeit our role as the people’s representatives because Epstein’s story was never just about Epstein.
It was about the people who helped him.
And today’s threats are no different.