Most legitimate journalists are accustomed to producing reports that infuriate the powerful. It’s sort of our bag. Not that reporters go out with the express intent of antagonizing elected officials but the goal is to report the news “without fear or favor” as a certain New York (third word rhymes with “dimes”) newspaper publisher famously promised 129 years ago. It’s much the same here on the opinion pages. Our goal is to help readers sort right from wrong and perhaps to think a bit, not to serve the head of government. And so it goes with legitimate U.S. media outlets whether editorialists lean to the political right or left or other.

Given all that, it is with a mixture of amusement and alarm to witness President Donald Trump take yet another new tack in his perennial struggle — whether ham-handed or iron-fisted or both — to get friendly coverage from the press. As first reported this week by The Washington Post, the U.S. Department of State has ordered cancellation of news subscriptions around the world — at least those deemed to be “non-mission critical” — whether from newspapers, magazines or other publications. We’re not certain how the State Department can reasonably define mission critical in this context (The Feb. 11 memo suggests asking oneself “Does it make America safer?” which would be a pretty heavy lift for any publication.), but we do know how to spot short-sightedness.

The last thing any ambassador should want is to know his staff is less informed.

The amusing part is that, at least when we last looked, embassy subscriptions weren’t exactly a major profit center for the media, mainstream or otherwise, thus manipulating them in an ineffective way to strike fear in, or curry favor with, those outlets. This appears to be an overreaction to the report that federal agencies spent $8 million on Politico subscriptions — but this was actually more about “Politico Pro,” a service that tracks pending legislation. Meanwhile, subscribers to the online news outlet include quite a few Trump-supporting Republicans including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a MAGA stalwart who apparently likes to stay informed.

What’s more concerning is that this continues a pattern of Trump believing he can control information in a manner unbecoming the leader of the free world. Our embassy in Micronesia could surely carry on without multiple subscriptions to Bloomberg News but one wonders whether keeping abreast of the latest business ventures might not prove useful in London, Paris, Beijing, Moscow and many other major world capitals. And, of course, this follows Trump’s latest efforts to curtail White House access to the Associated Press for failing to rename the Gulf of Mexico in all its reports. The AP is the gold standard for straight news reporting on this planet but it’s clear Trump doesn’t like its independence (including AP stylebook choices that fail to dovetail with his views of transgender individuals, minorities or immigrants).

Is it self-serving for The Baltimore Sun to be standing up for its colleagues and for the First Amendment? Yes. And we’d be among the first to admit that whatever the public’s view of politicians, its regard for the press is seldom much better — more than one-third of Americans have “no trust at all” in the news media, according to Gallup’s annual polling. But the beauty of freedom is that people have choice of whether to subscribe or not, to click or not, or tune in to listen or watch or not and then decide for themselves. And we should cherish that freedom to decide and respect others’ choices — not mock and undermine them.

When the president who increasingly likens himself to royalty tries to bully the press through the various levers of power available to him, that’s not about promoting freedom at all — it’s the opposite. Trump supporters will say this is just Trump being Trump and it’s more a case of trolling than policymaking. Maybe so but how a U.S. president responds to press coverage surely gets noticed by despots (and those who lean in that direction) all over the planet. On this subject, we would rely on the thoughts of a Trump predecessor by the name of Thomas Jefferson: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”