The Free Press Foundation has awarded its fourth annual Press Freedom Prize to President Donald J. Trump.
Because the Foundation’s mission is “to revive” the American Free Press, nominees are not necessarily members of the “working press.”
In a letter to President Trump announcing the award, the Free Press Foundation notes:
On behalf of the Free Press Foundation and its Advisory Board, this is to confirm you have been awarded the Press Freedom Prize, 2025 in recognition of your courage, pioneering media initiatives and leadership catalyzing the renaissance of the American Free Press.
The fourth annual Press Freedom Prize recognizes a successful businessman and the Leader of the Free World but not a member of the “working press.” Why? Your record of correcting “the record” succeeded where the legacy U.S. media failed.
By popularizing the term “fake news” and regularly calling it out, Donald J. Trump single-handedly made possible an accurate historical narrative as the basis for national discourse. When social and legacy media monopolies banned your Free Speech, Donald J. Trump created and published on Truth Social giving readers in the U.S. and worldwide the benefits of the American Free Press.
A wide-open and transparent debate and the free flow of verified information is needed by all individuals to properly inform their decisions and to chart their own course in life per the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Such is also needed to protect the freedoms and the uniquely American concept of government as characterized by President Abraham Lincoln:
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Free Press Foundation salutes your initiatives to restore competition in the marketplace of ideas that helped make America exceptional.
The Foundation champions independent, privately-owned news operations with the aim of displacing “legacy media” which have strayed from once fiercely held professional standards.To achieve this ambitious but necessary objective, such news companies require “market justice” from Big Tech social media companies, as Foundation President Larry Ward has written for Jack Posobiec’s Human Events and WorldTribune.com.
Compensation for years of discrimination will not only revive the “American Free Press but improve AI, leading to more balanced, accurate and trustworthy systems, Ward added.
Trump's Executive Order of July 23, 2025, “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government”, inspired Ward's Op-Ed. However, while the President has successfully battled legacy media corporations, the algorithmic tyranny of the post-Covid Biden-era continues to punish alternative media outlets and stifle the free speech of ordinary citizens posting on social media.
"Privately-owned independent media outlets championed by FreePressFoundation.org continue to this day to be suppressed by Big Tech algorithms and policies," said Robert Morton, CEO of the Foundation and Publisher of WorldTribune.com.
"Many of them have upheld once sacrosanct principles of the American Free Press and are now struggling to survive commercially. The President's voice on Truth Social and from his bully pulpit, is powerful but the nation's unique alternative media must be compensated, and the censorship of its voices must end immediately."
Past recipients of the Press Freedom Prize include Free Press Foundation Chairman John McNabb, Garrett Ziegler (who worked in the first Trump White House) and Ward of Political Media, Inc.
Related: Media entrepreneur is awarded the 2022 Press Freedom Prize, August 9, 2022
Related: Press Freedom Prize, 2023 awarded to John T. McNabb II, August 28, 2023
Related: Press Freedom Prize: Ziegler did ‘shoe leather’ reporting; ‘News professionals’ did not, October 3, 2024
Support Free Press Foundation
